This is the strongest rebuttal yet to the government assertions that people do not have an expectation of privacy in emails. If the Whitehouse and State Department staffs think that a private email account if secure enough for government business, then clearly the government expects that emails are private.

This the the best rebuttal to claims that the government has the right to root through people's emails (even just the metadata) without a warrant.

Or, maybeæ you knowæ crowfund it just because traditional investors are too scared to do new things

Stop right there. People don't "invest" on kickstarter. They have no ownership interest in the business. The people who fund in kickstarter take all the risk, while having no possible upside beyond the products that they buy.

I could make a political point about how kickstarter and its kin are a response to laws that limit risky investments by all except the wealthy and the effect of "the closure" in Venice in the 14th centuary.

every 5th text was silently dropped :

Every 5th? Wow, that's good. With my T-Mobile service, most texts from AT&T are dropped. I suspect it is because my number was originally a Pacific Bell number and somewhere within AT&T is a database that still shows my number as one that is with AT&T.

I saw a 'gator right at the edge of the VAB parking lot last month. In a drainage ditch, up to the fence, cars parked right on the other side.

With luck, they'll start incorporating our radio transceivers. I hear that SpaceX flies with several USRPs now, so that's not completely unrealistic. That might be as close as I can get. Anyone who can get me a base invitation, though, would be greatly appreciated and I'd be happy to do some entertaining speeches while there. I need a base invite for Vandenberg, too. I got in to the official viewing site for the first try of the last launch (and that scrubbed too), but this next one is on Pad 6.

I was in Florida to speak at Orlando Hamcation and went to see the DISCOVR launch at Kennedy Space Center. I paid $50 to be at LC-39 for the launch, an observation tower made from a disused gantry on the Nasa Causeway between the pads and the Vehicle Assembly Building. A crawler was parked next door! A hot sandwich buffet, chips, and sodas were served. It was cold and windy! I watched for a few hours and unfortunately the launch scrubbed due to high stratospheric winds.

The next day, Delaware North Corporation, which operates tourism at KSC, decided not to open LC-39 or the Saturn 5 center for the launch. This was the third launch attempt and I guess they decided most people had left. I was annoyed.

The closest beach was going to be closed in the evening, it's a sensitive ecological area. I ended up seeing the launch from Jetty Park. This turned out not to be such a great location, the tower wasn't visible at all and the first 10 seconds of the rocket in flight were obscured before we saw it over a hill.

What's a better viewing location?

The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next.

I heard one theory that ISIS is really a creation of Bashar al-Assad. Before ISIS was around, the West was all for regime change in Syria. Now we are effectively supporting the dictatorship in Syria.

In my experience, it won't.

I reported to a small non-profit that their list of email addresses had leaked. I knew this because I used a unique address when registering with the site and I later started getting SPAM at that address. It might not have been a hack that caused my address to leak, but, irrespective of the means by which my email address had leaked, there should have been an investigation.

I reported it to the CEO, who passed it to the IT head, who basically could not get his head around the idea that there might be a problem.