Salyut 3, a Soviet military space station, was launched in '74 equipped with an anti-aircraft cannon. The gun was aimed by orienting the whole station. Far more interesting than some survival gun.

Of course, the operative word there is "volunteer." If trace amounts of inert Fluorine compounds are a serious concern for someone, in addition to the asbestos, dioxin, carbon monoxide, benzene, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, aldehydes, lead, hydrogen chloride, zinc, silicates, dichlorofluoromethane and only god knows what else that any given volunteer is likely to encounter, then the thing to do is not volunteer. I suspect the net number of volunteer's that abandon their role as firefighters due to Fluorine compounds will be precisely zero.

You have inflated expectations of our knowledge.

Buckyballs are common in nature. They proliferate around campfires. We didn't realize that until after we "first generated" (as Wikipedia puts it) buckyballs in a lab and awarded Nobel Prizes for it thirty years ago.

When some chemical company reacts Fluorine with whatever to make fire retardant is it really surprising that a variety of molecular species appear? We don't actually put each molecule under a STEM and serialize it. The product is "mostly" some intended molecule and the rest is..... meh. Whatever!

You live in that world. You are wearing it, eating it and using a big pile of polymer and highly refined minerals to demonstrate your ignorance with it, and despite the fact that we probably haven't cataloged more than a fraction of what all that stuff is out-gassing into your lungs you'll probably live to be a ripe old 90+ because of it. So try not to spaz out about it.

These Fluorine compounds are close to inert which is why they persist so long. Unless the firefighters are actually eating their fire retardant with coffee each morning they are unlikely to suffer any effects at all from the minuscule amounts that manage to get past their filters and whatnot. And if they do then they have their gold plated government funded health care, public union negotiated disability plans and similarly generous pensions to help them cope. Fighting fires is a dangerous occupation.

No. The petty cost of trading influence is well known. William Greider detailed this phenomena 23 years ago in "Who Will Tell the People." A nice fur coat or use of a private plane is often sufficient.

That won't work. They don't simply spin about on a whim. The sellouts are predisposed to the buyers for many reasons and the tokens you're dwelling on are really just obligatory offerings and partly symbolic; tossing a liberal some exclusive theater tickets usually won't buy a pro-gun vote.

Plots? Plural?

The plot is a young male Jedi + sexy princess trying to blowing up the ebil command ship/death star thingee followed by celebration and an awkward award ceremony. This single, recurring plot is punctuated by light saber fights.

Anyhow, as far as Disney discarding Lucas's work, it's really hard to imagine them doing worse. The only interesting part of this story is that George actually thought enough of his own work that he appears to be surprised they aren't using it. LOL.

Sharpton's regular broadcast just started as I read your bullshit. I listen to his hate mongering on WVON out of Chicago. You have no idea what you're talking about.

The callers are the best part. They've all been filled with hate from birth and many of them want violence.

schwit1 figured this was an opportunity pick at one of his grievances expecting the freetard groupthink around here to indulge him.

And he's right.

HP is marketing these ideas as "The Machine." The basic concept is using Re-RAM (ions) for all storage, fiber optics (photons) for all communications and electronics (electrons) for all processing. Ions, photons and electrons in a flattened crossbar matrix. Look up Martin Fink's recent presentations if you need a Buck Rogers fix.

The incredibly small, simple and easy to fabricate cell structure that Re-RAM seems to offer is just too compelling to ignore. Crossbar (the company) appears to be solving the Re-RAM problem. All we're trying to do is move ions around with current. There is a long list of possible materials and designs yet to be investigated. Eventually a sweet spot will be found. When that happens non-volatile storage density and speed will leap forward an order of magnitude, and the whole storage stack from the CPU cache to the tape drive will get flatter.

Or not. It's not like we need this to make the future exciting. Humanoid robots alone will provide more than enough excitement for the rest of my life.

Everyone uses "golang" due to this. It works fine.

Supply and demand. The US elderly have voted themselves a limitless supply of funding for their medical care, so demand for doctors is very high and every other prerogative of our nation is pushed down the list. We've got Medicare paying for 74 year old gender reassignments. You want to know where they've spent your dreams?

So you take your little degree and your dreams of academic success and sod off. We have millions upon millions of knees and hips to replace. Find something that pays well too, mule; we're going to need you to cover that ACA mandate no matter how high it climbs.

The other great effect will be rapid inflation of community college tuition, pushing up the floor for all post-secondary education. And for what? Highschool II, dumbed-down to keep the subsidies flowing, and $400k/y community college presidents building Mcmansions on their Colorado ranches.

Thus our mass incarceration of SJWs in prisons that exist exclusively inside your hate filled little mind.

I've found you folks rather adept at inventing "stupid" strawmen to disparage.

As they've always done forever. Excusing and rationalizing terror, usually by attempting to argue equivalence, is standard SJW behavior. Not many people will be as surprised by this as you appear to be...