Trying to work in an open office is like trying to write music in a bus station.

Granted these are all daunting challenges and working out how to get that many people off the planet in city sized starships is going to be close to impossible. All I ask is that if it does somehow happen the starships be shaped like giant guitars. If we can overcome all the other challenges this should prove to be a small matter.

If it were in existence ~1400 years ago, perhaps we would have nipped Islam in the bud.

If it were in existence ~2000 years ago, perhaps we would have nipped Christianity in the bud.

And I wonder how many readers agreed with my first line, then threw a shit-fit when they got to my second line.

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There's actually nothing degrading about a handout. Nothing at all. I get so sick of hearing this bullshit. If there was no "subsistence and degrading handout" people who think it's degrading would be complaining that there wasn't even a system in place to provide these people with even a subsistence level handout. What's degrading is being satisfied with a handout. Coming to expect the handout and refusing to work hard to improve your lot in life is degrading and people bring that on themselves all the time. Before you take me to task for anything understand that I grew up as poor as anyone in the United States you can point to. Go ahead and find an example and I can most likely match them or put them to shame. My family lost everything when I was growing up and the one thing we didn't do was lay down and accept a handout. My mom refused food stamps when we could have used them. She never went on welfare and she only accepted unemployment grudgingly. She beat the fucking bushes for work and never gave up. My brother is the first person in my family to get a college degree and he did it working full time paying his way as he went. I have literally gone to work with a broken back (wasn't aware of it at the time). Fuck the poor who spend their lives crying about what they don't have and how unfair it is. Everything they could ask for is there for the taking in the US if they will just get up on their feet and work for it.

What was the question?

I haven't found display ads a particularly effective marketing tool. Ad blockers are not the only reason their effectiveness is diminishing. Ads are so ubiquitous that we don't even see them anymore. We have several billboards within blocks of our house, I drive past them every day and couldn't tell you what's on them. It's just noise and we tune it out after a while.

At least when it comes to books, paid reviews and blogs are more effective than display ads. Even if the reviews aren't positive, they're useful if they can explain why they didn't like your book.It's more work but better results. That's also life without display ads. More work.

For rape and other sexual offenses, research did specifically find religion as a strong "before" factor.
I think there was a specific "before" finding for murder as well, but my recollection on that isn't 100%.

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Unlike those bronze age oral histories and iron age letters! /sarcasm

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I'll see your http://www.tempdatareview.org/ link and raise you a http://www.davidicke.com/forum... link.

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My first hit for "Global warming"+"times faster" yields this link: As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.

All the opinions you mentioned are, at best, poorly informed.

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Who gave the US ownership of the universe.....

God did. That's why when a white, humanoid alien from another planet comes to earth it's perfectly natural that they're going to fight for truth, justice and the American way. God likes us best and the rest of you fereners can suck it. Ha-ha!

Hey, I am fine with industry standing on its own and living or dying by the free market, but since when was letting the government own your liabilities part of the free market vision?

They're just asking for the same deal the insurance industry, defense industry, agriculture, pharmaceutical and banking industries already enjoy. Who paid the tab for the last recession? That would be the government, as in we the people. Who paid to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina or Florida after the last set of hurricanes? It was partly the insurance industry, which threatened to claim bankruptcy if the government didn't pick up most of the tab. Who pays for bad weather that wipes out crops? And who pays when someone loses their job and can't make their mortgage payment? Who paid for broadband infrastructure and then gave it away to telecos to sell at a profit which then started to whine like bitches when it came time for upgrades?

I actually agree that the government shouldn't be on the hook for any of that, at least not indefinitely. The government might have to be the buck of last resort for the private space industry until the risks are understood and private insurance has a structure for coverage. But then there's an accident and the insurance companies threaten to file bankruptcy if they have to shoulder the full burden of the claim and most re-insurers are located offshore, so they're not worried about paying up to the limit of coverage and saying, C' ya!

If the government doesn't shoulder the burden of liability then the private space industry never gets off the ground. On the other hand, we the people deserve some payback if we're providing insurance.

A self-driving car will still need windows in case the human driver ever needs to take over. But the windows could certainly have privacy shades. Other things we'd no longer need for robot cars are street signs, stop lights, and lane markers. You might argue that we'd need to keep those things for the people choosing to drive themselves but my question would be how long should the rest of us finance billions in infrastructure for a diminishing number of holdouts?

That's why I think self-driving cars are going to take over a lot faster than most people imagine. There are significant costs to maintain infrastructure for human drivers. Not to mention the insurance implications when it starts costing significantly more to drive yourself.

Yes, the data set is way to small to draw any conclusions,

Not necessarily. Pick a pool of 48 cars at random and compare the accident rates. You also have to compare them by the accident rate per hour behind the wheel.

This gets at the whole idea that self-driving cars have to meet some lofty standard of perfection to become the optimum choice. To replace people behind the wheel self-driving cars only need to be +1 better than human drivers.

Self driving cars can't drive in the rain. Oh, really? Take a drive around Seattle in the rain, you'll discover human drivers suck in the rain, too. And that's in the rain capitol of the world where you'd expect people to be used to driving in the rain and they still suck (I lived there for 10 years so don't bother trying to deny it).

The biggest obstacle to self-driving cars isn't rain or snow, it's something called Illusory Superiority. The vanity of humans who think they're better drivers than they really are.

Your sarcasm was fully warranted.
They "discovered" that the dissolution rate is essentially equal to surface area over volume.

For their next experiment they will 3D print it as a loose powder and see if that has any effect.

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