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Comment Re:My daughter (Score 1) 205

I have a daughter born in 1999.

A bit younger than my daughter, so your daughter has a higher chance than mine (and my kid's chances are non-zero) of living in three different centuries (20th, 21st, 22nd).

I'm thinking that noone has ever done that (unless you count some Biblical codgers)....

Comment Re:Good news (Score 2) 94

Corporate tax avoidance?

Would that be like when you take your Standard Deduction (or Itemized, as appropriate for you) on your Income Taxes?

Or deduct your VAT, if applicable?

Do try to remember that "tax avoidance" is synonymous with "didn't pay any more taxes than legally obligated to". What it does NOT mean is "broke the law by paying less taxes than the law requires"....

Comment Re:Or (Score 1) 389

Why do we need a climate change bullshit bogey man to get politicians to stop blocking natural progress?

Well, mostly because you dropped an even bigger bogeyman into your argument - "nuclear". That word produces even more hysteria and foaming at the mouth than AGW does. By different people, mind you, since the people generally doing the most yelling that we need to do something about AGW tend to be the ones who panic at the thought of anything nuclear....

Comment Re:Christmas is coming early this year (Score 1) 702

The TSA is probably thinking that if the battery in your gadget doesn't work, it might not actually be a battery...so, just to be on the safe side....

Most likely, this is tied to the announcement of the discovery of explosives that don't trigger the standard explosive detectors. So the battery really could be a bomb.

Comment Re:I dont see a problem here (Score 1) 146

Not arguing. Merely pointing out that "once upon a time..." when NASA was being created, the people in charge really had a "we want no military hardware, nor the results of military research here, because we are all about PEACEFUL space exploration"....

And apparently, a few of them have managed to retain that mindset.

Note that they're as anti-business as they are anti-military - if it's not driven purely by SCIENCE! it's got no business here. Hence the "Elon Musk is the Debhil, and SpaceX is his Great Temptation away from the purity of SCIENCE! into crass mercantilism.

Yeah, yeah, they buy everything they use from companies way bigger than SpaceX...consistency is a hobgoblin of small minds....

Comment Re:I dont see a problem here (Score 2) 146

Yeah I don't see how "propulsion stage is based on the motor of a rocket often used by the Air Force" is a negative thing about it.

It's a leftover from the early days of NASA. See, NASA was a CIVILIAN agency, and couldn't associate with those warmongers in the Air Force and Navy.

As a result, NASA rockets used only technology that wasn't developed with a military purpose in mind. So no ICBMs as launch vehicles, that sort of thing.

Yes, I know they ended up using Atlas and Titan II, because their civilian-designed rockets wouldn't fly at first. But from Saturn forward it's been pure as the driven snow....

Comment Re:Not a dime from me (Score 1) 117

Does any mention of a candidate in the news come out of the hypothetical $200M?

If not, then the incumbent has an enormous advantage in that he/she can get into the news just by proposing a piece of legislation.

If so, then a news entity can burn through a disliked candidate's share of the $200M by doing a bunch of stories maligning the candidate, leaving no money for positive PR.

Or were you planning on suspending Freedom of the Press for campaigns?

Or did Lessig just forget that news people have political beliefs too, and are willing to act on them?

Comment Wait a minute! (Score 1) 74

How could this be? I thought noone but the USA had foreign intelligence types, from all the howling I've heard over the last few months whenever it was mentioned that the NSA's job is to spy on foreigners.

And yet, here we have a German, working for Germany's foreign intelligence agency, at least theoretically spying on foreigners (by German standards - note that spying on Americans would count, since we're foreigners to Germans)

Yeah, he was working for the US's foreign intelligence agency at the same time. And deserves to be nailed to tree (figuratively, of course) for that. But can people now shut up with the whinging that the it's wrong for the NSA to spy on other countries?

Comment Re:many are missing something important. (Score 1) 247

How often do you drive across the US?

Let's see...

I make 500+ mile trips 8-12 times per year.

In addition, about once a week, I have to drive 100 miles or so.

An electric car (other than a Tesla) would require me to rent a car 60 times a year (plus or minus a few), a Tesla would require me to rent a car 8-12 times a year.

Somehow, I can't see spending $70K on a car and still having to rent one maybe once a month, or spending $30-40K on a car and still having to rent one weekly.

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