Here is evidence. In 2014, the US had 610 reported cases through mid-November this year. In most of the previous years, reported cases were under 100. Even if we took this high as an annual average, underreported by a factor of ten, and a human lifespan of a century, we get a life time risk of catching measles at 0.2% in the US. Meanwhile let's look at the related disease, chicken pox.

Note this has a graph showing chicken pox cases consistently over 140,000 per year in the US for two decades prior to 1995, when a vaccine for that was introduced. Since 1999, no year has experienced over 50,000 reported cases and most years exhibit far fewer cases. Eyeballing the graph, I believe I would get roughly 50% of the population experiencing a reported case of chicken pox using the same calculation as above for the pre-vaccination years. This would roughly be the average annual rate of measles, were it not being severely curbed by something.

Note also that the decline in reported measles cases and the decline in chicken pox cases do not correlate, meaning that it probably isn't a change in human behavior responsible. Similarly, they experience a huge, sharp decline immediately following introduce of the respective vaccines.

Note also the reported number of cases of measles peaks at almost 800,000 cases in 1958! We have more than three orders of magnitude reduction of reported measles cases in 56 years with a growing population which doesn't correlate with human behavior.

Again, absence of a blind RCT study doesn't mean the observation is wrong.

A more than three orders of magnitude change doesn't require blinded RCTs to be observed. The "gold standard" is sufficient, but it is not necessary, to confirm observations that are orders of magnitude in strength. Finally, a blind RCT requires that some people get exposed to measles without the protection of the vaccine (the "controls"). That creates significant suffering and risk of death or major injury in order to confirm a strong signal. What is there to gain scientifically that justifies that price in suffering? I see no justification for it.

That isn't true. Now go away, troll.

That obviously is not true since the 9/11 hijackers had to pass through airport security.

That much of Europe has probably been almost lulled into the level of complacency that will make a truly horrifying attack possible?

No, that just shows that the Intent, Capability, and Opportunity haven't yet aligned to result in an incident or attack... that you know of. Absence of an attack isn't the same as absence of a threat. And you're kidding yourself if you think there aren't terrorists in Germany, or flying through it, that wouldn't attack the airport, planes, or other places in Germany specifically or Europe in general.

Attacks on Frankfurt Airport, Ramstein Planned: Three Islamist Terror Suspects Arrested in Germany - September 05, 2007

Germany Sends 240 Cops to Arrest Nine ISIS Suspects in Cologne - November 12th 2014

What is the form of the bias that you think exists, and how do you think that it alters things? Does that mean Iraq didn't invade Iran or Kuwait? Or did anything else not happen?

Because I'm not getting the connection between driving safely and taxing the poor via red light cameras.

Because you're being willfully obtuse.

And here's some keywords: you are ignoring evidence.

Where's the ultra cheap energy coming from? I'll point out also, that if you have ultra cheap energy, you have ultra cheap living costs too. That means humans stay competitive longer.

I don't see that as even remotely relevant. The point as I see it, is that NASA prior to Apollo used its contemporary advantages to wring as much value out of its funding and available resources, such as using rockets which were already mostly developed rather than rolling its own or exploiting economies of scale. Modern NASA does not. There is a remarkable blindness to cost, outcome, and goals.

No, you don't need that level of precision. And you could have always worked on getting that precision with the MERs. Six more vehicles gives you plenty of opportunity to improve landing precision.

And the quest for more capability is a common NASA failure mode. What is the point of obtaining costly capabilities you don't use?

Such as an external party, US Congress mandating inefficiencies in the Post Office? Sounds like a logical fail then.

I notice that you say a number of wrong things in your comments on this story. The most important is this one:

Not in the developing world. For example, the first chart at this link shows over 60% growth in real income (adjusted for inflation) for the global median wage over the period 1988-2008. How does a 60+% growth in global median wages translate into "have been stagnating for decades"? They don't. You are ignoring 4/5 of the world's population.

No mention of demand for that labor. Supply of labor has been going up for centuries, yet it is more valued than ever.

The non sequitur.

We could always make it less of a bother to keep track of low-achieving humans. This is my theme throughout this discussion.

So why should I believe what you have to say about the future, when you are so painfully wrong about the present?