Just put a payload experiment in orbit and see if you can drive it around. If the scientists running the experiments accounted for the motion of waves on a beach five miles away, I'm pretty certain that makes it worth a payload slot. We could dick around down here for years arguing about whether the results are valid or not, or we could put one up there and try it.

Sounds like the perfect cubesat experiment.

As the kids these days say, "This."

Early Sheldon was a character I really liked, for all the reasons E-Rock pointed out. Other characters had friction with him mostly just because he was an insufferable genius who was always technically correct and looked down on everyone else for not living up to his standards of perfection, and ordinary fallible people find that kind of person hard to get along with because it such a person uncompromisingly highlights their own foibles.

But over the years Sheldon has morphed into a socially retarded asshole -- not just someone who awkwardly doesn't understand how best to interact with other people, but someone who thinks he does and yet is constantly wrong and will never hear anyone who tries to tell him so. He is no longer an insufferable genius who is always technically correct. He is an insufferable idiot who arrogantly insists that he is correct even when he is clearly, blatantly not.

And when a person starts to run roughshod over other people because of their own wrongly self-assessed "superiority", it goes from harmless "shamelessly ability to like himself" to dangerous borderline sociopathy as the AC I'm replying to said.

I stopped driving 2 years ago, voluntarily. My SUV cost me around $800 a month in replacement costs. Another $200 in maintenance. I was burning through $12,000 a year in gas. I spent an average of 1000 hours a year in the car, for work, for groceries, for fun. 999 of those hours were spent focused on the road. I hate talking on the phone while driving.

Consider my annual total: about $25,000 + 1000 hours of my time. For the "privilege" to sit in Chicago traffic.

I'm a consultant. I now use UberX every day. I also use public transportation when I'm not in a rush or when someone isn't paying me to swing by.

I spent about $5000 a year on UberX. $100 a week. While I am being driven around, I can respond to emails, make phone calls. I bill for that time. When a customer wants me to visit them, I pass the UberX fee on to them plus 50%. No one scoffs at it. Some customers will realize the cost of me visiting them is more expensive than just consulting over the phone.

I figure I'm $20,000 ahead in vehicle costs, plus I've literally gained another 600-700 hours of phone and email consulting time a year. Call it $40,000 ahead.

I don't take cabs, because they don't like to come to where my HQ is (ghetto neighborhood). UberX comes 24/7, within minutes.

My little sister had an emergency surgery a few months ago. I immediately hired an UberX driver, who took me from the office, to the hospital. He waited. We then took my sister to her apartment to get her cats and clothes, then he took us to the pharmacy. After, he drove us to our dad's house to drop her off, in the suburbs of Chicago. Then he drove me back to work. 3 hours, $90. I can't get a cab to wait even 10 minutes while I drop off a package at UPS. Forget about them taking credit cards.

UberX charges my Paypal account and they're off. If they're busy, they charge a surcharge. I can pick it or take public transportation.

I know why the Chicago Taxi authorities want Uber gone. But a guy like me is their best customer. Next year I'll budget $10,000 a year for UberX, and it will make my life so much more enjoyable and profitable.

Driving yourself around is dead. It's inefficient. Ridesharing is "libertarian" because it is truly freeing.

Unless we want to coin the verb "to police-police", meaning second-order policing, rather than ordinary first order-policing. In which case police-police-police-police(n) police-police(v) police-police-police(n), as you said.

Oh, why did this take me so long to get.

Police-police-police(n) police(v) police-police(n) as police-police(n) police(v) police(n) and police(n) police(v) people.

Unless you've found a way to make "police" an adjective, I think you have one too many iterations of it there. Police(n) [whom] police(n) police(v) [in turn] police(v) [other] police(n).

The buffalo sentence in turn has eight, not five (or your six), iterations. Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) [whom] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) buffalo(bully) [in turn] buffalo(bully) [other] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison).

How exactly is a massive government agency massively overstepping its already questionable legal bounds a result of "you wanted smaller government"? That sounds exactly like a prime example of bigger government and why someone might want a smaller one.

Interest, and the broader phenomenon of rent (interest is just rent on money), is the thing that breaks a free market and turns it into capitalism.

There would be no cause for forcible redistribution of wealth if only this mechanism by which wealth becomes concentrated was removed.

Without rent and interest, wealth would naturally redistribute from those with more to those with less, as those with more traded their excess capital for the labor of those with less; for what use is that excess if you're just sitting on it, not getting anything for it?

But when you can lend it out, and not only get it all back but more on top of that, and keep repeating that process, then you can spend that extra you get back to buy the labor of those with less than you, without ever losing any capital in the process. Capital becomes a free money machine, if you can charge usury on it (that is, charge for the mere use of it, without actually selling it).

And conversely, those who have to borrow from you, the same working poor whose labor you're buying, get to keep less of the product of their labor because they have to pay you that same little extra that you turn turn around and pay them with. The "free money" you get out of your free money machine is actually money out of their pockets; money that they would otherwise use to buy, rather than merely borrow, the things that they need.

