That sunset clause is the ONLY reason Obama was able to get rid of even a portion of the tax cuts. The whole thing was about to expire, and he was able to force the Republicans to accept some tax increases since the alternative was much larger increases. If it hadn't been for that sunset clause, the Bush tax cuts would have lasted another 50 years.

Yeah but the problem with human drivers/pilots is that they send SMS messages, update facebook, phone their girlfriends or go crazy and decide to kill their passengers. The engineers who build the vehicles do all those things too, but in an environment where their work can be checked and peer reviewed.

The best mass transit system I have seen is in Kuala Lumpur. It has no drivers. It is faster and more reliable than any other system I have seen.

You know, not having to pay for college does wonders.

For everything except your education. And your job prospects...

Although costs for school in U.S. now are so out of hand I would warrant you are better off in Europe since you can easily supplement education for very little, whereas the geas a huge student loan places upon you is nearly unrecoverable even after decades.

I didn't NEED a car in school either, I lived on campus or could also take the bus. But a car gives you a lot more latitude - even in Europe it gets you places not easy to visit by public transport (I've travelled a lot in Europe both by car and train/bus/tram so I know what's what there).

Flying back they have to cancel momentum twice, and fly the reverse of the outgoing trajectory. And they have to fly their rocket towards land, which means that populations on the ground would be at risk.

Oil rigs are very expensive to move and maintain. It would be hard to achieve ROI doing it that way. They might be better off with an adapted freighter. They could get a ship for 10 million USD.

As if food isn't going to be a problem in Europe, where the food and books and gas are far more expensive...

I was dirt poor as a student in college, but I still managed to eat just fine and have a car I could get away with when I needed a break. No way I could have afforded having and using a car in Europe.

Some movie directors are still bitching over the disappearance of film grain. There are companies putting unnecessary film grain in digital images.

We need to get to 48FPS or better, so slow pans over detailed backgrounds look right. No more strobing!

(Instead, we're getting 4K resolution, which is only useful if the screen is in front of your face and a meter wide.)

Yepper.

Pure fucking magic!

And if you don't understand this, well, you can just fuck off and die, because that is *exactly* how facsists think about *YOU*.

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.