Scientists say, or Scientist says - please not Scientists says

Bird strikes at supersonic speeds are not the issue. You will notice that the intended refit doesn't make the canopy handle supersonic bird strikes, only bird strikes up to 400 knots, or a reasonable cruising speed. The problem they are facing is hitting birds while cruising at much slower speeds than supersonic, much closer to the ground.

Besides that, it's a horrible, horrible secret. Until just a few years ago the first five digits could be easily determined from your birthday and location of birth, leaving only 4 digits of somewhat randomness, and even that went in sequential order, giving you a pretty good guess at a much small range. To add insult to injury, whenever a company thinks they are helping you keep it secret they will ask you for the last four digits of the number, the only four digits that actually matter.

Who's to say that's not what's going on right now? I don't know if you have noticed, but building the necessary infrastructure for privately managed low earth orbit access is all the rage among a certain class of rich people.

Of course, if you can get really lucky you can find a company willing to pay California rates while you work from home in SLC. Get over 200k and live in a lower cost area. Works for me.

Well, if you wanted to really keep your energy usage down you'd grow a nitrogen fixing plant like peanuts every other year, avoiding the need for petroleum based fertilizers.

Yea, I agree it's harder today than it was then. To be fair, I usually worked during the school year, but that's not always feasible for people to do while maintaining good grades. Undergraduate some Pell grants are generally available, and some borrowing may be a necessity without any support from the parents. I don't understand the people that walk out of undergraduate with a six digit debt.

Hmm, to be clear. Neither undergrad degree was at an Ivy, they were boring state universities, workable with part time and summer work along with merit based scholarships. Her law school was at an Ivy, there is little to no financial aid available for professional degrees. Yes, I was working as an engineer by that time and had a good salary.

Not exactly true of the professional degrees. Especially in those days there was basically no financial assistance for Law or MBA programs.

Tuition where I attended was pretty cheap, 5k a year or so. The wife's law school was not cheap, 24k a year. Add living expenses as needed. This was in the early/mid 90s

I struggle with this concept of it being impossible to get an education without taking on student debt. My wife and I finished four year degrees (Engineering and PolySci) and she did law school at an Ivy league with a total of 5,000 in debt. Neither set of parents paid for anything in any significant way. We got together after undergraduate and I had a real job that paid for law school for her, but otherwise it was pretty self supporting. Lots of work was required, and probably less fun, but it is possible.

Gah,

I can't stand it when evolution and religion are even mentioned in the same paragraph. They don't belong together in anyway and any question that compares them is the wrong question. Evolution is, like all scientific theories, the theory that best fits the facts we have. We then use the theory to make predictions and explanations. With a theory as proven as evolution those predictions usually turn out to be correct, but if they didn't we would add the new facts into the consideration and attempt to build a revised theory that accounted for them.

There is no belief anywhere in that process. It doesn't matter if you believe that evolution represents some kind of absolute truth or not. The only valid question is whether there is a better explanation for the facts that we have, and so far there most certainly isn't. If we start ignoring the facts because we believe we know something more that the facts on the ground indicate we stop being able to progress in our understanding of how the world works; we stop being able to do science.

Is this a conflict with a religious belief? I suppose that depends on whether your religious belief requires that you stop trying to understand the world around you. A well thought out religion would make no such requirement, but would instead stick to moral behavior and ways to live life to enhance personal happiness. Believing that helping out a recently laid-off neighbor will enhance your personal happiness in no way contradicts being able to function as a working scientist.

Any question that involves whether you 'believe' in a scientific theory is the wrong question. You don't believe in them, you simply evaluate their accuracy and use them to answer questions going forward.