Yes, yes it was. 8.5x11 was 80 column, but full-size paper was 132. So many hours staring at core dumps ...

What a hippie! Ideally, come Paving Day, I'll be cruising the Paved Earth in my Atomic Hypercar under the light of the Chromed Moon, and hippies like you will be Pit Slaves, toiling endlessly to clean the restrooms and stock the vending machines for the driving elite.

Luke landed and took off in a Tie Fighter on Dagoba. So I don't think it's a stretch.

Are you sure? I think it was Jim Kirk. In a firefly. On Epsilon III.

I'd assumed he was a good guy who'd stolen a stormtrooper uniform to infiltrate and/or escape

Star Wars took a fair beating for being almost all white. Bringing Billy Dee Williams on was at least partially a response to such criticism. We would expect casting from a 2015 Star Wars to be broad and inclusive and not repeat the first film's mistakes.

The funny thing is all this "aren't you a little black for a stormtrooper?" talk is arguing for a "white" stormtrooper when the guy who portrayed Fett is part Maori so it's wrong, if you even care about the premise.

But it's all nonsense anyway - people need to enjoy the film and try to be a little bit more colorblind. None of the characters are humans anyway.

What I like is "click anywhere is pause, scroll anywhere is volume", everything else is negotiable. Keyboard controls? In my living room? Damn Linux nerds! :p

False. New technologies are divided between "invented to kill people" and "porn". With a few like the internet being dual-purpose.

Or, as the saying goes "there are two kinds of engineers: those who build weapons, and those who build targets".

Quite so. OTOH, the Red Letter Media reviews (longer than the movies) were great. I hereby coin:

Plinkett's Law: The entertainment value of a Star Wars/Trek movie plus the entertainment value of the corresponding Plinkett review is constant.

I noticed these and several other "no longer even pretending consistency" moments. I guess my reaction to the trailer is: "I've got a bad feeling about this."

OK, I have no idea which side of this argument you're on, so I'll just leave this here.

McCarthyism came and went with no long-term effect on the nation. Eroding the Constitution is permanent - or at least I assume it will be as the GOP inevitably surrenders, rather than the House amending every bill the pass for the next 2 years with the sentence "Not withstanding any other provisions of law, no money shall be appropriated or otherwise spent on ...". That's not a government shutdown, just an insistence on proper separation of powers.

Part of being a responsible adult is having enough savings to get you through hard times. Really.

One reason the crunch went on a while was "deleveraging" - maybe you heard the term - people deliberately paying down personal debt as they re-learned that lesson about adult responsibility, sobered up, and spent a few years borrowing less, to be less at the whim of the economy. Part of the reason for Japan's "lost decade" was carrying that to extremes, becoming I think the nation with the highest personal savings rate, which meant the economy went nowhere for a decade as people saved instead of spent (Japan had other issues as well, and no one understands that whole story yet).

Ultimately demand drives the economy - until people feel safe spending instead of saving, that won't happen. That's not so much about salary as it is about unemployment - unemployment needs to go down steadily for 12-18 months before people will generally switch from pessimism to optimism, as we tend to base our outlook on the past 1-2 years of personal experience, not abstract economic data (it's one reason individual investors tend to do poorly).

Also, you'll find most people don't switch from "keep my head down" to "I'm not paid enough!" only when we're well into economic upswing. From minimum wage fights to actual revolution, it's a sure sign of a growing economy when people start shouting "grow faster!"

You immediately dismissed the Constitution-defying means and talked about the ends. Without a government that respects the Constitution, America is nothing.

Try flying some small helium party-style balloons on kevlar fishing line tethers, creating a forest of near-invisible strings.

Copter drones don't fly well with the blades wrapped in string.

(Indeed, I hear full-sized helicopers don't work all that well with a few hundred turns of 75-pound test line wrapped around that pitch control mechanism at the hub, either.)

This might not work against those with the bumpers all around. But the ones with the blades unguarded would have quite a time getting through.

Livestock require 8-20x more land per gram of protein produced than plant based protein sources. Switching entirely to plant based foods would allow returning >90% of that land to its natural state and growing crops only on the most suitable 10%.

Much of the land of the continental US is unsuitable for growing any crop suitable for human consumption, due to things like lack of water. The western range, for instance: Attempting to farm it would be an ecological disaster. Cattle, on the other hand, can make a fine living off it (at a rather low density - like four acres per cow) and ARE suitable for human consumption (and tasty!) when raised on what they chose to eat.

In fact, NOT raising range cattle on range land is ALSO an ecological disaster. US range land has a substantial infestation of invasive grass species that were accidentally introduced by European settlement. The native animals tend to avoid eating it, so it has an extra selective advantage over the native grasses and tends to squeeze them out. Cattle, on the other hand, prefer it - to the point of eating it almost exclusively when it's available. Thus they keep it under control. Meanwhile, any non-cattle attempt to eradicate it would amount to total defoliation, reseeding with native plants, crossing your fingers that the invasive species was wiped out, and repeating whenever it reappears.

Wait, is organic and free range supposed to be a better, that is tastier, product or just better for the environment?

While we're at it: If a chicken is free range it isn't organic. A free-range chicken eats wild bugs, and you can't certify that all the wild bugs that flew in ate an organic diet themselves.

My wife raises chickens, studies the issues extensively, and has a lot to say about free range, organic feed, organic chicken regimes, etc. They amount to animal cruelty. Some of the high points:
  - Free range means the chickens are exposed to predators and avian diseases spread by smaller birds.
  - Organic regimes forbid antibiotics and often vaccinations. A bird that catches some disease will either be dispatched to save the rest of the flock, or left to suffer and recover on its own without assistance - perhaps crippled - and meanwhile expose the rest of the flock. A number of poultry diseases are endemic among wild birds or prevalent in the enviornment. Young chicks are subject to coccidiosis and many of the survivors then live with damaged digestive systems. (Non-organic chicks are usually fed a coccidiostat in their early-weeks feed until their immune systems develop, or given a dose of antibiotic if the disease appears in the flock.) Marek's Disease, caused by a herpes family virus, is common. It produces partial paralysis, blindness, lymphoma, immune suppression, tumors, atherosclerosis, and a range of other painful and debilitating symptoms. Non-organc chicks are vaccinated against it. And so on.
  - Free range means the chickens are in large groups rather than individual cages with a handful of birds in each. Chickens can keep track of the ranking of no more than about a hundred other individuals, so life in a larger group is a constant series of battles to reestablish dominance. In small group cages, on the other hand, the heirarchy is worked out quickly and peace generally prevails (or relative peace, depending on breed). This is partiularly a problem with commercial egg-laying breeds, which are noted for intra-species violence and cannabalism.
  - Free range chickens are allowed to leave the barn in the day. But only the few who set up their teritory near the door actually get to leave. The rest are still effectively confined to the buildng in a mass of interacting birds.
  - Commercial feeds from big-name animal feed suppliers are tightly quality controlled and well tuned to the birds nutritional neefd an their taste preferences (so they'll enjoy eating it and thus eat as much as they should). Organic feeds are noted for dangerously poor nutritional qualities, from bad formulation choices, variation between batches, and the use of ingredients that quickly lose their nutritional qualities during storage. With their high metabolism, an under- or mal-nourished chicken will becomes a damaged and debilitated chicken in just a few days.v

I could go on...