For instance, if you were to start spinning in empty space and no other matter or light in the universe existed (yet you were still somehow alive), you would still feel your arms being pulled outward due to your spinning motion -- even though you had no point of reference to even know that you were spinning at all. You'd still be spinning in relation to the invisible framework of space-time.

Anyone care to elaborate on this ? I've spent countless sleepless nights pondering how a framework could manifest itself without interaction from matter or energy.

As far as I know no Vance book has ever been turned into a movie or a series. For some reason, Jack Vance seems to be not as widely known or appreciated for what he brought to the genre.

While I know it might/will be a disappointment once it eventually and inevitably happens, I'd love to see a capable director rise up to the occasion anyway. There's certainly more than enough detailed quality material.

So long, Mr. Vance, and thanks for all the text.

Depends on how you calculate. In my country, the national train company receives 15 eurocent per passenger.km in direct subsidies alone. Last I checked, my 10000km plus return plane ticket didn't cost 1500 euros.

It's late and I'm not going to find out, but I have a hunch that train cargo isn't overly attractive, just by comparing the volumes shipped.

Again, rail is surprisingly expensive.

Maybe not "more competitive pricing", but fair pricing aka charging the real cost. That cost, plus the cost of the former supposedly better service, used to be hidden by huge subsidies before privatization.

Trains are surprisingly expensive to run. So privatized companies are suffering while offering the service at an acceptable price. Socialist governments are happy to offer the service way below cost but hide the tab and charge it to others.

Deustchland probably looks as unpronounceable as Deutschland to you, but the former is while the latter isn't.

Cool - I now remember my grandparents' radio with a screw plug that had to go into an adapter, and finding it odd. As a 6 years old with a keen interest in all things electric, light sockets were out of my reach so I didn't realize the screw plug was designed to fit them.

Nice to finally see someone posting here who actually grasps the value of a high CRI.

I'm sick of dimwits blindly recommending a lower or higher color temperature when someone complains about the low light quality of current energy saving bulbs. Color temperature isn't the big problem: our brain easily adapts to a different white balance. Whole swats of spectrum missing is, as that makes a lot of pigments look dull.

So let's hope for lamps that can produce a continuous weighted spectrum from 650 to 400 nm with 90% of the theoretical peak efficiency.

This. Of course there may be some hypochondria involved, but people living close enough to hear whoosh-whoosh all day long, have their house invaded by shadow effects or their formerly rustic countryside tarnished have all reasons to complain.

NK serves a very useful purpose as a place where rabid greenist, socialist and communist bureaucrats can be figuratively banned to, to go and live their adored ideology to the fullest. Zimbabwe is another.

"Catch me if you can !", said the speeding camera.

Sorry, I'm out of +1, Witty points.

Pazjalusta ! A great opportunity to study the broken window fallacy in a post-communist economic context.

If you take just a second to look here, here, and here you will see that hurricanes, for example, have not become significantly more frequent nor intense.

The same applies to other freak weather events. They're just more mediatized now, and affect more people in an increasingly overcrowded world.

Oh, oh, the gullibles sure were as worried then as they are now, alarmed by the same quality of pseudo-scientists as the current CAGW crop.
It just didn't become that "big", because post-normality had not taken hold, science was not yet so deeply infested by public-teat-sucking watermelons, and reasonable minds still prevailed.

Why do the current alarmists deny that old scare and try to swipe it under the carpet and rewrite history ?
Do they count on the lack of memory and perspective of the general public ?
Is the analogy hitting home too closely ?
Is it an excercise for the serious backpedalling they'll have to do shortly, now that their pseudo-science is falsified ?

Wrong. They just had to use the same color they used in the seventies, when it was equally hot.