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Comment Re:The Navy sucks at negotiating (Score 1) 118

They used 'pristine' in an odd context. Possibly 'historically pristine', but certainly not mechanically pristine.

The Ranger had been in pristine condition, but for a week in August volunteers from other naval museums were allowed to remove items to improve their ships.

.

Flying over it makes it obvious it's not in great shape. Hell, the engines don't work.

Comment Re: for what i'm paying in taxes and mortgage (Score 1) 118

I'da payed substantially more to be towed out to the gulfstream and spent a few years trying to keep it from sinking.
The only thing stupider than the US government is the US citizen, notwithstanding stupid illegal aliens tha are too stupid to make it in their own fucked up countries and think it's actually better here.
What group of slimeball politicians got paid under the tablefor this latest episode of fuckme-imamerican?

Well nitwit, you could have bid on it. You generally need to be a telecommunications maganate before you go out buying aircraft carriers and parking them in the middle of the ocean.

Comment Re:Motive (Score 5, Insightful) 282

Worse than we got? A company that everyone loves to hate got embarrassed. Sony will likely lose a bunch of money. The FBI will get Beltway Cred for it's great Cyber sleuthing work. Hundreds of security consultants will get some nice Christmas bonuses. A few people will have their lives messed up.

What are we supposed to do to NK? Give them a stocking full of coal?

Comment Re:Patriotic to NOT watch it instead? (Score 3, Insightful) 227

North Korea is a country who:

- brutalizes the majority of it's citizens for the economic and political benefit of a few.
- threatens other countries with nuclear weapons.
- threatens other countries with Internet hacking.
- uses propaganda and bizarre statements for political gain.
- deifies it leaders and makes a joke of the political process.

Oh. Wait.

Comment Re:Action movies are boring. (Score 1) 332

The neat thing about the freighter crews as they were depicted in the shows, was that the crews were often families that would live and reproduce on the ship, spending their entire lives in space on a fairly small and poorly-armed vessel. They would occasionally take on new blood from outside their family unit (this helps combat the immediate idea of gene pool degeneration), but the majority of the crew would be biological relatives.

These crews were much less idealistic than Starfleet personnel, and were very much loyal to their families above and beyond any set of ideals. No doubt they'd encounter all kinds of sticky situations in space with pirates, Klingons, and even Starfleet, and have to defend their family, defend their ship, make ends meet, and survive.

They were Moties !

Comment Re:and that's how we got the world of FIREFLY (Score 2) 265

Or not. The Chinese leadership isn't as all powerful as some make it out to be. They are skating a very fine line between their own interests and the goals and aspirations of an enormous population. Right now, they are keeping the population relatively comfortable and happy by reasonable economic growth. That llows them to continue their current attempts at World Domination. If that falters, then so does most of the goodwill and support the Chinese population gives to the government.

In that sense, it may be more representative that the situation in the US.

Comment Re:Hahahahahahahahaha LOL (Score 1) 441

But exactly why do all these systems start breaking down? I agree we're not getting particularly close to 120 year lifespans with our current approach, which is tinkering with treatments for the ailments of old age. But I suspect there actually is a simple magic bullet somewhere - something to stop us getting old.

I doubt it. Nature doesn't work that way. Getting to 120 is going to take a LOT of engineering. You are going to have to manipulate the immune system in a fundementally more complex way than we're doing know. You will need to have better organ transplantation and you're going to have understand the brain. You're going to have to understand human biology at a much deeper level that we currently do. And you will be swamped with details.

Aging isn't just one thing. It's the pileup of a lifetime of little things going wrong until the bridge collapses.

You may be able to DELAY aging with some sort of magic bullet but that is likely to have a whole raft of unintended consequences. Not to mention, you're going have to start on it when you're about 20 years old.

Comment Re:Bear repellent? (Score 1) 276

OK. I can see cannon or swords as weapons. That's the point of them. But why is bear repellent a weapon? Are bears secretly part of the anti-terrorist program?

A bottle of bear spray is 10 oz of 2% capsaicin. If that accidentally or purposely was released it could incapacitate an entire plane. Given that there is no reasonable use for said spray while flying, it makes abundant sense to pack it away so the chances of release are minimized. All it takes is one half crazed passenger to put a whole lot of people in serious jeopardy. And we all know that a typical flight carries more than one half crazed person.

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