Fine, let's take the lowball of $144M. DirecTV has a well-known number of customers, namely 20,000,000. Viacom's channels are part of core programming, so everyone gets them. We divide $144M by 20M and we get $7.20 per subscriber per year. Okay, easy enough, that's a $0.60 per month increase, matching Viacom's claim of "pennies" per month. (60 pennies is still less than a dollar.)

DirecTV is putting a dollar figure on all their scrolls, a number I haven't seen Viacom deny. That number is $1,000,000,000 per year. Dividing by number of customers, that's $50 per customer, per year, or about $4.25 per month increase in the bill. Guess what, 425 pennies is still "pennies" per month.

If we go with your estimate of splitting the difference, it's $20 per year, and $1.75 per month. Again, if you want to stretch the term, it's still "pennies per month."

Now, if DirecTV is lying about the $1B number, why is Viacom not shouting "Liar Liar!" from the rooftops and giving out the real number instead? All they give us is "pennies per month" which describes absolutely *nothing* in terms of actual cost, other than greater than $0.01, since it's plural.

Both sides are using semantics. One is using them to defend my wallet, the other to pick my pocket. I know which side I'm naturally going to come down on.

So, you would prefer that DirecTV simply accept any rate increase of the content provider and pass them on to you? So, the $1B increase ($50/year/subscriber) should just be passed on to you? Like Viacom says, "it's only pennies a day."

And once that precedent is set, when Disney want's another $5 a month, and HBO does, and every other network, and your bill goes to $400 a month, will you vent your anger at the content providers or will you scream at DirecTV for not attempting to argue with the content providers to maintain a fair rate?

I'm no fanboi of DirecTV (although I do have it) but I'd rather they fought against a price increase even if it means temporarily losing channels, rather than tagging another $5 a month onto my bill.

Because space is big...

Imagine there were only 19,000 people on Earth, roughly evenly distributed. What's the chance you'd ever run into another person? Now, instead of just the land area, make sure that 3/4ths of those people are on the ocean. What are the odds of running into one of them now?

Now, imagine that, instead of just the surface of the Earth, you stack up about 500 layers, each one of them the surface of a sphere wrapping the entire Earth, each one a mile higher than the last and starting about 160 miles up. Now instead of just the surface of the Earth, spread those 19,000 people across those 500 spheres evenly and evenly spread them around the surface of the sphere they're on. And all of those spheres have more area than the surface of the Earth.

Now, would you consider that area "dangerously heavily populated?" On top of that, you need to shrink the people down for most of the debris.

Now, to be fair, the real test is that many of these "people" are moving really, really fast, although most of them are moving in roughly the same direction. But a few of them are going in different directions. And some of those are jumping between spheres. But it's still areas larger than the whole surface of the Earth. There have been only a tiny number of collisions between these objects. (I think the number is actually -- one.)

Like I said, space is big. Really big. Bigger than the biggest thing you can imagine. You may think it's a long way down to the pharmacy, but that's peanuts compared to space. (With apologies to Douglas Adams)

Sadly, you take the definition of a Progressive think tank (run by ultra-1%'er George Soros) as the source of your definition.

"Gee, Mr. Fox, what's your plan for Hen-House management?"

I doubt that Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Mao defined their socialist/progressivist regimes as, "A long-standing ideology to repress the people, destroy the economy, stifle innovation, and kill millions while insuring the continuation of a decadent, hedonistic lifestyle for a carefully chosen elite."

Funny how you criticize the US educational system, but have clearly never read or understood what the socialist movement (started in the latter half of the 18th century) and the newly re-named Progressive movement of the 20th century (renamed when the muckrakers and guys like Lenin made "communist" and "socialist" into bad words) have done or how they've been implemented. The fact, alone, that you don't see them as the exact same movement, with one version having a "candy-covered coating" is a truly sad commentary on your "critical thinking" skills.

Sadly, you have bought into the redefinition of the language that the Progressive movement thrives on. There is nothing "progressive" about progressivism. The end result of progressivism is a small cadre of "elites" who control the lives of the underclass "for their own good." This is no different then the Feudalism of the middle ages.

Explain to me how the socialist ideal of a society where all people are taxed using a "progressive" scale so that there is no one who is "unfairly" rich, leaving a large group of people who work endlessly to feed a government of cultural elites (bureaucrats) whose job is to dole out largese to the people -- just enough to keep them hooked on the system but not enough for them to escape it -- is any different from the Feudal lords and the idea of Noblese Oblige?

We had that system, we've tried that system for 2000 years or more. Oh, it "works" in it's own way, namely a short, brutish existence for 99% of the population. But for that 1% it's a wonderful system.

And that's the huge irony here. The progressives of the last century have managed to convince "the 99%" that they really want to have the socialist system installed.

