I could be wrong on this, but I thought Pratt was going to be building the RD Amross (which is the american version of the RD-180) starting a couple of years ago. If that's the case then the RD-180's being used on the Atlas V are completely domestic.

With that all said, no bid contracts are shit. The price delta between SpaceX and ULA are large enough that provided SpaceX can demonstrate the same reliability as the the Atlas 5 (so far it has) and the same capabilities (it has) then why not go with the cheaper of the two.

Also, if my assertion in the first paragraph is wrong, then all the more reason to go with SpaceX.

Yeah... considering *everything* has a processor in it and it not protected against EMP... Yeah. It would be a shit show.

Honestly, his insufferable personality is tolerable because on most accounts he's right. Being insufferable and consistently wrong is truly obnoxious.

So I'm in the market for a new car and I've been thinking of getting a volt... I have a couple of questions...
1. How did the battery do this winter?
2. Did you buy the optional 220v charger?

Overall likes/dislikes?
I suspect if I buy one, I'll end up getting one with all the bells and whistles, etc.

Likely the stripes give the animal multiple advantages. Predators and biting insects. Possibly the long hair might also confer some negatives in terms of being able to disparate heat, etc.

I'm not disagreeing with that. I think it's been a positive for the linux kernel as well, making linux a much more secure platform. I just thought it was funny that the Russians swapped their hardware for something that ostensibly the NSA has had more access to.

If they're worried about the NSA having code running on their tablets.... why did they swap their mach/freebsd running tablets for ones running and OS that's had heavy development from the NSA?

More than a decade ago the NSA got involved in linux development and never left. Is it possible that their security people have poured over the millions of lines of C and assembly that make up the linux kernel and all the drivers that are running on their tablets? Possibly, but highly doubtful.

Finally somebody else who agrees with me! I have long advocated that we should have bases on the moon and mars just in case something bad happens on Earth.

I think it would be a noble goal to not only put a base on the Moon and Mars but to make them self sufficient. Beyond having a self sufficient base it should also have a repository of our institutional knowledge just in case something cataclysmic should happen on Earth. Speaking of eggs... I think that something that should go to these bases as well is a chunk of the eggs and sperm we currently have in cold storage that'll never get used. This would provide a safety net for genetic diversity and provide a starting place in case something bad happens on Earth.

So what happens when I pull up in my model S with a relatively new battery and it gets swapped for a battery that's been to hell and back and can barely hold a charge?

I know my relatives up in Minnesota despite their bitching about it being -60 are glad that it's decimated the ash bore beetle infestation. Up here in the north east we're hoping it'll have the same effect on the Asian longhorn beetle as well.

Though evolution being what it is, enough of these really cold winters and we'll just have populations of these insects that can winter over these temperatures.

I wasn't disappointed! On a serious note, I thought they were building the godzilla of ice walls to fix this?

Please describe a "rational discussion of the message of the bible." As the saying goes the devil's in the details. In order to make any sense of the bible in any rational sense means doing a hell of a lot of cherry picking. Unless you're advocating that stoning your wife on her fathers doorstep because she's not a virgin on her wedding night is a rational position to hold. (Deutorotomy 22:22)

So right away there's whole chunks of the bible that you're choosing to ignore. What do you keep then? I hope that the pieces you decide are relevant are the same pieces other people find relevant...

The four gospels we NOT written by people named Matthew, Luke Mark and John. Moreover the first three gospels suffer from major synoptic problems. John's gospel is an acid tripping roller coaster ride compared to the first three but in places still has bits and pieces copied from the first three. Six of the thirteen letters attributed to Paul and now considered complete forgeries. The whole thing is a literary train wreck.

I'll now stop whipping this horse and turn my attention to other horses... The ten commandments.
Ask yourself this simple question... Imagine you're all all seeing all powerful entity and you have the opportunity to distill your vast knowledge of everything into ten rules... Now looking at the ten commandments, there seems to be some serious room for improvement. Just imagine how many people would have been saved from dying of water borne diseases had one of those commandments had been "If the water is not of the purest mountain stream, boil it." I could belabor this but you get the idea.

Create flash cards that have a horoscope but replace the sign with a number. Then create another set of flash cards that have the astrological sign on one side and the corresponding number on the other side. Have a decent sample size of people try to match up the signs.

This experiment has been run many times and the result is that it's completely random.

Without knowing the sign ahead of time every other horoscope works equally well for any other horoscope. You get out of it what you read into it.

With Russia having the mountain ranges and abundant amounts of cold and snow in other regions, why host the games here? I think this is just Putin waving his dick about.

The bigger issue I have with this whole thing is that Nye is letting Ham frame the debate. They're already talking about making DVD's out of this. What happens if Nye completely obliterates Ham? I don't think this will happen, but if at the end of the whole thing Nye is seen to have taken Ham to task, how do you think they'll edit the DVD? These jokers have shown themselves time and time again to not be interested in the facts. At heart I know that Bill Nye is an educator and believes if even one person in the audience has a eureka moment he's done his job. Unfortunately, I get the sense that the creationists see this as some type of big game hunt.

tl;dr I think the creationists are going to edit the debate to ensure it shows Ham in a great light and show Nye poorly and declare victory.