NASA doesn't have a lift vehicle, but three American companies do. The last ISS resupply was delivered on an American rocket, and the Dragon capsule being tested now will hold seven people.

I was working at Disney World when the first shuttle took off, and saw every shuttle launch before Challenger without a TV. One was a night launch I saw from my mom's house in Tampa. We drove to the cape to watch one, man that thing is LOUD.

The first one I not only didn't see firsthand was Challenger; I missed that launch completely. I was in Illinois looking for work (we'd just had our first kid and moved back to be close to family and besides, Florida is a shitty place to live).

You're my age then, I was working at a drive in theater and brought my TV with me (I had a little twelve inch Panasonic). The boss was pissed. I've written about it before.

Bullshit, were it not for Apollo we would not have the ISS, robots on Mars, telescopes in space, or probes all over the solar system.

I reposted this journal the day before the anniversary; it's my story of that day.

our driver of innovation today? cat pictures and dashcam video of accidents.

Telescopes in outer space, robots crawling around Mars, all sorts of robotic probes all over the solar system, self-driving cars, a permanent space station, GPS, private space launches... And, you know, when Apollo 11 took off, flat screen displays and Star Trek communicators were only fantasy. Those cat pictures themselves were impossible science fiction; a computer as powerful as a smart phone didn't exist. Hell, cars didn't even have seat belts then, let alone ABS, disc brakes, air bags, bluetooth... I think your memory of just how primitive it was and how far we've come is a bit faulty.

Investigators would not say whether the shooting occurred inside the home or in the alley behind the house. According to the station, Greer is not under arrest and police are still determining whether or not the homeowner will face charges.

The guy was eighty years old, the young people attacked and robbed him in his own house and had done so before. If he shot her before they left, it was certainly justified. If it was indeed in the alley he should certainly face murder charges. As the article says, that hasn't been determined. Personally, I'm going to withhold judgement.

I not only can't argue with that, I'd say the efforts won't sway anyone. But the tea party has never been rational.

I've never seen a hard drive last more than a couple of years

I've got a hard drive sitting here that's pretty old. I converted it to an external drive after replacing it with newer ones in my computer.

I'm not sure exactly how old it is, but I'm pretty sure that instead of storing the data as 0's and 1's it's using cuneiform symbols. I'm telling you, it's old.

I've noticed the same thing about my body. Damn you, Apple!

On what basis do you judge that? On the fact that in the past, you didn't hear about all the things the government kept secret?

I've posted links to data and graphs of the number of documents classified by the US government by year.

When you see the graph, you will never again need to ask that question.

Here, I'll do it again just for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ind...

Who running for president is not a scumbag? You have to be a scumbag to want to be president.

But it's not even quantity. I would love to know what the GP is talking about when he claims there is now new information available for any part of government since Obama was elected. It's just not true.

More secretive when it comes to intelligence and national security, but pretty much everywhere else there have been huge strides in transparency.

Absolutely not true. Do you know that the biggest growth area for classified documents is from the regulatory agencies? These are the agencies creating the laws we have to follow, but now they're classifying their work product for some strange reason.

Also congress. For example, why would the House Rules Committee have to classify thousands of documents? Or the House Commerce Committee?

I've cited the vast increase in the amount of government documents classified. Can you cite anything - anything at all - that shows there have been "huge strides in transparency" since Obama was elected.

Just want you to know I was joking. You don't really sound like a cruel, cynical bastard.

The telecom industry has been so heavily consolidated that it's not even close to competitive. You go elsewhere in the world and you find telecommunications services that far exceed ours in terms of quality, level of technology and value.

I honestly wish the government would break up AT&T and Verizon into about a dozen separate companies. They did it before and it worked out. There needs to be a lot more competition in telecommunications. The only other option is to limit the scope of what they do. If you provide telecom services, for example, you cannot sell phones. Or content. The only other option is to make them so highly regulated that their eyeballs pop out and let loose some consumer protection agency on them to sit on their necks until they stop charging $40 just to upgrade to a new phone (not the cost of the new phone, not the cost of switching the sim card since that's done by the customer. I cannot figure out why there is a $40 "phone upgrade" charge.)

I hate the phone companies. Really really.

But if you bang a 17 year-old, you'll probably be fine. Because she's nearly a legal adult.

You won't probably be fine in Arizona, California, Delaware, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin,

In Florida, you can bang an eight year-old, but only if she's really hot.