I think no sane person would argue that a good mechanical watch isn't beautiful as well as an amazing piece of engineering. (I cannot say the same for crappy digital watches however) That doesn't change the fact though that they are a single purpose device that generally speaking is seldom necessary these days. I don't really need to carry around an extra gadget whose sole purpose is to tell me the time 99.99999% of the time. There are occasions when that is useful/necessary but they are rare these days.

If you enjoy wearing a watch there is no problem with that. Just recognize that you are wearing a piece of functional jewelry rather than making a practical choice. I think a watch of any sort is a much better choice than wearing polished rocks embedded in rare metals.

And will sit in a drawer for any but the most basic or simple of tasks. I have each of those tools and use them but 9 times out of 10 I find myself reaching for the cordless hammer-drill or the pneumatic nail gun because I value my time and don't believe in pointless effort. Plus a good part of the reason those hand tools last is because you are somewhat limited in the amount of work you can do with them. I can generate FAR more torque with my hammer-drill than with any manual screwdriver or hand drill. Pretty useful when trying to punch a hole in concrete or loosen a stuck bolt.

Because they are FAR more productive with those tools. Maybe you've never done any construction. I have. Try framing a house sometime with a traditional hammer and traditional saw and miter box and then do it with a nail gun and circular miter saw. Then get back to me on how much I should value that old school hammer. Sure you can get the job done with the old tools and people did it for a long time. And it will take you 20X longer and require far more effort.

Which is exactly why those devices remain useful. And there are times when that is valuable. I sometimes carry a (dumb) watch when I'm hiking or doing some competitive distance running. Also useful if you are flying a plane or navigating a boat.

Here's the thing though. How often to you *really* need to know the time at a glance and do not have several clocks within eye shot these days? I spend most of my day working near a computer that has the time right on the menu bars. My car has a clock. I have various clocks in most of the rooms of my home. Most places at my office have at least one clock visible. When would I truly need to know the time so quickly that I cannot take a few seconds to pull my phone out of my pocket. Why would I wear a relatively uncomfortable piece of jewelry with no other purpose just so I can know to the second what time it is throughout the day? Does that really make sense?

That gets a tad difficult when you are trying to grow enough trees for 7 billion people.

Furthermore wood burning stoves are rather dirty from an environmental standpoint. Most traditional wood burning stoves are quite inefficient and release a lot of particulate matter.

Why the delay? You have something better to do? What could possibly be a better use of your time than the greatest exploration mankind has ever undertaken?

I think you are grossly underestimating the amount of hand holding going on from mission control here on Earth.

Probably yes.

Wrong question. You have to get the equipment there either way. The question is what can you do with the equipment once you get it there. Presently the state of the art in robotics is such that we are pretty limited in what we can do with equipment once we get it there. Generally speaking people can usually do a lot more in a short amount of time than even the most state of the art automation unless it is highly repetitive. It's exactly the same problem we have in automating factories here on earth. Automation can be extremely useful but for most tasks we still have no better or more flexible tool than a competent human being.

And the R&D payback will probably be 100X as large on a manned mission. People focus too much on the mission cost without considering the full economic picture. Remember that you have to develop a LOT more technology for a manned mission and much of this technology is applicable elsewhere.

Not on mars they don't. Not when being operated from earth. Average latency to send a bit of data to mars is around 13 minutes in each direction. Sometimes longer depending on where the earth is in its orbit in relation to mars. The speed of light is fast but mars is really really far away.

Complete and utter nonsense. We are discovering things about the Earth daily. We've barely explored the 3/4 of the earth that is under water. We know a lot but there is a lot left to learn right here on Earth and for the foreseeable future Earth is exactly where we are going to learn because we have limited options regarding space travel right now. Our technology is simply not advanced enough to send people much farther than the moon a present and even that is a stretch.

And we should explore that too. Doesn't make your previous statement any less false.

I understand it but like you I don't agree with it. We should be exploring space with as much enthusiasm as we can generate as a species. It will take courage and vision and an appetite for risk but the long term payback is almost certainly there. (and I'm not just talking about money either)

There are plenty of rational reasons to go there. Not all of them are economically rational. None of them are without some amount of danger. But the notion that there is no rational reason to go into space is easily and demonstrably false. Off the top of my head:

1) Scientific discovery, particularly as it relates to the human body in hostile environments
2) Technology development
3) Preserving the species (the Earth will cease to be habitable at some point)
4) Curiosity (simple curiosity is rational if risky)
5) Economic development (space R&D has a multi-fold economic payback)
6) Because the experience of standing on another planet is as different as standing on a mountain versus looking at a post card

Untrue. The oceanographer is simply being candid. Sure they are not completely ignorant but they also know enough to know their is a lot more to be discovered. They are simply stating the obvious fact that there is a lot of territory to be explored and we haven't explored very much of it in any great detail. They are saying they are like Christopher Columbus who has learned some fascinating things about this new continent while standing on the beach but there is a lot more to be learned. If they claimed they understood it perfectly that would be false because they've barely gotten off the beach (literally).

The differences are vast. It's the same difference as standing on a mountain versus looking at a post card. Sometimes machines are necessary but more often they are a poor proxy.

There is some exploration that has to be done in person. There are some questions that cannot be answered without sending people to answer them. Questions like "are we stuck on this planet"?

The cost of space exploration has paid itself back economically multi-fold. The spinoff technologies alone are worth billions to trillions of dollars. Even the most conservative estimates of economic benefit of NASA and other space exploration research has a 3X-8X return on investment. The question isn't why should we be investing in space travel. The question is why aren't we investing more?

Earth has vast amounts of mostly unexplored territory. The 3/4 of the Earth's surface that is covered by water has only barely been explored. Sure, there are bits and pieces of dry land that haven't been explored yet though those are disappearing quickly. But right now we really don't have the technology to explore the oceans comprehensively. I think people tend to forget about the oceans and how vast they really are.

Please note this isn't an argument against going into space. We absolutely should. I'm merely pointing out that there is actually quite a bit of the Earth that we don't know very much about.

That would mean the conservative equivalent is "A conservative is someone who will take your shirt and tell you to get a job so you can buy another one".

You cannot presume that. While it's certainly possible that some of them did have the necessary qualifications, it is also quite possible (likely even) that most did not. If you fire an engineer you cannot replace them with an accountant or even necessarily a different engineer with a different skill set. Even if they did have the qualifications that does not mean they were available and willing to work in the jobs that Microsoft had available. To make up an example, if they fire some guy in Finland from Nokia because they want the development to take place in the US, it's quite likely the guy might not want to move to the US to take the job that is available. Maybe he has family and cannot easily relocate.

The person has to have the right qualifications, be available to do the work, be willing to locate themselves to where the work is and cost the right amount.

You can ask the question but the answer is simple. (whether the answer is actually honest or not is a different issue) What Microsoft would say is that those 18,000 workers didn't have the skill sets needed by the company going forward. If you fire an accountant you cannot replace him with an engineer. Not all people and jobs are interchangeable. I personally have had to fire people and hire different people precisely for this reasons. Even if they are lying through their teeth, this answer provides nearly impenetrable plausible deniability.