There is nothing noble about 'creating opportunities to work'. The true test of being exploitative or not is how workers are treated. It could be that the workers are going to be treated very well here. If that's the case, great. But the fact that sufferers of mental disorder are being targeted makes it an issue you have to be careful about.

The charity could have all the best intentions in the world, doesn't mean the IT companies are going to look at it that way.

Exploiting the vulnerable.

But to some degree, I guess that describes all jobs.

No, actually. Unless by 'sucks' you mean, works imperfectly, but still better than those parts of the world that did not benefit from my tax dollars.

I say this with the benefit of experience. I've traveled to dozens of countries, rich and poor, and those with solid tax bases have dependably better public infrastructure than those without.

The cause of your crumbling infrastructure in the US is largely people not paying taxes.

Things that were illegal didn't suddenly become legal just because they weren't explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

No, but unless they fell under the Constitutional powers of the feds, they remained state crimes, not federal ones.

OTOH, some things that were illegal in the states did suddenly become legal when the 14th Amendment was passed. Any laws restricting free speech, religious liberty, etc., as well as any provisions creating unequal protection, were null and void from that point on.

Of course, the state often operates under unconstitutional, null and void laws anyway, as much as it can get away with. Jim Crow was illegal, marriage inequality is illegal, much of the War on Drugs and the War on Guns and the War on Copying is illegal, but they've got the guns.

That statement is not consistent with Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Correct. The point is that SCOTUS jurisprudence often has fsck-all to do with the Constitution.

For example, the first amendment has been held *not* to give you the right to incite violence. (See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.)

A perfect example. Chaplinsky was engaging in exactly the sort of political speech that most requires protection and was in no way inciting violence. He called somebody a nasty name, that's all. The Court's absurd and immoral decision had neither law (i.e., the text of the Constitution) nor reason on its side.

Actually you answered your own question without realizing it. Morality is not in the sphere of science so by implication must not influence what is put in textbooks. Science is by nature progressive since there is no forbidden knowledge. He is right because the issue of the morality of birth control has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether a biology textbook ought to discuss birth control. Conservative thinking wants to restrict what people know. To control their behavior by controlling information. This is fundamentally at odds with the foundational principals of science which makes science progressive or at least anti-conservative. Scientist hold morality as applying to how you use knowledge never to the knowledge itself. The same physics that gave us nuclear power (arguably a moral good) gave us the deadliest weapons ever created (undeniably a moral evil). The application of knowledge has moral questions but science is liberal because it never allows anything (including morality) to dictate the knowledge itself. Whatever the scientific method produces is published without limit or exception. Indeed caring about what people may do with it is a fallacy - the appeal to consequences.

Hey, stormtroopers'll dig trenches anywhere. Even on airless spacestations.

Movie makers edited out lens flares at one point. There were a LOT of complaints. So many that even in pure CGI movies and animations, lens flare is now edited IN.

I think it was the second of the unofficial Han Solo novels during the time of the Original Trilogy that first had TIE Fighters in the atmosphere. So you're absolutely right that they're impossible, but it's "legitimate" extended canon. (Which is why I don't consider anything after the first movie "canon" at all.)

Plausible. Also, since it's an amateur rig, the force field may well extend well beyond the blade and not just envelop it. If that's the case, the cross guard's projectors cannot be sliced off as the force field would be protecting them as well.

Since they filmed some of the movie in Puzzle Wood and since I'm damn sure I recognize the trail, I'm going to say that's the likely location for this scene. If so, expect some seriously gnarled and twisted trees in the background. Those won't be CGI, that's really what the place looks like.

A projectile containing a Bose-Einstein Condensate.

The bullet vaporizes on the force field surrounding the plasma interior. However, this isn't instantaneous. During that time, there is a cavity in the force field. The BEC gets through this cavity and impacts the plasma. This causes the BEC to instantaneously heat up to temperatures that permit fusion. Since the nuclei are already overlapping, fusion into a mega atom takes place. The mega atom instantly disintegrates as it's violently unstable, drenching the Jedi in hard radiation.

Midichlorians don't exist in the Star Wars universe. We all heard Obi Wan, the Force is similar to an energy field except that the Jedi scientists could not understand its nature fully. Ergo, no deeper understanding exists, ergo midichlorians are mythical.

It was imagined as a 9-parter from the very beginning. The mistake Lucas made was to not write all nine parts in one go. Had they all been written together, you'd not have had the continuity errors or the deterioration in quality after the original.

> Also, had the US invested just 5% of what they spent on nuclear energy development since the 1950s on solar, we wouldn't even be arguing. Solar would be crazy cheap!

No, reality does not work that way. You don't throw money at a problem and expect all scientific and technological issues to be magically solved. And besides, solar has gotten plenty of development effort, especially if you consider the insane amounts of money invested into semiconductor tech by the electronics industry. If solar is any good now, it's largely because of the incredible existing electronics infrastructure. Nuclear energy has had far less private money thrown at it, by a large margin. Your argument is rubbish.

> We needed fuel for bombs, or thought we did, and we went nuts building these things... 110 plus military and resarch plants... and 1 plant would have provided all the bomb fuel we'd ever need

No, we built nuclear reactors the way we did because that was the level of technology that was available at that time. It was a great investment. Newer reactor technologies are an even better investment.

> heck... lets just keep going down that road until we're bankrupt and living in waste!

That will be the case if we stick to coal... or if we pretend that solar and wind will provide all our energy needs, which in practical terms means that we will have to continue to burn fossil fuels.

Don't get me wrong. I support solar on roofs. But sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending renewables will provide all our needs is a very unscientific, dangerous road that will only lead to ruin.