I don't think your proposal is practical. The "space pickup truck" idea is nice, but the idea that it should descend to and lift off from a planetary mass is unfeasible, without controlled fusion, and perhaps even then. (You could do something similar with some sort of skyhook [the PinWheel is my favorite, as being the most practical in the near term].)

But FIRST you need to work on a nearly-closed eco-system. This "space pickup truck" will take a long time to make a long trip. It will probably be powered by solar cells and a ion-jet of sorme variety. This will let it move from orbit to orbit, carry things along, etc., even do interplanetary voyages. But it's SLOW. This means that it needs to be either robotic or a closed eco-systme. (Well, nearly closed. Really closed is impossible.) And if the people who are inhabiting it are going to remain sane, it needs to be large enough to live in. Larger, probably, than a hutment in Antarctica. (It's easier to go outside in Antarctica, and less expensive of habitability. In Antarctica that just means heat, in space it primarily means air and water...no matter how careful you are.) Also, if you design it for habitability you need to carry along significan radiation shielding. Water is probably a good choice for that. But that means weight.

If, OTOH, you only mean short interorbit transitions you still end up with a slow vehicle. And one that can't land on a planetary surface.

Please note that the same driver frame should be able to have several different cabins mounted on it, and should be able to haul cargo. But that's really tricky when you're using rocket/jet propulsion. You can't haul the stuff behind on a cable, unless it's WAY behind, and then the cable had better be able to stand being exposed to the wash of the exhaust. Probably better would be to have three or four main engines angled slightly outwards, and slightly manuverable, to allow hauling things on a cable, even though that would reduce the efficiency. But adjustable, so if you weren't hauling cargo you could eject straight backwards.

Please note that this approach won't work much beyond the orbit of Jupiter, as solar cells will become too weak to generate enough power. So you need some alternate power source. Fission reactors are the only thing that currently seems feasible. Fission reactors are probably enough to allow manuvering throughout the solar system, but for interstellar, even at slow speed, fusion may well be needed. (I suppose that one could build an anti-matter factory near the sun and power it off sunlight, and then store it as fuel...that seems only an engineering problem, with no theoretica breakthroughs required. But it's a HUGE engineering problem.)

Near term, though, to get from a planetary surface with an atmosphere, use a skyhook. (Some could be built now. They aren't all as difficult as an elevator.) If there's no atmosphere, use a catapult. Ion rockets to get from orbit to orbit. And human presence requires a nearly closed ecology. Which can be developed right down here. Siberia or Canada seem like good locales to do the development, with other locations if it needs to deal with excess heat rather than excess cold. (And note that right now the real requirement is cheap land that can be somewhat isolated, and funding. BioSphere & BioSphere II were examples of attempts that have failed, and in failing taught us something. But nobody's put serious effort into the development. And it needs to be done before anyone does any serious planning about a permanent human presence off the planet.

There's an interesting reason, though. Consider building a Trie around Unicode chars. Granted, this may not be a major reason, but UGH! There's a lot of advantages to having a small alphabet. The early languages didn't usually even allow both upper and lower case. Well, memories have expanded, processors have speeded up, etc. But Unicode is still too verbose for many algorithms to work well. And using bytes and utf-8 yields different problems.

I will grant that there are lots of approaches that don't suffer dramatically from this problem. It's largely historic. But there are still valid reasons.

IIRC, driving was originally unregulated. Neither a right nor a priviledge. (Unless you count oxcarts and horses. If you do, it predates the invention of "rights", and was presumed to be allowed to anyone who could afford it. Though, IIRC, at one point Rome had laws baning "trucks" between dawn and sunset. But that's traffic control, not forbidding driving.)

I think the changes will be faster than you suppose. States already have laws saying that driving is a priviledge, not a right. And the insurance companies will be pushing for any change that reduces their expenses (while continuing to require that you purchase increasingly worthless insurance).

Taxi drivers will probably lose out quickly. Bus drivers will change to "stewards". Their main job will change to controlling passengers. Shuttle drivers...probably the same as bus drivers.

OTOH, in most places it will require legal changes to allow driverless taxis. Even taxis with drivers tend to be licensed and controlled, so there's an entrenched bureaucracy. So there will be resistence that won't collapse until large companies go into the automated taxi business. And, as with buses, vandalism will be a problem.

