Exactly, the only way the summary makes any sense to me is if you replace the word "woman" with "feminist".

No, they really don't. They may make jokes and talk frankly about women, but guess what, women do the same thing about men. Are you calling women savages now?

VAT in Ireland is 23%, I'm not sure I'd call that low.

I'd agree with this to a certain extent but I'd be cautious about making everything voluntary, some foundational skills in math, geography, history, language etc should be a requirement. Also life economics like mortgages, pension plans, investments and savings. The entire property bubble was an organised ram raid by the banks on middle class savings, students need to know how that happened so they don't fall for it or any other bubble again. And while we're at it the legal ramifications of things like marriage and parenthood should be dealt with right next to sex ed.

Ah now, how sad would it be if his mum was condemning him too. While arguments can be made for and against unconditional love, more often than not it's helped people get back on their feet after they do really stupid things. It's not as though he's got a shortage of critics.

How did you get the subdomain to point to a home dynamic IP? Mine changes every day or so, do you ping the pi or have the pi ping a webserver and update it or something?

Unless we manage to harness the mechanism of spatial expansion (and presumably reduction), that is.

I think that might have been more relevant back in the 17th through 19th centuries, even for most of the 20th, when there were plenty of jobs for low or limited skill workers. Nowadays western countries are having to try very hard to maximize the numbers going into education because without a degree you won't get much work as a result of hugely increased automation that shows no signs of stopping. For better or for worse, that's just how it is.

In this new environment a massive influx of people without much in the way of qualification becomes a burden moreso than a positive addition, even if they're willing to work their asses off, as most of them are. Meanwhile all they're actually doing is competing for the crap jobs with the most disadvantaged in whatever country and driving down salaries for those that need them the most. I may have missed something here, but I don't think so.

If the US really wanted to address this problem it would legalise most drugs besides the nastiest ones (added bonus of prison populations falling through the floor and people not being stigmatised for life, leading to greater earning potential, plus taxes on drugs) and provide incentives for its neighbours to the south to deal with corruption within their own governments. I've become firmly convinced that 90% of the causes for impoverishment on a national level are plain old graft. Wealth isn't being shared as it is in developed countries.

Anyway yeah. My two cents.

It could well have been the FBI or NSA running the black market. Nice little money maker and fines handed out to criminals as a salutory lesson.

Apply the same logic to writing and 90% of the fantasy fiction genre owes Tolkien's estate some big bucks.

You posit? You're an ignorant embarrassment, and that embarrassment is now indelibly engraved on the internet for all time, connected to your Romancing Alaska... thing... And just think, you were so confident about teh muh soggy knees and how all teh wimminz would be lining up for a taste when you were done beating your chest like a jackass.

My work here is done. Not that I had to do much work, you did all the heavy lifting really.

That was a question, as indicated by the question mark. Remarkable how grammar works really. Except of course the actual facts cited were supported by links to research in a subsequent comment you unsalvageable pleb.

Yes, facts are misogynistic. Those damn woman hating facts.

I want you to stop, put down the bottle, and take a good hard look at what you're trying to excrete here. Nobody, but nobody denies that men get treated brutally by the family courts, except yourself.

Why might that be?

You presume that their reasons for doing so are benevolent.

After all, species which have the ability to first of all see these stars and secondly understand their meaning are probably going to head in that direction as soon as they can, meaning they're young and not very scientifically advanced compared to a civilisation that can manipulate stars on an almost unimaginable scale. Scout ships get captured, their source traced, and rival civilisations extinguished in their infancy.

It could be a megaengineered honey trap.

As an alternative, JAXA is already working on a microwave solar power satellite.

By the time we're colonising Mars, microwave solar power from orbit will already be old news. The idea of cutting ice, transporting it from the poles to the equator and then popping it into an engine is cute but really only a scientific curiousity.