Whether or not it's a science, economics is horrid at predicting the future. Case in point: all the economists who insisted that the Clinton tax hikes in the '90s would cause a recession, or all the economists- probably the same ones, really- who insisted that Obama's policies would result in a spike in inflation. In both cases, the exact opposite occurred: the economy boomed in the '90s, and inflation has remained a non-issue since Obama took office.

Economics is an attempt to explain, well, how economies work. If economics were any good at this, then one would expect that economists would be able to use their theories to predict how a given policy would play out in the economy. And, in a huge percentage of cases, they fail miserably at this. To be honest, beyond supply and demand, I'm not entirely what economic theories can been shown to actually have any predictive value.

Economics seems to exist to give jobs to the otherwise unemployable. After all, the entire field seems to specialise in predicting the past, yet managing to get it wrong anyhow. I say "predicting the past" b/c economists have a horrid track record of predicting the future.

But, then again, economics has gotta be a great field for job security. When's the last time you heard of an unemployed economist?

1) Write app
2) ?
3) PROFIT!

Duh,

Code name: Star Blazers! Cue the theme, raise the Yamato, and ready the wave motion gun!

1) Build huge, tornado-stopping wall system
2) ?
3) Profit!

I mean, obviously.

(PS: full-disclosure, I'm a Drexel alum)

According to the City of Portland's Website (http://www.portlandoregon.gov/Water/article/328963), the total capacity of the Portland reservoir system is about 220 million gallons, with "distribution storage reservoirs" ranging in size from 1000 to 10 million gallons. How much urine did this kid evacuate into the reservoir? According to the National Institutes of Health (cites in Livescience- http://www.livescience.com/323...), the average healthy human bladder can hold "nearly 2 cups of urine comfortably."

Let's err on the side of caution on both sides- assume that this kid both had an insanely huge bladder capable of holding 2-1/2 cups of urine *and* that he peed into a 1000 gallon distribution storage reservoir- the worst-case scenario, in other words. 2-1/2 cups of urine is 20 ounces, which is equal to 0.156 gallons (128 oz/1 gal). 0.156 gallons/1000 gallons = 0.00015625- 0.00156% pee in the reservoir. And this is *before* the processing that happens to all water *after* it exits the reservoir and before it enters the city's pipes.

The reason this is absurd is the same reason that fear of poisoning a city's water supply via open reservoirs is stupid: you'd both need so bloody much of whatever it is to have a significant amount *and* that something would have to survive various filtration, purification, etc. processes after that.

No, scratch that... draining a reservoir b/c a kid peed into it isn't absurd, it's mind-blowingly stupid and a horrid waste of taxpayer money. Any lawyer who couldn't defend against a lawsuit the way I did above deserves to not only be disbarred, but to also have his college + HS diplomas revoked.

Interestingly enough, I had a conversation similar to this today, except about houses. A co-worker was commenting that she'd never lived in new construction. I mentioned to her that old houses tended to be better- today- not because "they built 'em better back then," but because time had weeded out anything that *wasn't* well-built. Plenty of shite houses were built in the mid 1800s; they didn't last until today, while the well-built ones did.

It's kind of self-selecting: any old tech that's still useful today was *obviously* well-made, whenever "back then" was. It doesn't mean that *everything* made "back then" was of equal quality.

I wouldn't say that "OEMs really have no choice." Rather, they *could* choose desktop linux rather than Windows, but have chosen not to do so. Frankly, I don't much blame them- I consider myself a linux fan, and even I'm fairly sure that my next desktop computer will run some version of Windows rather than any version of linux, at least as a primary OS (I'll definitely keep my roll-your-own linux NAS, and will probably dual-boot linux). Desktop linux is the monorail of computing- it's the future, always has been, and always will be.

And, it's the choice that OEMs have chosen not to make.

Agreed, 100%, the human body is not cut out for space. Certainly, like all life on earth, we require oxygen, we evolved with gravity, radiation is toxic, and so forth. Our bladders, for instance, tell us that we need to urinate based on a sense that depends on gravity holding urine down at the bottom; without gravity, if we wait until we feel the need to urinate, we need to be catheterised.

BUT... the human body isn't cut out for a lot of things THAT HUMANS DO ON A DAILY BASIS. We're not cut out for flight; we're not cut out for deep water diving; we're not cut out for rapid movement on ground. Yet, with technology, we do all of the above. Absolutely, space flight requires far more in the way of adaptations to protect our (very) frail bodies than air travel, SCUBA, or cars. But human history, broadly simplified, is the story of us using our brains to overcome our manifest physical handicaps.

Government by the masses only works when the masses are well-educated. If the masses are, by and large, as ignorant as Americans have become, then they're easy to manipulate via fear, and produce government by those least-suited for the task. Sadly, the mass underfunding of public education in the US has been a bipartisan effort- people in the US overwhelmingly choosing lower taxes + poorer public education over higher taxes + better public education- and a self-perpetuating one at that. After all, poorly educated people are also easier to convince to further cut money from education.

The ideal form of government may well be the true Philosopher King, but I'm not sure that such a person has ever existed- or could ever exist. Barring that, self-government by an educated populace has produced the best results so far- quoting Churchill: "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried."

Seeing as how I was the first to mention it in this , it's hardly as if *everyone* was saying this, the way you suggest. But, if the US + USSR aren't being forthcoming w/their expertise, then there is certainly less information on which to draw. I would note 2 things that may be available, though:

* Some aspects of failures are in the public record (such as the US experience w/conflict between Metric + US/Imperial measures)
* The scientists + engineers who worked on the past projects may be bought just as people fear that former Soviet nuclear scientists could be bought.

And that is *precisely* why I emphasized not to underestimate the difficulty.

Not to underestimate the difficulty of sending a payload to Mars, but they *do* have the combined 40+ years of US and USSR experience upon which to draw. When the US and USSR were putting people into orbit, landing them on the moon, sending probes to Mars, etc., it had literally never been done before. The mere fact that something has been done before- and that data collected during the attempt is available- gives the Indian Space Research Organisation an advantage that literally no country has had before it.

Again, this is not to minimise the challenge, which will be enormous. It's only to point out that they're not flying blind, so to speak.