A major problem with representative democracy is that the average politician is generally unwilling to do work that has an effect more than four years into the future. Eight at the outside. Long-term goals tend not to exist.
No, however, the EU, a transnational body, exceeds it, and a fair few of the EU member states exceed it on a per capita basis. Bear in mind that there are only two single nations larger than the US, and they're both developing world.
It doesn't have anything over Mir, for the moment. Mir was a long term manned space station (the first, really), and I would consider it humanity's most interesting and significant manned space venture so far. The IIS, however, has the potential to surpass it; they're already developing super-clear glass that can't be made on Earth as a commercial product, for use in instruments.
The rest of the DEVELOPED world would be reasonable. And the EU is (quite rightly, IMO) opposed to genetically modified foods which have not undergone sufficient testing. Our standards are higher than yours; we have fewer powerful food industry lobbyists to tell the governments what to do, after all. When something has been tested sufficiently, we are generally happy to use it (of course, like everyone else in the world, we have luddites who would no sooner eat their GM food than their next door neighbor).
And gay marriage, in particular, is relevant, because it's one of these things where a society says "oh, no, that's new and different. Surpress it immediately". Just like nanotech, GM, nuclear power, in fact. Although these reactions are understandable; historically, the same thing has happened over rights for minority races, inter-race and inter-religion marriage, and so on, all over the world, they are not sensible and they are not a way to run a country.
And I'm rather impressed that the US has just one set of morals. Do you have telescreens in every room, telling you what to think? Or are you just blithely assuming that your whole country has the same morals as you?
"$466,000,000,000 (466 billion) per nation per year."
I couldn't let this one go by. What a wonderful nonsense figure! What does that have to do with anything? Also, the current GDP of the EU is $13.9trillion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
I think your figure may be for a pre-expansion Europe.
Not quite, because the Mercury craft was only capable of carrying one. The Chinese craft has a 13% higher capacity than the Soyuz. It is currently outfitted to carry 3 people, expected to rise to 4 in redesign.
Sorry, my government? I'll have you know that we were an almost perfectly stable colony of the British Empire/part of Britain for about 400 years (we had a parliament for about 150 of that, then elected people to Westminster for another 120 years), and transitioned moderately smoothly into self-government. And you were rather arrogant in talking about "my government". I could have been Dutch (Holland has had an elected government and guaranteed rights like freedom of religion since the 1400s)
And normal citizens never, ever had the right to gun ownership here, without good reason. Nor did they in any other European country that I know of. It never occured to anyone that guns were the sort of thing that random maniacs had a right to carry.
And your government seems to be doing a far better job of oppressing both your own and other people right now than any western European power has since WW2. (With the possible exception of France with Algeria in the 60s). We have not gotten complacent about our governments, but you certainly seems to; any mad new oppressive law is justified under "oh, but the terrorists will get us". You accepted USAPATRIOT hardly noticing, Europe's new constitution has effectively failed beucase of lack of public trust (and most of the voting public did apparently have some idea of what they were voting on). Sadly, to an extent, the UK seems to be following you; however, the whole thing is massively unpopular there, (Blair's government was only re-elected because the alternatives were so dreadful, and he lost 200 seats) and people are increasingly unwilling to stand for it.)
You should be whining about losing the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. You should certainly be worried about a place where it seems to be considered blasphemy to be unpatriotic. Here, patriotism is a bizarre aboration; people know the government isn't to be trusted, and they know there's nothing that wonderful about our country. You shouldn't be whining about losing the "right" to carry offensive weapons. And you're seriously expecting the US to be in a state where it requires conscripts to provide their own guns? If a war gets that bad, in our new world, someone will already have used the nuclear option.
These two were my initial thoughts, actually. Unless shrimp-alergic people are only allergic to the thing's flesh, this would preclude its use in a first-aid situation. Also, shrimp is neither kosher nor hahal; I'm inclined to think it would be unacceptable to jews and moslems in much the same way as blood transfusion is to Jehova's Witnesses.
The British space progamme hasn't existed for some decades now, you know... And here in Ireland we've never had an independant launch vehicle (a university tried to launch an orbital rocket a few years back, but it exploded).
But really, it's hard to know when Americans are joking sometimes, and this ludicrous persecution complex some people seem to have? "Ooh, they want to take our assault weapons! How on earth will we defend ourselves if we are personally assaulted by a small to medium military unit"?
Do people really babble such rubbish on the radio?
And for what it's worth, my other response to that thread played along with the joke; I was just hedging my bets;)
Hmm, so who are these decent, God-fearing Americans? They're obviously not the Bush regieme, who are in charge and could just nuke the liberal death-satilite. (Before they got into space, but after the Soviets did, the Americans did indeed have a plan to nuke the moon; it was abandoned as too silly). And they can't be the filthy liberals, either. So who are they? Fred Phelps?
On a mildly unrelated note, I can't halp being very, very glad that we don't have "second-amendment rights" here.
And was the OP serious? I sometimes don't know, with Americans...
Ah, in other countries, it's a fundamentalist-fascist-police-state conspiracy headed up by Hitler, Fred Phelps and Margaret Thatcher; they shift-work with the liberal group responsible for aiming the mind control beams at America. Different paranoias for different people...
Ah, but the great joint-Iluminati/World Zionist Consipracy/Knights Templar/other causers of tinfoil hat wearing group responsible rewrote all the books, obviously. Also, tides are caused by special machinery installed for the purpose.;)
The correct way to justify nukes is of course that they prevent war. Without nuclear weapons, there'd likely have been a WW2-style land war between the Soviet Union and America, and probably also between the Soviet Union and China. The fear of those bombs saved a lot of lives.
Well, they're dead wrong. That's a bit like saying that the Saturn V was Florida's independant space capacity, because it was partially manufactured and launched in Florida.