In short, with rent and interest in existence, those with more wealth can perpetually extract labor from those with less wealth without ever losing anything in the process, perpetuating and even exacerbating the wealth gap between them.

While without rent and interest, that wealth gap would naturally close without any forceful intervention just by natural market forces.

Even worse, there are sometimes even deceptive statements made about how much you will have to pay, and business arrangements you enter into without even knowing that the other party exists, much less that you're getting their services.

I didn't see a doctor for ten years because I couldn't afford insurance, and when I finally got covered through a decent job and went to get my first general checkup in my adult life, there was a big sign up front saying "ALL CO-PAYS DUE AT TIME OF VISIT". I figured that meant what it said: anything I owed, that was not getting billed to my insurance, was going to be billed to me before I left. When they let me walk out without paying anything, I figured that meant I must not have had a co-pay, which made sense to me as it was just a general physical exam, and a blood draw for some basic general-health lab tests (cholesterol, blood sugar, STDs, etc).

Then I got a bill in the mail a month later. Called and complained, why am I getting billed, didn't my insurance cover this, and THEN they tell me that that bill is for the remainder that's left after what my insurance paid (IOW my copay). I argued about the sign saying all co-pays were due at time of visit and they said... I don't even remember what now, exactly, but something to the extent that that's no excuse and I have to pay the bill. Not knowing what else to do, I did.

A month later I got a different bill for the blood tests, from a different company. I called and complained that I already got a bill for that visit and paid it and even that was unexpected and what the hell is with two different companies trying to collect for the same fucking service. They explained that they are the lab that my doctor sent the blood off to for the tests, and they they bill separately, and that paying my doctor for their service doesn't get me off the hook for the lab service. I had no knowledge that I was even buying services from this lab company: the only entity I interfaced with was my doctor, they hired the fucking lab, let them pay the lab and roll the cost into their bill, I figured. But no, and lab insisted I owed them money, and not knowing what to do, I paid up.

A year later, my second doctor's visit in my adult life, different doctor in a different town as I had since moved. They at least had the decency to say up front how their billing works (without me even asking), and that they will send me a bill for the copay after they process it through my insurance. And they don't do in-house blood draws and send out to a lab, they send you to the lab of your choice with orders for what tests to run. So that's better, much more clear. But the lab itself also has a "ALL CO-PAYS DUE AT TIME OF SERVICES" sign... and this time, they actually billed me at time of services! Awesome. So far, I was liking the medical establishments in this new town a lot better.

Until a month or two later I got a bill from the lab. When I called to complain that I already paid them at the time of services as their sign said, they told me then that that was only an estimated copay, and that after they put the bill through insurance, there was still a balance remaining on my copay, which is what that bill was for. Again, no idea on what grounds to dispute it, so I paid up... but ugh, what the hell

For emergency services where the patient may not have the time or awareness to evaluate the costs and benefits, I can understand you just do the service and bill later. But for a motherfucking general checkup and routine bloodwork? Jesus fucking christ, how can you not just say what it will cost up front and bill before I accept your services?

It's only one step removed from the homeless guy who washes your windows without your consent and then demands you owe him money. "Hey man you need some medical services?" "Yeah uh I guess how much?" "Can't tell you yet now turn your head and cough." "Uh... [cough]" "Aight you cool man, that'll be $100." "WTF no you didn't say it would be that much" "Too late you got the work now you pay the bill man... don't make me go get my collections posse to shake down yo ass, pay up sucka."

Personally I have almost no debt, just my car payment.

We opted out the debt economy years ago. We froze our credit reports and paid cash for our last house, car and motorcycle. We could have some dinky medical bill or something that slipped through the cracks in collections and not even know it. We might not even find out about it until we update our address when the credit freezes expire and we need to renew them.

You don't need credit cards, car loans, or mortgages. We're living proof. We fly, stay at hotels, rent cars all the things people think they need credit to do. We don't pay more for car insurance, though we do have the occasional utility deposit.

Nothing you can buy with credit feels as good as opting out of the debt economy.

Given the situation, the outcome was quite easily predictable.

If it was that easy FP&L would be making plans to close Turkey Point instead of expand it. That whole site is going to be underwater and, before that happens, there's going to be a storm surge high enough to swamp it. That's a guarantee which seems to fly in the face of your supposition.

I worked in the nuclear industry for nearly a decade. What I saw with my own eyes could best be described as straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

And people get mad when I say NASA has devolved into a collection of risk adverse mid-managers loosely connected to a rusting theme park endlessly replaying clips of their glory days. Their best days are behind them and it's time to think about reorganizing the entire agency.

That is flat freaking amazing. NASA does some pretty cool stuff, but I can't help but wonder how many billions it would have cost taxpayers for them to manage development of technology like that? It's hard not to see NASA as an organization with its best days well behind it.

Wasn't this the opening scene for Jurassic Park?

Go => "Ramming speed!"
Stop => "We die!"