But why not:
a hat off,
a twist off,
or another kind of off?

Because I don't pick fights that I can't win.

We should fence off the US and go to sleep for 50 years while China and India have a space race!

Which would be fine, except the DC FRZ (flight restriction zone) is a 30-mile circle around the Capital within which it is illegal to fly ANY remote control device of any kind. Includes "drones" as well as those toy RC helicopters at the mall kiosks, and the sort of RC planes that people have been flying around for many decades. Some tourist flying a quad in DC is in for a very rude awakening, as has already happened.

Wouldn't matter. Do you understand how small the White House grounds are, and how fast even a modest quad can fly when it means business? I've got one that can do over 40mph. That would cover the distance from the sidewalk in front of the White House to the middle of the typical speech-giving area of the Rose Garden in well under 8 seconds. A drone flying waypoints - with no need for a human controller nearby or watching - could be moving that fast well before it gets to the White House fence, and be coming in 200' overhead, be above a high-profile press event in seconds, cut power and drop like a stone spewing a mist of cesium or a nice cloud of serin or laden with a nice little brick of C4, and it would be on the ground in the middle of that speech/ceremony so fast you'd have no ability to do something about it. Except maybe light it up with some sort of automated buckshot gatling gun, right in the middle of a busy urban area.

This is going to result in a lot more events being held indoors.

There's also no ability to bail out like they did with Apollo 13. Once they are on their way there, there is no possibility of turning around. Even when you get there, you have to wait about 6 months for the planets to get into the right alignment for the trip home.

Hmm, Apollo 13 "bailed out" by taking advantage of its Earth Return Trajectory (it was launched on a path that would come back here unless there was a burn to put it into Lunar orbit).

Likewise, it's possible to do an Earth Return Trajectory for Mars. It's a two year orbit that comes back here at a time when Earth is at the same point in its orbit. More fuel intensive, but quicker (it'll take about six months to get near Mars).

This is difficult to answer without getting into a long discourse on spacetime. However, you have to get away from the notion that there is some kind of "edge" to the universe and space is somehow expanding that edge into infinite nothingness. There is no "edge" to the universe anymore than there is a definable "edge" to our planet (i.e. a flat earth).

Most ebooks don't come with DRM attached.

I find myself curious as to which world you live in...

Amazon's Kindle format comes with DRM (just got a note from B&N telling me that they're no longer allowed to do unencrypted Kindle format for their eBooks (though they provided a helpful guide to removing the DRM for backup purposes).

Default for most Nook books is encrypted ePub, though there are a few publishers that don't require encrypted ePub.

So, where are the "most books" coming from that are not DRM'd?

Poorly written article and misleading summary. Basically the article says you can "travel faster than the speed of light" without violating relativity...but neglects to mention which "speed of light" you're beating. Light speed is different in depending upon what medium -- or lack thereof -- it's traveling through. It's possible to slow light down to the point where you can walk faster than that speed of light. But you're not violating relativity by doing so because you're moving through a different medium.

So, hyperdrives...not so much.

RoHS/Lead-free has already baked obsolescence into your consumer electronics. Tin-whiskers plus the difficulty in services devices with lead-free solder, not that VLSI really makes it practical to take your gizmos to the repair shop anymore.

but what if I want to put my smartphone in the paper-shredder when I'm done with it? [when Apple releases a new model]

I don't agree that you can build .ko's with g++

And yes, I'm a chip vendor. Anything I do is automatically blessed by myself.

They want a bike that can go zero to sixty in two seconds. Yet the human eyeball flattens enough under that kind of acceleration that vision is severely limited.

Interesting theory you have there, Butch...

0-60mph in two seconds is 1.37g. Which is comparable to the acceleration you'd experience landing after jumping to the ground from a height of three feet or so....

It doesn't have to be loaded with graft & corruption to be a waste of time.

TFA talks about a 2.5KW system. Which is about 10 panels. So this whole program is going to provide free solar to 150-200 homes in a State with 38.8 million people.

Wow, a program to provide free solar to 0.0025% of CA's population!! Really generous program you've got there, guys....

How has the US/Russia/etc negotiated in good faith on effective measures

Note that they're required to negotiate in good faith on "effective measures" - when they figure out some "effective measures", then you can complain about them not negotiating "in good faith".

And just curious, what "effective measures" can you think of? Especially in light of the fact that North Korea is NOT a signatory to the NPT....

It seems that the arsenals are growing, or if shrinking, they are becoming more powerful overall as they are replaced with more modern weapons.

As to that, no, they're not actually building more powerful nukes. The delivery mechanisms are getting more accurate, so smaller nukes are as effective as big nukes were back in the day. Note that there are no multi-megaton nukes left - they've been replaced with fractional-megaton weapons with a CEP small enough that it makes no difference.

Note, by the by, that CEP is a function of the rocket (or bomber), not the nuke. And improved versions of rockets/bombers aren't limited by the NPT in any case.

I mostly chose responses where I could cower in the corner. Because I was worried that personality type was not well represented in people who would actually finish the survey. Pity the results aren't tabulated, but now it makes more sense now that you bring up it being Socratic questioning.