Heinlein's thoughts were so far above the cookie cutter "isms" as to be on a different plane altogether.

A very great many people are stupid. Old news at 11.

What's the mystery?

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <string>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    std::istringstream iss(argv[1]);
    while (iss.good())
    {
        std::string s;
        std::getline(iss, s, ',');
        std::cout << '"' << s << "'\n";
    }
    return 0;
}

How is that in ANY WAY different from the US.

Nonsense. Germany was zero threat to the US. The Japanese threatened our naval power in the Pacific, but were never the slightest threat against the homeland. What should the US have done? Act as the hired mercenaries of Europe?

The stupidity of Britain in pathetically weakening their defenses after WW1 and right up through the late thirties was responsible for not being able to stomp Hitler when the necessity arose and the opportunity to do so was golden. "Peace in our time" was effectively the mantra right from 1919 until 1 September 1939. The US suffered from the same moronic weakness. Germany was not a very strong power in 1939; they were furiously racing to rearm while Britain slept, and they were more than a match for Poland when the time came and Britain and France were too cowed to lift a finger to help Poland.

It would have been royally appropriate if Germany had walked over Britain like they did France. They came within an inch of doing it, but in the event the tiny RAF fighter force ended up showing that Germany's luftwaffe was terribly deficient. Also, the British and US navies hadn't been gutted as badly as the land and air forces, and Hitler didn't even try for a surface fleet. Luckily, Germany, Italy and Japan could not coordinate their forces enough to fight their way out of a paper bag.

Then after WW2, exactly the same thing, as the west couldn't fall over themselves fast enough to disarm, until Korea woke them up.

The cold war was the exception. And after 1992, the same broken record with getting suckered by twits nattering about the "peace dividend" lie. Even now Britain and the US are weak as kittens, and you got the absurdity of trying to fight Iraq and Afghanistan in laborious slow motion on the cheap in terms of manpower and equipment. Not cheap in terms of back-breaking expense though.

All the answers to the contrary which you are going to get are wrong, wrong, wrong.

By far the best version is the original theatrical cut. The international release is very slightly better (one minute of "scary violence" is cut from the U.S. release), but either that or the U.S. release will do very nicely. This is the only version with Ford's voiceover, which is absolutely essential to understanding what is going on. It also adds tremendously to the noir feel.

The only way I know for sure to get this version is to get one of the multi-disc sets which include the "1982 theatrical release" (the 5-disc blu-ray set is a slam dunk). You can also get it on cable, but I doubt it is the only version circulating on cable or streaming.

All other versions (rare original workprint, 1986 U.S. broadcast version, 1992 director's cut, 2007 final cut) are CRAP in comparison.

Nonsense. Better than 50% of males "get that far". A male in the U.S. reaching age 65 today can statistically expect to live, on average, until age 84.3.

83 is neither unusually young, nor unusually old, to die.

That Shuttle is not small by ANY definition. It is GIGANTIC. 20x16.5cm compared to 11.5x11.1cm. That's the price for passive cooling.

I don't use https because I'm too much of a stingy anarchist to pay for a key.

So why don't you use a free certificate from startssl.com?

"Republicans Back Down" is what is known in the trade of journalism as a "standing head". It is a newspaper headline, all preset in type, ready to be used for ANY morning's newspaper. That is how predictable Republicans are. They will ALWAYS back down, because it is all Kabuki Theatre. All they can imagine is being obstructionist, with no real agenda whatsoever of their own, and their pre-planned end strategy is to ALWAYS throw up their hands and say "oh, well".

I'll make it plainer. They have all turned into a bunch of PUNKS. Anyone who takes them seriously is a SAP.

How twisted do you have to be to believe that, to prevent the government from tyranny, you have to try to prevent it from fulfilling its proper function? I ask you seriously. If your government has turned against the people, your society is in deep doo doo, and worrying yourself sick about little details like this is not just silly, it is failing to face the real problem.

Where did you get that number?

Out of his ass.

Your recollection does not align with history. DDT was far from the first significant agricultural pesticide.

In the real world, pesticides and specifically insecticides date back thousands of years. Sulfur was burned to produce a noxious gas, and various naturally occurring substances, biological and mineral, were gathered and used. Hydrogen cyanide gas was used to fumigate citrus trees in California in the 1880s. Zyklon A, which was a compound designed to release hydrogen cyanide on the application of heat and water for pesticidal purposes, dates back to before WW1. It was banned after a similar compound was used as a chemical weapon in WW1.

Zyklon-B was a cyanide-based pesticide with an irritant additive to serve as a warning, dating back to the early 1920s. It was used for delousing clothes and controlling pests in ships, warehouses and trains. It was co-opted for more infamous purposes later. One of the inventors was executed in 1946 for knowingly providing the substance to a certain evil state actor.

Organophosphates were used as pesticides, followed shortly by use as nerve "gases".

It's been a long, long time since I have seen an engine with anything other than self-adjusting hydraulic valve lifters, too.