Even as a sardine is just a bird with an altitude problem.

The good news in all this, is that not only does O want America to go to Mars, BUT, he backs nuclear engines and power. Sadly, the dems fight it. But, the current CONgress is likely to be pro-nukes, which I doubt that O will stop.

Does "saving the country" not count as something to accomplish? You've got me confused here.

government sucks

it's just that the world sucks even more without it

congratulations, that's the most retarded thing i've read this year

It's almost impossible to think of anything that will create a $140 billion business out of nothing."

Lol. Just waiting on the tech. These will all be many-billion dollar businesses: fully immersive 3D entertainment; electric cars; household robots; sex robots; space habitats; real 3D printers (by which I mean they'll be able to print electronics, mechanicals, hydraulics and so on -- able to print any item you can provide the raw materials for. The "3D printers" we have today aren't good for much yet.)

As to what you could do today and have a chance to meet that metric... all I know is it isn't going to be an iWatch class device.

Of course if we were collectively smart we would have "Manhattan project-ed" solar, solar storage, and the means to pass massive amounts of energy around long before now at a similar level, and we'd already be off the middle eastern tit.... but of course that means the big oil cronyism in congress would have to be reined in, and that isn't happening.

and yet, while A does the right thing, it is possible for B to be encouraged to do the right thing.
For example, China's emissions are mostly caused by 2 things:
A) Smelting plants that use coal.
B) power plants that use coal. Back in the early 90's, China was at 65-75% coal plants. They are now at over 80% and still growing FAST.

The vast majority of that electricity goes into manufacturing, not into civilians.
As such, the smart move is for America (and hopefully the entire west) to tax ALL GOODS predicated on where they come from and the emissions / $GDP (real GDP, not PPP GDP). This will quickly encourage China to change their direction, while at the same time, getting the west to change quicker.

our healthcare system sucks because we tolerate these parasites on our system that have to "profit" for some reason. there's no competition. so they just siphon profit and buy off our legislators and regulators to keep the money train flowing

they are natural monopolies

they are monopolies alone, no government needed to make them

you don't spend billions to build a hospital across the street from another. there's no free market. we're not talking about nail salons

you don't go shopping for an oncologist based on cost. you don't shop around for hospitals while you are having a heart attack. there's no capitalism here

so we need government control, rather than make believing a magic free market fairy fixes things

i'm not a socialist or a statist. specifically on the topic of natural monopolies *alone*, universal payer is the least worst option

citation: all of our social and economic peers: uk, canada, japan, germany, australia, etc: they spend far less on healthcare, and have higher quality healthcare. and it's all government controlled

our bullshit system persists because our government is corrupted. we need to fix the corruption, then kick out the parasites

Reminds me a bit of Lost. Seemed like a great series at first but it's pretty clear based on the ending they'd dug a hole they had no idea how to get out of so made some shit ending about being in limbo or whatever.

It was so blatant because most things were never even explained by the ending they chose, the ending they chose merely answered (badly) the main plot line, but completely failed to factor in and explain countless side plots, and so was largely just completely broken.

At least in this case he has some guidelines as to how it should all play out though, that's something. Lost basically felt like a really desperate live improvisation.

I don't mean to bring up Thatcher or talk negatively of the EU because I'm extremely pro-EU and am relatively neutral on Thatcher.

But if Thatcher's government was visionary on one thing it was technology, not only did they push computers in schools which I fondly remember as a kid and is a large part of why I do what I do and like what I like today but her government also wanted to roll out fibre and replace copper way back in the 1980s but was actually blocked by the EU because BT had at that point become a private entity.

I don't want to get caught up in the politics of Thatcher, the EU and privatisation as I know these are incredibly divisive subjects and my feelings on the issue in this case run wholly counter to my feelings in general (I'm extremely pro-EU and hate euroscepticism with a passion because it's short-sighted and isolationist, and I believe public utilities should always be publicly run) but I find this to be a fascinating twist in history. A missed opportunity that I would've loved any government ever since whether Labour, Tory, or coalition to have attempted to revive.

It's one case where EU law sadly genuinely prevented the UK being first class and completely ahead of it's time in a particular area of technology and left us much worse off for it.

Yeah, but this is how it was with ADSL too.

Back when ADSL rolled out, and people only got 512kbps, there were no limits. You could literally download constantly at maximum speed for the entire month.

Then along came ADSL Max and people got bumped to 1 - 2mbps. Suddenly caps started getting introduced, so low that your speed had gone up but the amount you could download had literally declined by several orders of magnitude.

So whilst with the advent of basic FTTC unlimited has once again become the norm, don't count on currently unlimited bandwidth meaning perpetually unlimited bandwidth. It wouldn't be the first time in the UK that increases in speed have seemingly paradoxically meant decreases in the amount of data you're actually allowed to download. That's exactly what happened last time.

But what is happening is BS. Unless ALL nations are involved, then nothing will change.
As it is, the largest polluter, China with more than 1/3 of the CO2 emissions, is being allowed to continue GROWING their emissions while only the west are to cut back.
This will NEVER succeed if this continues.

the only possible solution is if all nations cut back, and if they are cut back predicated on CO2 / $ GDP. The reason is that emissions are NOT tied to ppl,but dirty manufacturing.

the lawyer seeks out the victim

if you ever are the victim of a newsworthy accident/ crime, you will get cold called by a number of lawyers, who want to represent you pro bono

because such cases gild their CV, get their name out there. free advertising

some lawyers, they seek out interesting strange and noteworthy cases only. out of ego, fame, crank cause, adrenaline, hero complex, whatever:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

etc.

you mean you're a hopeless idealist who think things have to be perfect?

i'm glad you agree we need to get rid of corruption

but i'm mystified how you think the country's obvious success has nothing to do with democracy, however imperfectly implemented

i've been commenting on slashdot for years. there's always this steady drip of comments from grammar (punctuation?) nazis like yourself. do you see me changing or caring?

if you don't like the formatting of my comment, don't read it. i don't owe you anything. you're not paying me

this is an informal comment board, not a doctoral thesis. get over yourself