Buses with dedicated lanes can be faster than driving if there is congestion. Bus lanes are a lot cheaper than train track, and buses are cheaper than trains as well.

I still hate buses.

The austerity is there to ensure that the Greeks WILL need €100 billion in a couple of years time. They are unable to deal with the interest on their existing loans, and since they are not allowed to go bankrupt, they have no way out. The agreement dooms Greece to have an ever-shrinking economy and therefore they will have even less ability to service their debt in the future.

If the country tries starving to death, debt rises as a percent of GDP. In order to have any chance at all at paying back the debt, the Greeks need to work, not be unemployed. How else will they produce the goods and services to sell abroad, so they can get the money to pay off the debt?

Unemployment is still steadily rising in Greece. Each worker out of a job means one less worker to help pay the debt.

Exactly! The sane solution: Write off the Greek debt and don't loan them more money. The solution that Greece wants and needs. And the solution that no one will let them have.

Why does it matter where the money is? The actual money itself went back out of the country to pay for imports and to be hidden by the rich tax-avoiders. The goods and services that it paid for have been used.

They are not demanding more money. That is the what the confusion is all about. Greece just wants to go properly bankrupt, i.e. not pay back the money they owe. They will even settle for extending all the loans at a low interest rate, so the economy gets a chance to grow.

New money is only needed because the EU will not accept the losses that already happened. This denial of reality means that anyone with any sense can see that Greek will eventually give up on the Euro, and therefore everyone sane does what they can to get their hands on actual Euro notes rather than numbers on a bank statement. Obviously the banks cannot handle this demand; no country could print paper money fast enough in that situation.

So, at a time with a very fragile government and civil administration in general, risks of unrest and protests, you want to cut the military.

In such a situation, is it entirely out of the question that the military might consider other options, perhaps like Egypt? It would not exactly be the first time in history.

European leaders keep pretending that they are giving Greece new money, when they are merely shuffling old debts around.

The money that was loaned to Greece has been lost. The whole crisis is about everyone involved being unwilling to accept this reality and thinking that the money will somehow magically come back once the Greeks have been punished sufficiently.

It is the same theory behind debtor's prison. It should be abolished for the same reasons.

Until we have an actual theory about what is going on, this is just adding epicycles. And bad ones at that, since we do not have sufficient observations to even create decent epicycles

It all changed around 2012.

My information came from the link I supplied: "The MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Early 2013 packs the battery, keyboard, trackpad, and upper case into one assembly. If any of these components fail, the entire assembly must be replaced."

Your guide is for the 13" model. I do not know whether it works for the 15" model, but I can assure you that I am not intending to find out.

But yes, it can be done for one $80 in tools and materials at least on the 13" model, unfortunately in 47 (well 93) steps.

I give you the instructions for replacing the trackpad on my Macbook. It is an easy 44 steps. Well, 87, since you have to do it all in reverse to put it back together.

Also, it's $450 just for the parts and tools. More if you don't like to buy refurbished.

It is great to have the rovers on Mars, but a team of say 5 astronauts in 2 weeks could have accomplished at least as much as all the rovers did.

The rovers require large support teams on Earth. Is it really worth keeping personnel on for a decade to do what could be done in a few weeks?

Robots may be the answer, but right now they really suck when they are out of range of immediate control.

It works just if you removed taxes on work and income and replaced them completely with taxes on property. It is logical that this will cause people to behave in ways that are suboptimal for society as a whole.

Just be aware that income taxes ALSO cause people to behave in ways that are suboptimal for society as a whole. The proper solution is to try to spread the tax load over income/consumption/pollution/property/inheritance/... in such a way that overall harm is minimized. Most governments do so but obviously with very different emphasis on which tax they prefer.

Moderate inflation tends to be correlated with decent economic growth. Printing money is a completely valid way to pay for a part of the government budget. Alas, a fairly small part in normal economic times.

The problem is that shoulder-launched AA cannot be negated that way. The A-10 used to be mostly immune to shoulder-launched missiles, they would have to be very lucky to take it down.

Lots of g's were useful back when missiles were severely g-limited on turns. You could simply turn away when the missile got close. Unsurprisingly, missile developers discovered this and made the missiles better at turning.