Dark side of the moon radio telescope: no interference from Earth's radio signals. Gravity wave detector: the Moon is less geologically active.

I am a big proponent of harnessing fusion . . .using solar panels.

I would like to build a Moon base with 2 goal, one as a base for astronomical observatories (radio, visible light, I think it would be a good place to try to detect gravity waves, test some dark matter detection theories) and it would be a good test of how viable it is to live on a very inhospitable world. Lessons learned from a Moon habitat will be useful for an eventual Mars habitat. I have no illusions about a Moon habitat being self sustaining over the long term.

I grok that.

As much as I would love to colonize Mars, it would be a lot easier to colonize the Moon. In both cases you need a pressure suit and you're going to be hit by lots of radiation. You'll be spending most of your time underground in both cases. And it's cheaper to get more stuff to the Moon to help people to survive.

Thanks for the update, I obviously haven't kept up with the latest LEGO information (and forgot about proper capitalization of LEGO). Your post shows a real-world example of what really works.

I would probably get a talking to about that too. Unless maybe if I brought bagpipes and said I was going to a parade after work.

Let's look at Lego. If Lego sold as many sets to girls as they sell to boys they would earn billions more than they do now. So they try hard to sell to girls. They show girls in advertisements playing with traditionally boy's sets. They make pink sets with flowers and ponies. They try and try and try and try to get girls into Legos. Yet the number of girls who play with Legos is consistently much smaller than boys. Lego isn't actively trying to prevent girls from liking their product. Capitalism beats out sexism. Only an idiot would allow sexism to prevent them from doubling their market. It's just that Legos don't appeal to most girls.

I think a better example would be skirts. It is socially acceptable for a woman to go to work either in pants or a skirt. However, if I (as a male) came to work in a skirt I would be asked into the bosses office and told to go home and get changed. This being summertime I imagine a skirt would be quite cool and comfortable.

If you can explain what a delegate is and use one to create an event, you can probably get hired.

Thanks to fracking we are now one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas. We are pumping it out so fast we're running out of places to store it. Obama has the luxury of not putting boots on the ground in the Middle East because we no longer need their oil.

If you want to be immortal, you have to be sterilized.

It's actually more plausible to colonize the Moon than Mars. In both cases you're going to be living underground. In both cases you're extracting water and oxygen from local resources. In both cases you're going to be wearing a pressure suit on the surface. The advantage of the Moon is it only takes a couple weeks to get there instead of months. You can bring a heck of a lot more resources from Earth to your Moon base for the cost of bringing it to your Mars base. An emergency escape craft to bring you from the Moon to Earth wouldn't cost a trillion dollars. If you believe a Mars base would be easier to bring to self-sufficiency you are fooling yourselves.

I first read it as "Hot Pocket", which I think would be a better fit.

I was just saying it was a problem. As it just so happens I'm plugging up someone else's memory leaks right now in a C# program. I worked in C and C++ for decades, so I love garbage collection. Just because I point out a problem doesn't mean I want to dump Java or C#.