But I don't think, such use makes them officially "hammers" and "anvils"

Hammer == rock you hit other rocks with.

Anvil == rock you hit with a hammer....

In other words, they found some rocks that were banged together. which is nice, but it's not the same as "tools". They MAY be tools. Or not. It would be nice to hear about some evidence they were DESIGNED for some particular purpose. Other than banging on some other rock.

What? You object to my parents/siblings keeping their secret ballots secret?

Or do you just object to them not brainwashing me to believe exactly the same things they believe?

You mean Phobos and Deimos are also made of cheese?

Currently, Oregon has a $0.30 per gallon fuel tax. Plus conversion factors for unusual fuels.

This $0.015/mile tax is equivalent, therefore, to the rate you'd be paying if your car got 20 mpg.

So the volunteers will come out ahead if they have gas-guzzlers, and way behind if they have even reasonably fuel efficient vehicles.

And in exchange for higher taxes on driving, they get the privilege of providing Oregon information on how much they travel and WHERE THEY TRAVEL.

What could possibly go wrong with this idea?

Since 1978, utilities have been obligated to purchase electricity from qualified facilities (QFs) under a law called PURPA. Net Metering isn't a federal requirement, but PURPA sure as heck is.

Note that what makes a "qualified facility" is that the price of electricity purchased from one must be LOWER than the cost to produce the electricity by the utility.

Which means that they're only required to buy the electricity if not doing so would increase the cost of electricity to their customers.

So, no, net metering isn't required. They're not even required to pay you as much as their own wholesale rates, though they probably would....

from several criminal practices, including avoiding taxes

"Avoiding" taxes is NOT a crime. "Evading" taxes IS a crime.

I have never known a woman that was into comics

**points at wife and daughter** I know two....

You jest, but I was in high school before there were TRS-80's. The TRS-80 hit the streets about the time I was graduating....

It's been pretty much normal since FDR's day for young people to (tend to) vote Democrat and older people to (tend to) vote Republican.

And yet the Republican Party hasn't disappeared. Probably because some of those young D's eventually grow up to be old R's.

Note that the reasons for that transition are manifold, but I suspect largely a matter of the definition of "conservative" and "liberal" (which definitions have been shifting as time passes - what is "liberal" today will be "normal" tomorrow and "conservative" the day after).

I was born and raised republican

Interesting. My parents never talked politics. They never mentioned who they were voting for. Or even IF they were voting.

Come to that, I have no idea at all who my siblings vote for now, or even if they vote.

And I'm none too sure who my wife and child vote for, or if they vote....

Examples that NASA has something to do with (maybe not directly): the microwave, 0-G ball pen, tennis shes, freeze dried ice cream.

Tennis shes? Pretty sure women were playing tennis long before NASA came along....

Our generation is definitely screwed compared to recent past ones, but I don't know enough about the younger kids to say if they've got it any better than us.

I think that if you check, you'll find that pretty much every generation in history has said pretty much the same thing.

I suspect that your analysis of the current generation is about as wrong as all the others....

By the by, do remember that GDP per capita doesn't actually map well with FAMILY income. My parents, for instance, had three kids, with Mom as a stay-at-home mom for all but a few years of my childhood. So five of us were being supported by one salary. So if we had a per capita income of 1/8th your income, as a family we had 5/8th of your income. And while there are a lot of expenses that are proportional to number of people (food, for instance), there are also a lot that are not (home mortgage doesn't really care how many people are in a family - it doesn't go up when another kid is born, ditto electricity, gas, water bills...).

In WW2 we had analog computers that could aim guns at moving targets from moving platforms. This is actually a harder proposition than aiming a laser; bullets don't move at the speed of light and you've got to compute lead. They did it without electronic computers.

They also didn't do very well

Actually, they did quite well. Consider the Prince of Wales, sunk by the Bismark. The Bismark was using just such electromechanical analog computers for fire control.

Likewise every other modern (for the period) cruiser and battleship in the world.

Plus some of the better destroyers....