Well which is it?

Duuude... you live in the fuuuuuture???

Well, let me not be confused with one of #OccupyResoluteDesk's throne sniffers.
But using a tragedy like that in a prophetic mode is tasteless. As tasteless as the idiotic Indiana protests designed to distract from Her Majesty's email fiasco, and SecState Kerry's rodeo-clownery. Or the whip cracking on Menendez's back to keep those Democrat Senators on the plantation.
Were there less at stake, maybe some of this buffoonery would be amusing.

"So ... Heinlein was writing within the accepted science of his day (no surprise there), which was that the craters of the Moon (there were no others known) were primarily a volcanic phenomenon. "

I'm missing what you are trying to say -- is it that there were no volcanoes on the moon? Ever? If so, I believe you are wrong. Check out volcanic glass recovered by Apollo 17 and more recent papers on fairly RECENT volcanic flows (as early as 100 million years ago).

Besides, by the 1950's, I believe it was generally accepted that lunar craters were primarily (though not exclusively) the result of impacts. I believe a geologist named Gilbert first proposed the strongest argument for this in the 19th century.

I'm unsure how you can say "his science was wrong" about Heinlein. I wouldn't say he "got it right" as he didn't INVENT the idea of lunar volcanism -- but he wrote about using underground caverns in the 1950's in a way being described in the original article.

A tasteless remark.

Deeply satisfying. Does this offend you/

Thank you, I knew I misrembered that.

"homosexuals would have to take additional time/effort to find another bakery."

I think you'll find that most constitutional scholars would argue that does not rise to the legal definition of "harm".

Were they to refuse service based on their sexual orientation, THAT could be argued to be discrimination. To force service that involves producing product that violates their faith would violate the baker's first amendment rights.

Example:

(A) "I will not sell you this generic cake because you are gay" could be strongly argued to be discrimination.

(B) "I will not make you a cake for a gay wedding with two grooms (or brides) on it because it violates the precepts of my faith" could be strongly argued to be correctly exercising their first amendment rights.

It was VERY avant garde as far as Disney is concerned, and very dark as well. I mean, Ernest Borgnine died horrifically, as a robot with spinning blades eviscerates him as he feebly tries to shield his body with a book. As a child, that scene disturbed me because it was tense and the character was impotent to save himself in the face of impending doom. Ernest Borgnine was a consummate actor ("Merlin's Mystical Shop of Wonders" aside) and he really conveyed the sheer terror of his character effectively to 5-year-old me. This is a classic movie and you must see it.

No no, this post needs to go in the Weyland-Yutani/LV-426 thread. Much more topical.

Which is exactly why I cited examples where any rational person couldn't get it wrong. Nobody who is fighting for the power to take away other people's freedoms (say, of speech, assembly, religion, etc) is fighting for freedom. It's possible to objectively look at two different fights, and see where one is actually about freedom, and the other is about gaining power to deny freedom.

The governance of England (not to let it off the hook there, even so) was not the same as England's governance of the colonies. Don't tell me to learn more about it when you paint with a brush so broad you miss out on that reality. The Americans were fighting to be free of how England was ruling the colonies. Even if you consider the then-state-of-affairs in England to have been the model of freedom (plainly not true), the colonists did not enjoy the same liberties or representation.

"Became?" He started out that way, and didn't stop. He was no champion of a constitutional democracy. Didn't seek one, and didn't act to establish one. What he and dictators like Castro found to dislike about the regimes against which they rebelled has nothing to do with their vision for a totalitarian communist paradise. They set out to achieve what the Castros have been using violent oppression of their own people to preserve ever since.

If they were ever about freedom, they wouldn't need to lock people away or simply kill them for speaking their minds.

Yes, there is. The only way you can get a section 333 waiver is if you are a licensed pilot. Period. Here's the existing process:

https://www.faa.gov/uas/legisl...

Their currently proposed rule changes contemplate a simpler grade of permit, but still make no provision for BLOS flight. You'd still need to pass an FAA operator's test, and pay to sit and re-take it every year. The proposed rules also require each and every aircraft to be registered - something that makes flying continually changing prototypes off the work bench a near impossibility.

I'm not "totally off base," I'm aware of the actual situation. You're just engaged in wishful thinking, or making excuses for the administration, and hoping nobody will do any fact checking.

Do you mean that when a huge undertaking involving actual, you know, human beings taking action in opposition to a monstrously violent totalitarian regime sometimes involves some of those human beings doing assholish things ... that therefore the side that's acting to prevent oppressive totalitarianism is wrong to fight it? You'd rather allow groups like ISIS, or people like Stalin, or fun outfits like the Khmer Rouge to just carry on being brutal across the board as part of their purpose and policy than risk deploying against them on the off chance that not every action taken to oppose them, by everyone involved in the fight, will pass your purity test? Better to let the house burn down than to risk having anyone involved in trying to put out the fire be a jerk, I guess.

Right. Because that's what they (the country of Japan) set out to do. Cruelty and torture and rape weren't the actions of a few idiots/asshats in the Japanese army, those things were the stated tactics, the official policy, from the top down. That wasn't assholishness by abberration, and prosecuted (a la the WV guards at Abu Ghraib), that was marching orders. Your need to confuse the difference between that, and things like what Japan systematically did in China, shows you to be either completely misguided, or simply trolling. The latter, most likely.

I'll take April Fool's seven days a week plus holidays over one more Bennett Haselton or Nerval's Lobster post.

No kidding; it used to be a few AF jokes sprinkled among the regular stories, which is effective and entertaining. The last few years it's been nothing but all day, which loses appeal quickly.