OMB reviews, independent budget reviews and internal NASA reviews all say that at the current funding rate, the system will not be ready for such a mission for a decade beyond 2025.

I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.

:-)

You make it sound like starving people are getting fat too.

If they are becoming obese, the particular individual has a surplus of caloric intake, if only for this year or month. This is not to say that they have proper nutrition. So I am not at all clear that the fact that there is obesity in the third world is confounding evidence.

For most of the existence of mankind and indeed all of mankind's progenitors, having too much food was a rare problem and being hungry all of the time was a fact of life. We are not necessarily well-evolved to handle it. So, no surprise that we eat to repletion and are still hungry. You don't really have any reason to look at it as an illness caused by anything other than too much food.

Martin,

The last time I had a professional video produced, I paid $5000 for a one-minute commercial, and those were rock-bottom prices from hungry people who wanted it for their own portfolio. I doubt I could get that today. $8000 for the entire conference is really volunteer work on Gary's part.

Someone's got to pay for it. One alternative would be to get a corporate sponsor and give them a keynote, which is what so many conferences do, but that would be abandoning our editorial independence. Having Gary fund his own operation through Kickstarter without burdening the conference is what we're doing. We're really lucky we could get that.

The emulator was key in allowing users to use older 68k apps on the new PowerPC chips, until the software houses released versions built for the PowerPC. A lot of companies (including Apple itself) hurt the platform by delaying their PowerPC update releases. The OS did have some issues; I'm not going to sugar coat it. Apple also took a few journeys down dark alleys with poorly designed hardware during the '90s. Of course the alternative at the time was Windows 3.1, which wasn't a utopian dream either.

No, the thing it caries from the ship, through the surf zone, over sand and onto hard ground that has the killing power are the U.S. Marines.

We do charge entry to the convention. We get really nice facilities for the people who actually travel there and for the speakers. Last year's location was subperb. But I don't see why they should actually subsidize the folks who do not attend.

I think TAPR's policy is that the presentations be freely redistributable, but I don't know what they and Gary have discussed. I am one of the speakers and have always made sure that my own talk would be freely redistributable. I wouldn't really want it to be modifiable except for translation and quotes, since it's a work of opinion. Nobody should get the right to modify the video in such a way as to make my opinion seem like it's anything other than what it is.

If I remember correctly, it was 4 video channels last year: tracking on presenter, proscenium, audience, projector.

Yes. I put in $100, and I am asking other people to put in money to sponsor these programs so that everyone, including people who did not put in any money at all, can see them for free. If you look at the 150+ videos, you can see that Gary's pretty good at this (and he brought a really professional-seeming cameraman to Hamvention, too) and the programs are interesting. Even if at least four of them feature yours truly :-) He filmed every one of the talks at the TAPR DCC last year (and has filmed for the past 5 years) and it costs him about $8000 to drive there from North Carolina to Austin, Texas; to bring his equipment and to keep it maintained, to stay in a motel, to run a multi-camera shoot for every talk in the conference, and to get some fair compensation for his time in editing (and he does a really good job at that).

Not art.

If she's not college material, send her to trade school to learn a construction trade. Having a trade means she'll be employable. Some jobs are never going to go away -- there will always be construction jobs.

If she's college material I'd recommend two paths: lf she has a math or science bent, engineering. If STEM isn't her thing, as a first step send her to an accredited business school. Follow that with a good trade school. Having the business degree means she'll be able to operate at a higher level in the industry, handling the business with the background necessary to not screw it up.

Engineering and construction jobs will never go away. You have to keep up with new technologies, techniques and trends but you'll be able to find a job.

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Teaching is a worthwhile pursuit but there are too many of us that know that teachers are poorly paid and constantly under attack. I can't, in good conscience, recommend that career to anyone who hasn't already expressed a strong interest.

not like the wild animals and fish don't piss and shit into our water

The wild animals don't tend to piss and shit birth control hormones and other still quite bioactive medications.