“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”
- Woody Guthrie, typescript to "This Land Is Your Land"

Also, perhaps not so incidentally "The melody came from a tune that A.P. Carter had found and recorded with Sarah and Maybelle Carter prior to 1934 and was not original to Guthrie." (Wikipedia)

The hour isn't an Imperial unit.

It isn't metric either, but it is among the non-SI units mentioned in the SI. The second, along with the other units in the GP, is not only metric but also part of the SI system that most of the world uses these days.

How's that for pompous? ;)

There was huge amounts of what we today call collateral damage, but back then they didn't use the term "collateral damage".

It was more or less seen as inevitable that there would be civilian losses and damage to civilian infrastructure even if the intended target was military (as it almost invariably was, with some notable exceptions - the Blitz for example specifically targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure).

It wasn't until the 1991 Gulf War "collateral damage" started to get used as "unintended civilian losses".

I beg to differ. Any number of economic systems allow for unrestricted exchange of things between human beings; capitalism is hardly unique in that aspect.

A system where both the means of production and the end product of labour is torn from the worker's hands and given to the company owner to distribute as he sees fit can never be called humane; it is more akin to slavery than anything else, especially when the system rewards the company owner for distributing as little as possible back to the worker.

Why would anyone without control over a corporation's actions ever be allowed to call themselves "owner" of that corporation? They're financiers, money-lenders. This notion that they're somehow entitled to an ever-increasing return on their investment is one of the more troubling aspects of capitalism, since it allows money to generate more money without anything other than more money actually being produced.

I don't think I argued this doesn't happen - although it probably happens far, far less than it should. But then again, who makes the laws? In many places, it's the same people that run the corporations. Indirectly, of course, through lobbying, campaign financing, and just plain old good-old-boys networking.

You could at least have googled it. It's not like I came up with the term here and now.

While I don't disagree that a state monopoly on business prevents freedom, it is because capitalism by its very nature prevents individual freedom. As a wage labourer, you have no true freedom; you're only free to go from one (hopefully gilded) cage to the next, from one master to another, always a slave. We can't all be bosses.

It was democracy Churchill commented on, not capitalism.

I hope I don't need to point out that democracy and capitalism aren't the same thing, or that one does not presuppose the other?

You can refuse to be a customer and/or employee of a business, but you can't refuse to be a customer and/or employee to all of them.

Capitalism is inherently inhumane, putting the good of non-humans (corporations) before humans, as well as sociopathic in forcing the majority of humans to labour for the privileged few (company owners).

And before someone wilfully misunderstands me: Soviet Union-style "communism" (in quotes because it's communistic in name only; it was really state capitalism) was worse, but that doesn't mean capitalism is good; it's just a tad bit less worse in some aspects (and worse in others)

Patriotism; the well-dressed, smiling sociopath brother of xenophobia, racism, and intolerance.

And hard to get to.

And rather hazardous, what with the radiation from solar storms, the risk of hull breaches from (micro)meteorites, the problem with cooling/heating, the lack of oxygen (or anything to create oxygen from), and so on and so forth.

It's not exactly a walk in the park.

Yes, the pressure difference is just 1 atmosphere rather than then 1 atmosphere/10 meters of the ocean, but on the other hand there's no DNA- and electronics-destroying radiation in the ocean, you're actually inside a very efficient heat sink, and have all the oxygen-containing molecules you'd ever want, and you're a lot less likely to get your hull punctured.

Bottom line is that neither space nor the deep sea are "easy", and that's part of the reason we don't generally go on vacation there.

"Remember, half the people you meet are dumber than the average."

While not strictly true, because of median/mean ambiguity, the word "dumber", and that you probably don't meet statistically random samples of people, it's still useful because it makes people think "waitaminute, that can't be right" - and then they have to realize that it's probably not, but IQ is also not some objective measure of dumb/smart. It's probably not really a good measure of anything but the ability to do well on IQ tests.

An IQ score only has meaning in relative terms of the population on which it is measured, as "IQ 100" is by definition just the median test score of a certain population. Each standard deviation up or down is +15/-15 points, so 85-115 should contain about 68.2% of the population, with only 2.1% or so being lower than 70 and another 2.1% being higher than 130.

I'll be long dead in 2100.
My son will be dead in 2100.
His children though, my grandchildren, may very well be alive in 2100.
Their children, my grand-grandchildren, are very likely to be alive in 2100
My nieces and nephews, born between 2009 and 2015, may very well be alive in 2100.

And conceivable for you or not, but I do "give a crap" about them, even the ones not born yet.

There are several scientific theories - multitudes even - about what consciousness is, how it arises, and what qualifies.

You should also try studying some philosophy; philosophy of mind has been the subject matter of thousands of books, theories, discussions, and theses all the way back to Plato.

When a scientist says "if the current trend continues, X will happen", media reports it as "X will happen".

What they don't report - and what people like you seem unable to understand - is that the current trend DIDN'T continue because people, governments, nations, actually DID something about it.

So the ozone layer is still here (slowly recovering) because we stopped spewing CFCs into the atmosphere. We MADE SURE the trend didn't continue.

We still have oil because we go to silly lengths and spend ridiculous amounts of money to find and extract more. Fracking, anyone? Oil sands? Deep-sea drilling?

The point many scientists - and more and more regular people, and even some politicians in some countries - are making is that unless we DO something, if we allow the current trend of climate change to continue, it is - sooner or later, but most assuredly - going to make this planet a worse place to live than it already is.

It's not going to fix itself, much like the ozone layer wouldn't have just fixed itself. We're going to have to fix it, and a good start is to stop making it worse.

To paraphrase Torvalds:

If it compiles, it's good. If it runs, ship it.

Being a programmer is a trade in some parts, and you can get by with good craftsmanship.
In other parts it's a creative art, and you can't force creativity.

To write really good code, you need to both have the craftsmanship and the creativity.

Some critics of the Hyperloop concept have focused on the possibly unpleasant and frightening experience of riding in a narrow sealed, windowless capsule, inside a sealed steel tunnel, that is subjected to significant acceleration forces, high noise levels due to air being compressed and ducted around the capsule at near-sonic speeds, and the vibration and jostling created as the capsule shoots through a tube that is not perfectly smooth or level.[25] Even if the tube is smooth upon construction, ground shifting due to settling and ongoing seismic activity will inevitably cause deviations from a perfectly smooth, level path. At speeds approaching 900 feet per second (270 m/s), even 1 millimeter (0.039 in) deviations from a straight path would add considerable buffeting and vibration. With no provisions for passengers to stand, move within the capsule, use a restroom during the trip, or get assistance or relief in case of illness or motion sickness,[26] the potential for a seriously unpleasant travel experience would likely be higher than in any other popular form of public transport.
  - Wikipedia