Meh, that's what NXDOMAIN is for I suppose. That's what I get when I try to resolve them. I must have 25 domains configured this way.

Those are all joined by "or" so this is true if the answer to this question is true:
Have you ever personally experienced comments about physical beauty at an anthropological field site?

Technically that would be true if I said to a corker at a dig site, "that sure is a beautiful sunset." Even if making the obvious correction that they're talking about comments about YOUR OWN physical beauty, the statement is true if I compliment a coworker on her haircut.

The other question is much more useful as it focuses more on unwanted physical contact. Question 32 is so broad that I'd be surprised if it wasn't true of almost everybody.

This is the kind of control that exists by consensus though.

The reason that half of Europe and Asia go along with the US, is that at some level most US policies around things like the Internet tend to make sense. I don't care for the intrusive surveillance, but when you look at it at a national level the US comes along, installs a bunch of gear, and likely shares all the data obtained from it with the country that gave them access (I doubt they give them access to everything internationally, but I wouldn't be surprised if a small country could get more data on what is on their own networks by collaborating with the US than trying to do it themselves, and for the most part their interests are aligned with the US on the sort of stuff they'd be looking for anyway).

The US can't just arbitrarily enact some kind of lasting blockade on the internet, because they wouldn't have the support on the ground to do that.

Now, the US could exercise control over data travelling through undersea cables that cross its territories, and when it comes to the Pacific I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of those (as a result of WWII). Land routes from Europe to Asia, however, are probably fairly free from US direct control.

I was speaking of the quarantine of something like a town. That is a FAR different problem than sealing a large border. I also assumed that there would be no constraints on the tactics used - shooting anybody that moves is far easier to implement than arresting anybody that moves (and far less likely to expose troops to the disease).

Like I said, I don't think this scenario is likely since there isn't that much political will for something like this. If there were, however, it could probably be done fairly effectively.

Sure, some of those methods involve printing one-time passwords.

Still, the point is that two-factor is annoying. Even picking up my phone is annoying. It would make more sense to wave my super light/thin government-issue identity ring that I wear 24x7 in front of my monitor. Of course, first we need such a thing, instead of everybody just coming up with their own solution.

Simple. In the US I don't think the banks are liable for these losses in the first place. Also, nobody wants to carry around 47 dongles which is what will happen if everybody wants their own personal two-factor solution.

Maybe if we get to a point where one two-factor device can be used for EVERYTHING without the need to manually retype 6-digit numbers or whatever then it will become a good solution.

Imagine if SSL for websites worked by copy/pasting ASCII-armored webpages to/from an encrypt/decrypt application like people used to do with gpg and email (which also never took off). Nobody would be using SSL. That is where we are with two-factor - you have to think about it to use it, and so nobody does.

When you just wave your government ID ring in front of your computer to log into a website or something like that, then we'll have widespread two-factor authentication.

I never claimed the quarantine would work.

You claimed that "you're really excited to give your rights away, but I'm not going to let you take mine."

My point was simply that you have no ability to prevent the government from taking your rights away in a situation like this.

You say that you earn money/property by spending your time and effort, and that gives you the right to own money. What did you spend to earn yourself in the first place? You were born with what you have, and did not do anything to earn having a healthy body and brain, vs being born a mentally retarded cripple.

If you take collectivism to the ultimate extreme we all end up as slaves to the community. If you take libertarianism to the ultimate extreme we all end up as slaves to the guy who owns all the resources.

I don't argue that you need to allow people to have some ownership of the fruits of their labor so that they have something to work for in the first place. The problem is that if you give people exclusive ownership of the fruits of their labor then anybody who isn't able to earn a living just starves to death, or basically ends up being treated as a pet.

The problem with the system that you advocate is that the march of technology steadily makes a larger and larger number of people unnecessary to the economy, if you view the sole purpose of the economy as providing goods and services to people who have money (remember, the vast majority of the wealth is owned by a small portion of the population). This leads to increasing disparity of wealth. Maybe in 100 years if the Earth has a population of 10 people each tended by an army of robots you could argue that those 10 people were the hardest workers and the most deserving of living in paradise. However, if you accept that people ought to be able to get by with less than a continent each then you could have a society where far more people can get by happily by just accepting that the folks who own all the robots should use some of them to help everybody else out, even if they don't really want to.

