This has way more to do with the political motivation to spend the money required than technical know how.

And the Chinese inherited the technical knowhow, since they went after the US. So, given the technical know-how, the Chinese still took 40 years, after watching us do it in eight.

Yeah, there was a lot of "who cares?" from China that saw them ignore space for a long time. But even after they started taking it semi-seriously, there was still a couple decades before they managed that lunar lander (made with 21st century tech) that the US did in eight years (using 1960's tech).

Fundamentally, you seem to believe that Iran and Syria have, in fact, given up their WMD's (poison gas in the one case, enriched uranium in the other).

So, do you have any actual evidence that this is true?

Without international inspections (which neither country has allowed), it's not like there is any way to know for sure whether all the poison gas manufacturies (in the one case) have been revealed, much less shutdown. Ditto the enriched uranium (in the other case).

And then there's Ukraine.

Next week, Obama is going to the Far East to reassure our allies there that he won't leave them hanging out to dry the way he left Ukraine hanging out to dry. While there are definite differences between Ukraine and Japan/Phillipines/etc, it'll be interesting to see if Japan/Phillipines/etc buy what he's selling.

Previous Korean conflict you had the south and its allies against the north

You also had the Red Army on North Korea's side.

Do remember that the NK's last six months on their own, and had pretty much lost their country (the US Army was approaching the northern border of NK with China), when the Chinese came in (and kept the war going another couple years).

That's the Chevy Volt. Modest engine and battery, good electric motor. The Honda FCX has electric drive, a fuel cell, and ultracapacitors for acceleration boost.

A pure electric transmission with an IC engine? That's a Diesel-electric locomotive. Works very well, especially with modern solid-state controls. Overkill for a car, where getting started isn't that hard and clutches are in slip for only a second or two. A huge win for trains, where getting all that mass moving is the hardest part of the job.

MGP Ingredients, which produces a sizeable fraction of the distilled spirits in the US, doesn't seem to have a problem with this. They're already running their distillery by-products through a dryer and turning out dried-grain animal feed. MGP, formerly Midwest Grain Products, takes in grain and turns out a broad range of food and beverage products. They're set up to make and ship food-grade products for humans, so complying with the rules for animal feed isn't a big deal for them.

The liquor industry is different than ads indicate. The "secret family recipe" hype is mostly bullshit. Huge plants in the Midwest produce bulk alcohol, which is then shipped by rail, in tank cars, to companies which perform further processing and bottling. The same ethyl alcohol is used for vodka, gin, rum, scotch, bourbon, brandy, tequila, Canadian whiskies, and liqueurs. MGP also sells some ethyl alcohol for fuel use, although for them it's a sideline, not their main business. They make more alcohol than the booze industry can use.

So, for the big plants, this isn't a problem.

Wickard v. Filburn?

That's the Supreme Court case that ruled that a farmer growing his own chickenfeed was engaged in Interstate Commerce, since the act of NOT BUYING chickenfeed affected interstate commerce in chickenfeed.

Looks like it would pretty much cover this case nicely.

Lots of people scoffed at Bruce Schneier for saying Heartbleed is an 11 on the 1-10 scale... I agree that sometimes he goes overboard but this is not one of those times, and the attack mentioned in the article demonstrates this.

The summary is a little muddled on what happened here, but if you follow the link you'll find this is not a security test or a research group showing something could theoretically be done. This is a real live company somewhere just using a VPN many other companies probably use, that had over the course of many hours multiple VPN session hijacked and made use of. That is a huge deal, if one person can do this you can almost bet there is a script somewhere that even the great unwashed hacker masses can make use of.

Brewers get $30 a ton for the waste from beer manufacturing. Per can/bottle of beer, that's negligible.

Brewers can continue to sell this as animal feed. They just have to follow the same rules as everybody else who sells animal feed, like Purina Chows and Cargill. The big plants will have to do a little more processing and testing. The "craft brewers" don't produce that much waste, and it's biodegradable.

So, not feeding the beer by-products to cows will acidify the oceans???

Who knew?

Sorry, what has "the US" done (something from scratch?) in 8 years?

First satellite in orbit to first lunar lander by the USA - eight years.

First satellite in orbit to first lunar lander by China - 40 years.

I knew someone in Los Angeles who had disposed of some tired storebought tomatoes by tossing them into the front yard for the birds to eat. The seeds volunteered all over the place and after a few years of benign neglect, their yard was one big self-renewing tomato patch -- producing perfectly edible tomatoes, all of the same variety. Apparently whatever they'd bought at the grocery were not hybrids.

Read this when it was in the New Yorker in 1995.

Why would NK ever agree to do anything to help South Korea? They didn't care about paying bak the money anyway, so it's not that.

No, the real reason NK agreed to have a pipeline built through the country is they plan to insert NK frogmen spies into the pipeline to infiltrate the south. The beauty of the plan is, they cannot be spied upon the other way due to the pipe flow!

Masterful.

I bet that is how we 'knew' they had WMDs.

We "knew" they had WMD's because they used poison gas on their Kurds, just like the Syrians did.

Do remember that poison gas is a WMD, and under US policy is treated exactly the same way as nuclear weapons.