... and for the places where people actually live much longer. Though Vermont might (and probably was) a larger portion of the population at the time. The UK was either early or late to the party depending on how you count the Magna Carta. But after their abolishment in 1833 they did more over the next few decades, by far, to irradiate slavery by making it an issue of Treaty with pretty much every country they dealt with, creating a large part of the navy specifically for anti-slavery operations etc. As much as they were dicks to the colonies they at least were very active in freeing/preventing slavery once they set their mind to it.

In my mind that is the problem with a federalist system: it takes an act of God to get a consistent law across the country. I don't think fundamental human rights (quality and standards of healthcare and education included) or what is a criminal act should depend on which state of a country you happen to belong to.

I was actually impressed with that board; no hint of pricing from the manufacturer so I took the time to look up somebody selling it.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? $963.75? And for all its super high power CPU and ample IO the RAM maxes out with 8GB in a SINGLE SO-DIMM slot! Then, let's see, you still have to make your own enclosure.

I fail to see how there could be a single user who would not be infinitely better served at far lower cost by an Intel NUC or similar.

Maybe we do this to get going fast and we immediately set about improving it

Is 2032 your definition of "get going fast"? That's the year this hare-brained scheme is supposed to reach the level everyone is interested in; 130 tonnes to LEO. The Falcon Heavy is due to fly NEXT YEAR, and has 53 tonnes capability compared to 70 for this thing in 2021.

Don't design it with o-rings this time

What do you think "five segment SRB" means? The segments of the solid rocket booster are bolted together, and each joint sealed against the raging fire inside by several o-rings plus heat resistant putty. All because it's "too hard" to transport them from the factory to the launch pad in one piece.

In the 1960s, Goodyear already had a proposal for a very large nonrigid airship to carry outsize rocket assemblies. It was never funded.

The entire Manhattan Project, start to finish, including not just the basic science and hugely diverse intricate engineering, but all the civil engineering of building vast infrastructures, and employing 130,000 people, cost only $26 billion in 2014 dollars, and took less than four years.

This is just bolting together a bunch of decades-old parts, but will dwarf that expenditure. It is the swan song of what was once a daring and imposing nation, and clearly will never be completed. All the Congressmen who vote for this budgetary pork, and the President who signs off on it, should be tried for corruption. Those at the heart of championing and designing this abortion should be tried for conspiracy to bankrupt the nation.

Github FAILS the requirement for reliability due to being subject to DMCA horseshit. Will somebody please start the next github in a jurisdiction untouchable by DMCA and other thuggish regulations.

And stay there.

Yeah that is the worse bit. I like fireworks I go more times than not to see them (on a different day than the yanks though). What sucks is the drunken idiots with $5 of fireworks to set off every night for a week on either side. They always seem to wait until 12-2am and set off one or two. Could call the cops but who knows where they are coming from? It isn't like they are doing a whole show or anything: just enough to wake you up and scare your dog.

It was a long time later before the idea of getting rid of slavery came up. The funny thing with the 4th of July: declaration of independence: yeah and how long did it actually take to get it? I can declare myself boss at my work it might take a while before others agree though.

In a system with no property tax, there would be no disincentive to hoard property.

So? I apologize in advance; there is no way to say this politely; you can take your loaded term "hoard" as well as your consensus and your bowing and scraping to government, and stuff them. You started the name-calling when you characterized real property ownership as "hoarding".

If you get off on seeing people's wealth seized by force and redistributed, fine; viewpoints and opinions are the most basic rights everyone has. But if you give support and comfort to those doing the seizing, expect a little blowback.

Now, if you want to get to basics and discuss the pros and cons of allowing private ownership of what is called "real property" (basically land) in the first place, that is fair game.

Er, if you find a file whose contents seem REALLY random, you can be pretty goddam certain that it's encrypted. Even binary files practically always contain valid strings in the header - database files, exes, mpegs, jpgs, etc, etc.

You've got your tinfoil hat on backward if you think ITER will save anything. Cold Fusion is a fallacy and will never replace oil.

You are confused/uninformed. ITER is plain old conventional tokamak style hot fusion. This has nothing whatever to do with cold fusion.

Funny that you want to sideline the politicking when the Democrats are the fuckups.

You are arguing with an anonymous COWARD who won't even put his own identity on the line.

"isolationism ... That's largely what brought the US into the last world war"

The declaration of strategic-economic war against Japan represented by the oil embargo led to the US getting involved in war. This led the Japanese navy to estimate that it had two years of fuel left. It should not be bewildering that a nation being being thus strangled might retaliate, and that retaliation could only take the form of shooting war.

The embargo was calculated to respond to Japanese action in its own region with which the US disagreed - the invasion of China and the colonies of Southeast Asia.

Without entering into a discussion of the pros and cons, it was the OPPOSITE of isolationism which brought war to the US.

You got to do something so you can damn the people that don't believe even after all the evidence. You got to do very little so those that believe you did it look crazy and you give people a reason not to believe in you.