Too many humans. Cut it down to 1-2 billion and a lot of problems just disappear.

Am I correct in assuming that you do not believe that YOU are part of the 5-6 billion that should be eliminated?

If we need them (and have dug them all up), we can't mine them from the ground, but we can mine them from the landfills and buildings, like some are doing with copper now.

It should be noted that as recently as WW2, Italy was "mining" the slag heaps from Roman-era iron mines. It had more iron in it than any remaining, easily accessible ore bodies in Italy.

(lead's not cheap to shoot into orbit, let alone Mars)

GIven the infrastructure, lunar regolith would be relatively much cheaper to get to LEO (deltaV required to reach LEO from the lunar surface is considerably less than half that required to reach LEO from the ground.

And lunar regolith is quite usable as radiation shielding. Hell, you can use it as reaction mass for a mass-driver to push off to Mars orbit.

So, how to explain the "we followed the vehicle for five minutes, and saw no signs of impaired driving"?

Other than the tip, they had NO evidence that the driver was impaired, and they never even bothered to check that the "he ran me off the road" actually happened (which would have generated a police report, including the identifying information on the tipster).

The number of false reports to 911 is vanishingly small, and there is very reasonable to believe the tipster was telling the truth.

Citation?

And what reasonable belief did they have that the tipster was telling the truth? It's not like the cops saw the guy weaving down the road (they followed him for five minutes without observing any sign of impaired driving). Nor is there any evidence they went to the "crime scene" and saw the tipster's car in the ditch (which would have effectively made the report NON-anonymous, since they'd have had to get the tipster's personal information to fill out the police report on the accident).

Justice Thomas might actually summon up enough courage and mental faculties to frame a cogent question in the next hearing.

Or maybe he'll continue believing it's the lawyers' job to provide the evidence, not the judges', and that just listening to their arguments is sufficient.

For Christ's sakes, this guy ran the woman off the road, was under the influence, and on slashdot - she is the bad guy.

I gather that you have evidence that this woman was run off the road by this guy?

Other than her 911 call, I mean.

Did the police go to the site of the incident? Not that I've read anywhere.

Did the police take her statement officially? Again, I've not seen anything hint that they de-anonymized (is that a word? If not, it should be) her by actually talking to her or anything.

From all I've read, she called 911, reported something that got the police to hunting for the vehicle (which they found 18 miles from the purported incident), the police checked him for drunken driving, found he wasn't, then searched his car for drugs, found he was carrying a lot of weed.

They got a call, including plate number and location, that a car had run someone off the road.

What they did not have was any evidence that someone was actually run off the road.

Nor did they have any evidence that the driver of the suspect vehicle was in any way impaired (they followed him for five minutes without seeing any erratic driving).

For all we know, the "anonymous caller" could have been his ex trying to get him in trouble, or a member of a rival drug gang trying to get his payload confiscated....

Don't get me wrong, surviving a 2 meter drop is pretty good compared to most consumer products these days. Still.. I would expect much much better from a $5600 tablet marketed to the military. It should at least survive a couple of stories!

If the user falls a couple of stories, he's dead and doesn't need the tablet anymore.

If the user DROPS the tablet off a building, and it falls a couple of stories, you really don't want the bad guys to be recovering a usable tablet before you can run downstairs and locate the thing.

The milstd seems to be designed so the tablet will survive the sort of things that happen in combat that are recoverable for the user (if you come under fire, diving to the ground is likely to break any civilian tablet when you land on it), but not survive the sort of thing where the user has no real chance to recover the tablet....

Honestly I'm really not sure how somebody like her gets appointed there to begin with.

She's Hispanic, and a Woman. That's two checkboxes in the diversity list.

Admittedly, it would be better if her father were Black, and she were a Lesbian - that would be FOUR checkboxes. But I guess they couldn't find someone that qualified for the job....

For those who don't get the joke, a very long time ago, there was some pulp literature (the Destroyer series) that made fun of the then-current martial arts fad. The secretary to the boss in the stories was, in fact (well, in fiction), a half-black, half-hispanic, lesbian woman, chosen because she filled ALL of their minority quotas with only a single hire.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS

Actually, this is exactly how it was supposed to be - it was meant to address historical racial disparities by giving an extra boost to the historically deprived race(s).

That formula does exactly that.

No, what they're talking about is fewer as a function of comparative numbers.

Now, whether this is due to inherent racism in the system, or because some minorities value education and some don't, further deponent sayeth not.

ALSO, I want to shoot something through the doors and blow them up with things.

Oh, Gawd, a believer in the Joe Biden School of Civilian Marksmanship....;-)

Assuming people are too young to personally remember this, were they also asleep during their history classes?

What, young people get history classes now?

Being somewhat older, and having spent a sizable chunk of my childhood near the Inner German Border, I remember this quite well.

My daughter? Not so much....

Probably doesn't know what cope d'etat means, either.

Probably can't spell "coup d'etat" either....