The most ironic statement in history: "Workers of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains." Because when they rose up, all they really did was forge shackles for themselves.

The USSR killed at least 25,000,000 people.
Pol Pot killed 10,000,000
Mao and his Cultural Revolution? Probably in excess of 30,000,000.

And this is the system you want to champion? I bet you think you were taught "critical thinking" as well...

A typical launch carries a 3-5% excess fuel load for safety margin, so there was always some extra fuel aboard at separation. The big factor that changed the game was that the Merlin 1-D engine was suppposed to reach 120,000 lbs of thrust each, but instead is testing at 145,000 lbs of thrust with a higher ISP, which IIRC is about 310 seconds, which is phenomenal for a Kerosene/LOX engine.

With the extra thrust and the better performance, it meant that they could either expand the payload by a few thousand kilos, which would still be an option with a more expensive, expendable flight, or they could have 6-8% fuel reserves at the end of the stage separation.

Without the payload to push, that 6-8% is more than enough to slow down a very light "empty tin can" and get it out of it's sub-orbital trajectory. If you watch the video, they're only burning three engines to deorbit, and one engine to land the first stage. The claim is that the first stage actually has the thrust to return it to the launch site, which might be possible. First stage separation is only a few hundred miles downrange, and you could actually just slow down and let the Earth rotate under you to move back west. In any case, you'd want to bring the speed down to where you are basically in a straight line free-fall back to the launch site, using only maneuvering jets for stability until a few miles above the ground, when you light the center engine and tail land it.

Clearly this isn't something simple, either. They aren't going to be flying this by next week or anything, and the actual fact is that they are likely to be unable to recover some of these first and second stages to bad or uncontrolled landings -- which is exactly the same as what happens now, so this can only be a win scenario for them if they get it working. I'd love to see $10/lb to LEO pricing.

As for the use of parachutes, the first launch of Falcon 9 attempted to parachute the first stage back to the ocean, but from what I heard, the aerodynamic forces on the tumbling, uncontrolled reentry of the stage caused it to break up before the parachutes were deployed. The second stage reentry is under even higher stresses, and I don't think they even tried to recover it before the grasshopper program.

I don't know any native-born American who is anti-immigrant. In fact, I am a third generation American, and I never even found anyone who'd call me anything but an American, and that includes my wife's family, who came over on the Mayflower. About the only people I know in America who'd call me anything but an American are those with names like John Crazy Horse. Of course, they do have some basis for that...

I have absolutely no problem with, and I don't know a single person who does have a problem with, every person who fills out a legal visa application and shows up in the country to work and become part of the productive society. I do, however, know a lot of people who are anti *ILLEGAL* immigrant -- cutting through a fence, sneaking into the country, stealing someone's identity through their social security number and then using it to take a $7 an hour job from a worker because the employer knows he can pay the illegal $4 an hour to do the same job since they can't complain about minimum wage violations. Then jumping on the welfare system or other public programs that don't report illegals, to add to their income with taxpayer money. That kind of crap is what's destroying a lot of the entry-level jobs in this country. And largely, that's not the fault of the illegal immigrant, but the fact that there's estimates of as many as 20 million illegals in the country means the problem is wide-spread. We tried amnesty in the 1980's and it was a disaster of epic proportions, as all it did was cause a new rush for more illegals to get into the country. After all, if we did it once...

My 18 year old son can't get a job right now with teen unemployment in the city over 70%, but not one of the clerks at the local McDonalds speaks a word of English. You try to figure out why that is...

There's no "anti-immigrant rhetoric" in the news, except for the lefties *claiming* that the republicans hate anyone who isn't white. It's the tired old democrat playbook of race warfare they've been going to since the late 1960's. Every Republican I've met is in favor of Immigration, heck the republican from Texas (whose name escapes me) keeps doubling the H-1B visa rate every year, despite the fact that it keeps depressing salaries in the computer programming field.

Sorry, I know you are talking about how accepting most Americans are about immigration, but that one line about anti-immigrant feelings just steams me.

Just to be pedantic -- Elon Musk has said he could design the Falcon XX for $2.5B. Bigelow Aerospace can put up a "Mars Mission" space station using BA-300's for less than a Billion dollars more. Assuming six launches of the Falcon XX to put those six BA-300 segments into an interplanetary transfer orbit at $150M each (SpaceX's estimated cost per flight of the XX) and you have a total of right around $4.5B. Now, Apple has a warchest of $80B in cash, so Apple could launch not one, but about 30 missions to Mars and remain solvent.

Whether they'd get a return on their investment is a tough question, since I'm not sure whether FoxConn will set up slave labor camps on Mars to make iPads or not.