Non-progressive taxation is also economically inefficient. If somebody is able to earn a billion dollars, that doesn't mean that they will efficiently use the billion dollars that they earned. In fact, letting them sit on that pile of money actually takes away their motive for ever working another day in their life. There is no reason that they can't get by with less than 100% of the fruits of their labor, while still allowing them to have far more than the average person.

Oh good, instead of losing 90% of the country, we might just lose a few New York Cities. That makes it better. :)

Uh, if you're in the one town in the US where there is an Ebola outbreak you're not going to be able to stop the rest of the country from taking your rights. There will be fences, tanks, armies, drones, aircraft, and the general works surrounding your town. Your stash of AR-15s in the basement aren't going to accomplish much except maybe to keep your neighbors from stealing your food assuming you have a stockpile so that you can stay inside and let the disease blow over. Besides, if you do have such a stockpile then just hunker down - you'll outlive the epidemic anyway, which is probably why you have that stockpile to begin with.

Well, that is if the rest of the country has the brains to set up a strong quarantine. There is a good chance that this won't look good in the polls so we'll just ask everybody to be nice and stay at home, and watch the disease overrun the country. Maybe I should work on my own stockpile... :)

But, if the government has any brains they'll put up a perimeter around the town, lock down all air travel into/out of the country, And burn down everything within 10 miles of the town to create a no-man's land. I mean, we are talking about a plague that could kill half the population here. Given a choice of raising taxes half a percent to rebuild the no-man's land after it is all over, or watching the entire country turn into a post-apocalyptic horror story, I'll take a bit of authoritarianism and call you in the morning.

I'm not convinced some level of quarantine wouldn't be wise. Just ban general air/maritime travel to/from any location within 100 miles of a reported Ebola case, and lock down borders/etc as best as you can. I agree that the disease will certainly continue to spread, but then you just expand the quarantine region as it does, staying a step ahead.

The goal isn't so much to prevent any spread at all as to keep the disease off of aircraft, where it could spread globally overnight.

Sooner or later the spread of the disease will end up running against geographical barriers, like the Sahara or the Atlantic/Indian Oceans. Gaza certainly would be a defensible border. There are limits on how far the disease could spread against a coordinated effort to contain it.

Plus, a decent quarantine will at least slow down the spread so that you have a fighting chance to do something about it. What is the alternative, throwing your hands up in the air and saying, "sure, feel free to get on a plane if you're sick?" Better to have a handful of people sneaking through the jungles between checkpoints spreading the disease than hundreds of people taking busses.

I do not debate that libertarianism is in my own best interest. That does not make it morally right. There are many who cannot own property because they do not have the ability to purchase it, because they do not have the ability to earn money. I do not accept that these folks should be left as destitute.

Ultimately libertarianism fails because it puts the right of property above virtually everything else. In the name of liberty it ends up reducing virtually everybody to slavery.

Nobody is stealing your money - you're paying taxes. The rest of us will recognize your right to retain the rest of your property if you recognize your responsibility to help care for the indigent. If you don't do your part, then why should I recognize that you have any right to own property at all?

But, call it theft if you like. It really doesn't change the fact that you have no choice but to comply.

I imagine that you'd be a little less lofty in your views if you had one of those irresponsible parents. Heck, some kids don't have any parents/family at all.

The fact is that all the property/etc you've worked so hard to obtain is only yours as the result of you having been born to parents who raised you well, and who gave you genes that allow you to support yourself. Absent either of those, and especially absent the latter, you'd be as well-off as an ape that shares 98% of your genetics. As a result, I certainly have no moral issues with requiring anybody with the ability to take care of themselves to spend some of their effort taking care of others, using force if they do not wish to do so.

Hate to self reply, but think of it like shooting a rifle round at a blimp. The bullet is going to just sail right through both sides, with neither object being affected all that much.

You have a few stars worth of neutornium the size of a big asteroid or maybe a small moon moving towards a red giant that is perhaps similar in mass to our own sun.

I can buy that eventually the one ends up inside the other. What I wonder about is how you get from a neutron star falling towards a red giant to a neutron star inside a red giant.

I'd think the neutron star would have so much momentum that it would basically blast right through the star and come out the other side.

Of course, a more likely scenario is a mutual orbit where over many orbits the stars interact via their extended atmospheres/etc slowing their orbits until they merge. Still, I'd think that neutron star would keep making orbital passes deeper and deeper into the red giant's atmosphere, basically plowing a trench into the red giant which of course fills right back in each time.

I just don't see either star changing velocity enough on a single pass for them to merge.