France paid for about 30% of the Ariane programme, and 20% for the EU part of the ISS.
That's correct. It also makes basic human rights a constitutional matter, as opposed to a treaty/legislation/courts matter. For instance, if it goes through, no state will ever be able to legalise torture, execution, certain unfair labour practices, and so on. It's well worth reading it.
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Not theory, but fact. Notoriously, early Indian immigrants to the UK in the 19th century tended to die.
A major problem with representative democracy is that the average politician is generally unwilling to do work that has an effect more than four years into the future. Eight at the outside. Long-term goals tend not to exist.
An under-unity power source? HOW DARE THEY?
It was a joke (tho Clarke, in particular, went into a lot of detail on the geostationary satilite.)
No, however, the EU, a transnational body, exceeds it, and a fair few of the EU member states exceed it on a per capita basis. Bear in mind that there are only two single nations larger than the US, and they're both developing world.
It doesn't have anything over Mir, for the moment. Mir was a long term manned space station (the first, really), and I would consider it humanity's most interesting and significant manned space venture so far. The IIS, however, has the potential to surpass it; they're already developing super-clear glass that can't be made on Earth as a commercial product, for use in instruments.
And gay marriage, in particular, is relevant, because it's one of these things where a society says "oh, no, that's new and different. Surpress it immediately". Just like nanotech, GM, nuclear power, in fact. Although these reactions are understandable; historically, the same thing has happened over rights for minority races, inter-race and inter-religion marriage, and so on, all over the world, they are not sensible and they are not a way to run a country.
And I'm rather impressed that the US has just one set of morals. Do you have telescreens in every room, telling you what to think? Or are you just blithely assuming that your whole country has the same morals as you?
Yes, obviously. Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" ;)
No, the apex of manned space travel was the long-term manned space station (so far). Don't be silly.
Also, of course, America currently has no economical manned spacecraft, or indeed any manned spacecraft that they are currently happy about launching.
I couldn't let this one go by. What a wonderful nonsense figure! What does that have to do with anything? Also, the current GDP of the EU is $13.9trillion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
I think your figure may be for a pre-expansion Europe.
This is an interesting attitude. Does it really ring true with modern China?
Not quite, because the Mercury craft was only capable of carrying one. The Chinese craft has a 13% higher capacity than the Soyuz. It is currently outfitted to carry 3 people, expected to rise to 4 in redesign.
And normal citizens never, ever had the right to gun ownership here, without good reason. Nor did they in any other European country that I know of. It never occured to anyone that guns were the sort of thing that random maniacs had a right to carry.
And your government seems to be doing a far better job of oppressing both your own and other people right now than any western European power has since WW2. (With the possible exception of France with Algeria in the 60s). We have not gotten complacent about our governments, but you certainly seems to; any mad new oppressive law is justified under "oh, but the terrorists will get us". You accepted USAPATRIOT hardly noticing, Europe's new constitution has effectively failed beucase of lack of public trust (and most of the voting public did apparently have some idea of what they were voting on). Sadly, to an extent, the UK seems to be following you; however, the whole thing is massively unpopular there, (Blair's government was only re-elected because the alternatives were so dreadful, and he lost 200 seats) and people are increasingly unwilling to stand for it.)
You should be whining about losing the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. You should certainly be worried about a place where it seems to be considered blasphemy to be unpatriotic. Here, patriotism is a bizarre aboration; people know the government isn't to be trusted, and they know there's nothing that wonderful about our country. You shouldn't be whining about losing the "right" to carry offensive weapons. And you're seriously expecting the US to be in a state where it requires conscripts to provide their own guns? If a war gets that bad, in our new world, someone will already have used the nuclear option.
These two were my initial thoughts, actually. Unless shrimp-alergic people are only allergic to the thing's flesh, this would preclude its use in a first-aid situation. Also, shrimp is neither kosher nor hahal; I'm inclined to think it would be unacceptable to jews and moslems in much the same way as blood transfusion is to Jehova's Witnesses.
But really, it's hard to know when Americans are joking sometimes, and this ludicrous persecution complex some people seem to have? "Ooh, they want to take our assault weapons! How on earth will we defend ourselves if we are personally assaulted by a small to medium military unit"?
Do people really babble such rubbish on the radio?
And for what it's worth, my other response to that thread played along with the joke; I was just hedging my bets ;)
A worrying number of space systems were invented by science fiction writers...
On a mildly unrelated note, I can't halp being very, very glad that we don't have "second-amendment rights" here.
And was the OP serious? I sometimes don't know, with Americans...
Ah, in other countries, it's a fundamentalist-fascist-police-state conspiracy headed up by Hitler, Fred Phelps and Margaret Thatcher; they shift-work with the liberal group responsible for aiming the mind control beams at America. Different paranoias for different people...
Ah, but the great joint-Iluminati/World Zionist Consipracy/Knights Templar/other causers of tinfoil hat wearing group responsible rewrote all the books, obviously. Also, tides are caused by special machinery installed for the purpose. ;)
Sounds like a horrid orgy of capitalism's worst points to me.
The correct way to justify nukes is of course that they prevent war. Without nuclear weapons, there'd likely have been a WW2-style land war between the Soviet Union and America, and probably also between the Soviet Union and China. The fear of those bombs saved a lot of lives.
Yes it certainly is; people are far more inclined to get free stuff than very cheap stuff.
France paid for about 30% of the Ariane programme, and 20% for the EU part of the ISS.
That's correct. It also makes basic human rights a constitutional matter, as opposed to a treaty/legislation/courts matter. For instance, if it goes through, no state will ever be able to legalise torture, execution, certain unfair labour practices, and so on. It's well worth reading it.