What I was pointing out was that his comment of "as far as we can tell they've NEVER been this high before" was a patently false and exaggerated. It marks the kind of ill-thought-out rhetoric that marks both sides of the AGW argument. Both sides have become shrill and irrational with facts ignored in favor of screaming alarmist claptrap to push an agenda.

Things like his comment - "as far as we can tell they've NEVER been this high before" - are patently false. Comments from the other side, like, "reducing CO2 will collapse all of society and leave us in caves" aren't helpful either. I think that's the entire point, if you RTFA, that this guy Lovelock is admitting that screaming alarmist claptrap like "billions of people will be dead by 2050 and the few breeding pairs of humans left will be hiding in the Arctic and Antarctic" doesn't advance the science, or change anyone's beliefs, it's just utter bullshit that causes a harsh push-back that's just as harsh in the opposite direction. Especially as evidence to the contrary builds. Any good science is lost in the back-and-forth screaming match.

I hate to enter this discussion, but you are desperately wrong about CO2 levels. The Carboniferous period (when life * flourished* on Earth) had CO2 levels nearly 20 times higher than current times. Please read your units carefully. 7000ppm is quite a bit more than our current ~390ppm.

The original AC bitched about the advocacy of the astronauts and engineers as being unqualified. I pointed out that the same can be said of the AGW advocates. He then stated that he didn't know who Pachurri was, so I explained it. On top of that, Pachurri isn't just an advocate. He is the ultimate gatekeeper and head of the IPCC. Every government in the world takes his word as gospel in the IPCC reports. Every page of which he approves.

Reporting what the head of the IPCC does on the side is not ad hominem. He actually does write soft porn on the side, which calls into question his credentials. The entire other AC's post was about "gee, these guys aren't climate scientists -- they're highly trained analytic engineers who spend all their time going over numbers that have life or death results -- so they're totally unqualified to say 'maybe the company I worked for for 20-30 years should be more worried about launching rockets than taking sides in something the NOAA should be doing.'" While my post is, "gee, the guy who *runs* the IPCC, the highest authority on AGW -- is a former railroad engineer who's largest responsibility was explaining away late trains, and who also writes pulp novels -- so he's totally qualified to be making trillion dollar decisions affecting the life and death of literally billions of people."

I am not the one making the argument from authority. The logical fallacies aren't on my side.

On the other hand, I note how you completely ignore the very real fact that Michael Mann (et al) misused data flagrantly and got it past a group of "peers" who are all in his daily email list, and who run Real Climate.

Sorry, mis-remembered. It was Mike Tyson, not Chuckles. Still, I'm sure he's being dropped by all his sponsors and ad agencies...

Right?

Right?

(crickets)

Hey, Charles Barkeley asked why no one has shot George Zimmerman dead yet this morning...

I'm sure that he'll be dropped by the networks for his hate speech...

In 3..... 2....

Pachurri, by the way, is the Head of the IPCC, and co-recipient with Gore, of the Nobel Prize. He also writes soft-core porn on the side.

As has been pointed out in other threads, the entire contribution of the Oil industry to do "climate science" is less money than the GSA spent on their Vegas partying in 2010. It's amazing how all these people are getting checks from the oil industry, since they all must be for about $20. I'm sure a lot of scientists would risk their careers for that picture of Andrew Jackson.

Try reading some of the dissenting views for once, instead of listening to the echo chamber on Real Climate.

Real science? Go look up the Tiljander series and look at how Mann (et. al. 2008) used them and then tell me I'm the one relying on lies.

[Here's a hint: increasing X-Ray absorption in the sample corresponded to lower temperatures, Mann simply correlated the tail of the data -- which the author stated in the peer-reviewed paper was invalid due to modern interference -- with recent thermometer records and claimed it proved the hockey stick. This ignored the fact that higher values indicated colder temperatures, and the invalidity of the modern data. It fit his preconceived notions, so he used it... Upside-down. But hey, just because he used a proxy showing the Little Ice Age was warmer than the Medieval Warm Period... I'm sure that's justified.]

Here's an even simpler question to ask: Can someone in the IPCC name one test that can be used to falsify current AGW theory?

Because, last I checked, every scientific theory has to have a test that would falsify it. I can falsify all of evolution by finding a rabbit fossil in the stomach of a T-Rex. I can falsify the Theory of Relativity by finding one particle or wave traveling faster than light, or a mass that isn't equal to E=MC^2.

But in the AGW world, I have yet to hear one thing that can falsify AGW. If it gets warmer, it's AGW. Colder? AGW again. More storms? AGW. Less Storms? AGW. More ice? AGW. Less ice? AGW.

The only item I've ever heard as a test of AGW was that the stratosphere over the tropics should be cooling. Guess what? 30 years of satellite data says it isn't, but the very climate scientist who proposed that test is now saying that it simply proves AGW.

There is a term for a non-falsifiable belief, and it's "Dogma".