There was a similar set of claims roughly 60 years ago for the "Dean Drive" a "reactionless drive" that did not seem to use propellant. To casual review, and letting it push your hand, it seemed to work, and a great campaign for research and to ignore the sceptics of the time was headed by John W. Campbell, the editor of Analog magazine. Analog was, and remains, a science fiction magazine specializing in hard science and science fiction based on it, and it had many real scientists as readers and contributors, so the Dean Drive received quite a lot of attention.

The Dean Drive has since been pretty thoroughly debunked as an "oscillation thruster", a device that relies on tuned "slipping" on the floor it rests on to creep forward and even to provide a modest thrust, _pushing against the floor_. The designer was never willing to allow a full "pendulum" test, or careful testing outside of his own workshop, and there seem to be dozens more of similarly patented "reactonless drives". The ones that work at all also seem to be "isicllation thrusters", pushing against the floor or the mehanism in which they are mounted.

> As an added added bonus, such a drive would accelerate faster at a given thrust, because of the absence of reaction mass.

If only they didn't require an actual motor, or storage system for the energy for the microwaves. Since the maximum _chemical_ energy available in batteries is quite close to that of a good chemical propellant, it's only a big benefit if the energy for it comes from elsewhere, such as solar cells or a quite large nuclear power source. And if you have low mass space based solar cells, you can use either a solar _sail_ based system, or a transmission base to propel target spacecraft with a larger, more stable microwave source.

The "propellant" is the microwaves, which carry momentum. They don't have to have _rest_ mess, but they still are a measurable propellant.

The Founding Fathers explicitly made the Senate a "house of the States", where Senators, essentially acting as agents of the state legislatures, had the power to amend or veto bills produced in the House of Representatives. However, being unelected, Senators while enjoying greater prestige than Representatives, were also in a position where their powers were not democratically derived. The "check" as it were on the Senate was that any significant interference in bills would inevitably be viewed somewhat more dimly, which is how it has worked out in most Westminster parliaments.

With the 17th Amendment, the Senate gained the democratic legitimacy which in facts leads to the greater possibility of this seeming end-run around the requirement that money bills originate in the House. You don't really find this happening overly much in Canada, where the lack of democratic legitimacy means that Senators usually do not feel they have the right to alter taxation or spending bills. In the UK, of course, explicit measures were put in place in the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts that heavily restrict the House of Lords' ability to tamper with such bills.

Does this finally mean I'll be able to post replies to my own YouTube channel and other's videos?

I have my account, that predates Google taking YouTube over. I've resisted all these years going to G+ or giving them more information....but for that, Ihad to give up being able to post comments and replies not only to other peoples' videos, but even to my own.

This will be a welcome change if that works!!

Now, if they'd also do away with trying to occasionally "verify" your account with a phone call. I fear I"m gonna have to go get a disposable phone for that one day...but hey at least this is one step in the right direction.

That part was contracted out to interns.

Well, that could be true...

I mean, they DO have a daughter, so they presumably did it at least once...but there have been many rumors that Hillary is more of a "vagitarian" that a penis fan...so...?

I doubt, free trade with non-free countries is beneficial to humanity. Though one can argue, that it makes such non-free countries more free, it is not at all evident, that that's what happened to China, for example.

Meanwhile, the US is gradually losing freedoms as there appear more and more things we aren't allowed to do or even say, and the list of places requiring identification is growing.

As I said in my post, I don't live in the U.S.A. Apart from that solar panel thing, all I know is that she's the wife of former president Bill Clinton.

So, in other words, her primary qualification is, that she sucked a sitting presidents dick, right?

Not sure how that qualifies her for President???

Yeah, that's just what this country's over-leveraged home owners need---more loans.

And exactly who held a gun to those home owners' heads and forced them to take out loans way beyond their means?

If you don't know how to live within your means, manage your money like an adult, and overstretch yourself fiscally and fuckup and blow it and lose it....exactly who's fault is that?

And why would anyone suggest other folks having to be there to catch them when they fall?

The US is supposed to be free...free to succeed and free to fuck up.

Most good lessons in life are learned more from fucking up and having to deal with the repercussions.

Absolutely after a day of hunting, give me a curvy redhead I only have to pay once and don't have to talk to, and a bottle of good scotch and that is money well spent. At least getting screwed by the hooker is a hell of a lot more fun than having the government do it.

Ah....my kingdom for MOD points today!!

:)

The govt shouldn't be in the business of trying to mold or target my behavior. I fail to find in the US Constitution where that is one of its few, enumerated responsibilities and rights...

Look, I don't mind paying reasonable taxes, to fund common good things, schools, roads, etc. But that is best done by the states who are more directly answerable to MY needs locally.

I earn my my money, and should be able to spend it on anything legal I wish and I should not be having external forces, like the federal govt trying to mold my behavior by penalizing me with taxation.

That is simply NOT their job.

It's similar to the situation at the end of WWI. Versailles called for wide-ranging disarmament among all the belligerents, which was all well and good in theory. In reality, of course, a great deal of the R&D that had gone into new weaponry; tanks, planes, ship designs, and so forth, still existed. In fact, the most valuable commodity of all, the German plans for the 1919 campaign that never was, still sat in archives, just waiting for someone to come along and dust them off.

The cat is out of the bag, has been out of the bag for a few decades now. When most of us look at devices like Mars Rovers, we're impressed by the technology and science, and yet that very same technology is easily adaptable to building autonomous weapons. Even if the Great Powers agreed, you can be darned sure they would still have labs building prototypes, and if the need arose, manufacturing could begin quickly.

I"m still trying to thumb through my US Constitution and find where within the enumerated responsibilities and rights of the Federal Govt. that it is charged with picking winners and losers in industry. Also,where in there is the Fed govt supposed to figure out health costs of one industry vs another and penalize one over another?

And no, it has nothing to do with the "General Welfare" parts....

Have you been to France, Palestine, Nicaragua, Cuba, North Korea, or the former Soviet Union in the last 50 years? Hating America has been a popular national policy for decades, if not centuries, in many countries around the world.

Why should they paint it? If he's staying in captivity, he doesn't need camouflage, and it makes him far more noticeable for his caregivers or any fascinated schoolchildren who might want to see him.

RAID10 for nearline storage ?

More research required, methinks.