That isn't anything new. That's just immaturity, which (surprise) is characteristic of children. The problem in this world isn't childish children. It's childish adults.

Well, speaking as a parent with actual direct experience with my kids and their friends, they have *way* more work than I did when I was their age in the 1970s.The day is so stuffed with curriculum schools have cut the lunch period to under fifteen minutes, and "study hall" is something kids have never heard of, replaced with special content boosting classes to help them through statewide testing. The time pressure has spilled over into homework. Even as elementary students they seldom had less than an hour of homework per night, and often had two.

And, if I recall what kids were like in the 70s (as opposed to how I'd like to believe we were), these kids have a work ethic far beyond anything I ever saw back then. If anything I think we've gone to far toward instilling work ethic in these kids, who don't have the self-directed time we did. Compared to my kids' highly scripted and controlled childhood, my own feels like something out of Tom Sawyer.

Where videogames fit into this picture isn't stimulation. My kids look at videogame time (strictly limited in our house) as precious decompression time. If kids reach young adulthood less socially mature (which I'm skeptical of) it's probably not gaming per se. It's more likely that so much is expected of them and so little spare time given to them they don't have enough experience directing their own activities with their friends.

So far as I can see, this attitude is much more characteristic of *adult* Americans these days than it is of our kids -- at least the ones who are old enough that they should know this. We adult Americans don't want to plan for the future or to face anything unpleasant. When that neglect comes home to roost we want a quick fix and we want it yesterday. And if we can't get a quick fix we demand a scapegoat. If it is true kids are ignorant and lazy, does it make sense to believe the *kids* are responsible for their faulty education? It's not like the infants we got in this generation are somehow inferior.

But I don't think that kids today are no good. I look at the kids *I* know, and I see a generation that is brighter, more knowledgeable, and harder working than my generation was. If that's not what *you* see, then don't blame the kids. Blame the adults who raised them and the politicians you elected to set education policies..

Those goals reasons exploration of the solar system a higher priority than settling the Moon.

Lack of insects is one of the reasons that a moon base is a low priority. True, some insects spoil crops or spread diseases, but others pollinate crops, recycle decaying matter, and are food for birds, fish and yes, people. They're a critical component of any sustainable ecosystem that works remotely like Earth's.

Somebody who can't see the positive aspects of insects is not qualified to make judgments about the role of space colonization in humanity's future, on the basis of irrational cultural biases and nature-phobia.

Now to answer your question of why we don't build a base on the moon, you can't judge whether something should be done on its own faults and merits, you've got to look at the merits of things you won't be able to do as result of pursuing it. In economics this is called "opportunity cost". Investing $1 at a 5% return when another, equally safe investment would yield 10% is like throwing away a nickel.

So when you look at whether the *government* should be investing in moon bases, you have to look at the other things it could be spending money on. Even if you think a government funded moon base is a net win in itself, you have to consider whether that money would be better spent exploring the Solar System so we know what's out there.

They didn't have the notion of national sovereignty, and probably not even land-property, so I guess they probably said something like, "Hey, there goes a bunch of mastodon! Let's go catch some!"

Then later the Europeans arrived. They *did* have concepts of land-property and national sovereignty, and we *know* what they said: "All these uninhabited lands belong to us! Now let's go catch some slaves."

I once interviewed a retiring Navy officer to become my boss. His name (I am not making this up):Captain Jack Hammer.

It's not the asymmetry in tactics that makes a "war" like this unwinnable. It's the lack of any definition of "victory".

In a traditional war, you win by seizing territory and national resources, forcing the leadership of the enemy to capitulate. In something like the Afghan War seizing territory and national resources is only the opening move. There is nothing left to seize. The enemy leadership is not going to capitulate because there's nothing they have, including their lives, that are seriously under threat. Even if they did their movement would splinter. The only thing you can do is turn the populace against them, but *you're* an occupying army and the main instrument you have for winning civilian hearts and minds are troops who have to defend themselves from an attack from the very civilian masses they're supposed to win over. Under the circumstances US forces have done an amazing job, but it's like a marriage going bad: one stupid word or action cancels out ten good deeds.

The closest thing to victory you can expect in something like this is to wait for a relatively calm stretch, declare victory and leave.

Your *shoe* comrade, you're supposed to bang your *shoe*.

Bozhe moi.

Am I the only one who doesn't see this as a positive thing?

Well, obviously not, but in the current political climate I'm pretty far to the left and I see this as a good thing. Except for people who have a vested interest in this question I should think you don't have much company.

Privatizing government *responsibilities* is a bad idea, because those tasks have to be carefully managed to ensure public interests are protected. It's that micromanagement where you can't control everything through a P&L statement that makes government inefficient, so farming out something like running prisons, providing police services or fighting wars to private contractors mans you've got the worst of both worlds: government inefficiency, and private sector indifference to the public good.

But we've always bought *stuff* from the private sector, whether it is weapons or tools or vehicles. And this is really not so radically different from the way we procured complex vehicles like the Space Shuttle or military planes, except that SpaceX is *operating* the vehicles as well. What matters is that the payload gets where it's going reliably; the public has no particular interest in *how* that is accomplished. So this looks like a good candidate for privatization to me, unlike fighting wars or running prisons.

It's not as roomy as a coffin. It's more like a straightjacket, which is ironic.

Ever hear of Venice? Of course Venice is also subsiding, but seven inches on top of that has made a big difference to them.

The problem with sea level rise in the short term isn't that suddenly you're city is drowned every day of the year. It's with the increase in frequency with which rare catastrophic events occur. Every coastal city has a high water level below which flooding effects are marginal and above which they are catastrophic (e.g. a levee is overtopped). How close waters commonly come to that mark determines the impact of a marginal increase in sea level.

Cities like Venice or New Orleans which are already prone to flooding are certainly affected by an 18 cm rise in mean sea level, although that effect isn't necessarily seen every year. Boston on the other hand was built to withstand 3-4m tides and has never had a major flood from the sea, so the 18 cm rise in the 20th C. had zero effect on it. If at some point in the future sea levels rise by a meter or so, flooding might become a common event in Boston. At that point a further 18 a cm rise would be very expensive to deal with.

The effect of sea level rise is not linear, and it's not uniform throughout the world. The effect depends on how a city is constructed and situated.

Now as to "geologically stable tide guages", if you knew anything about surveying you'd know that rather begs the question. In any case you can get any result you want by arbitrarily throwing out data; *mocking* data you'd prefer not to exist doesn't count as an argument.