You have a point, but the people doing the job you're describing are more a cross between longshoremen and mechanics than truckers. (Yeah, I know they're mainly far from the water, but the job description doesn't really include ships, it include handling cargo.)

OTOH, consider all the automated warehouses that are going in. There will be lots of places where even these neo-truckers aren't needed.

Someone who always lies is quite reliable.

His statement is quite believable...because at least in the summary he didn't mention what measures he used. It's probably more profitable for the provider than anywhere else, for example.

Believable doesn't mean intelligible. The statement as I read it could mean nearly anything. There are LOTS of different measures of quality that are possible. Many of them don't even refer to the level of service to the end user.

One interesting point is that he said the problem was the number of subscriptions. This when at least MY internet connection often slows down to dial-up speed (as measured by rate of transmission). I've TODAY had connection speeds of 22.5 KB/S. Mixed with long periods when the was NO data transmission beyond handshaking.

So while I believe what he said, I don't believe what he was trying to imply. I consider him a spin-doctor, at best.

This may, actually, be in keeping with the "spirit of the law". IIUC, "the spirit" of the laws regarding self-incrimination are to prevent confessions being coerced under torture. They haven't been totally effective at that, but they've done a "pretty good" job, and this doesn't seem to be a case that infringes onto that spirit. (Unlike various cases where someone is ordered to decrypt something...which does seem to infringe on that. I count being held in prision as a mild form of torture...which grades into a more extreme form in some cases.)

I *slightly* disagree. It's entirely appropriate that construction companies be required to preserve historic artifacts. What's not appropriate is that *particular* construction companies be so required. That's, as mentioned, counter productive, and places the burden on those who are conscientious. It needs to be a general fee levied on ALL construction companies, with a partial rebate to those that find and appropriately report them. Doing it the other way creates and adverse incentive, as stated.

So. Perhaps tornado shelters are a good idea. If so, at least a part of the construction cost should be remitted for installng one. And perhaps some sort of punishment ("You go the end of the line in case of emergency"?) should be implemented for lack of one.

That said, I'm not sure it should be legal to sell or rent properties lacking a tornado shelter in areas where a tornado is likely. You may not be able to install it due to lack of finances, but this doesn't mean you should be able to transfer the problem to someone else. Perhaps sale should be allowed if the purchaser signed a clear statement in 14 point type saying (approximately) "I understand that the state believes living in this place is unsafe due to the lack of a tornado shelter.". Renting is, however, a separate problem. Landlords have a long history of totally ignoring the safety of their tennants, so I don't think they should be granted ANY slack.

I can't quite remember the reference. I know I've encountered that before in descriptions of this case.

His point was that only loons take those parts seriously among any but the Moslem religions, and that the Moslems DO that those parts (or their equivalents) seriously.

I'm not totally sure that I agree with him, but his point does have some measure of validity. OTOH, tolerance levels can change quickly, and parts that are ignored by one generation can be revived by a following generation. It's happened before. (His argument about religions "growing up" fails on that basis. A temporary level of tolerance doesn't guarantee anything permanent. There was a time when the Moslem culture was the most tolerant on Earth (bar a few isolated islands). Then they were invaded by Tamerlane, and most of them were killed off, and most of the rest became refugees. A few centuries(?) of recovery, and then onslaughts by Christians. (My timeline is a bit uncertain here.) Since then tolerance among the Moslems has been in sharp decline. Now a large number of them worship hate. And they still aren't among the least tolerant cultures. Only the least tolerant major culture.

That said, I, also, am less given to trust someone who identifies him/her self as Moslem. I don't know how sensible this is, and if I get to know someone, group identification becomes unimportant compared to how they have been observed to act. But when judging an unknown member of a group, the first impression is largely an echo of my attitude towards the group. And even when I know someone a bit, I acknowledge that I make frequent mistakes.

Unfortunately for your argument, politics is not a linear continuum. Fascism is a form of authoritarianism, and is closely allied to other forms of authoritarianism, some of which are "left wing".

To a stickler for definitions it would be fair to claim that there is no fascist government in the world today. So you can't win that way either.

As words are generally used, a term defines an approximate centroid of ideas, and can be used to refer to those ideas "near" to the centroid. If the GP was referring to the authoritarian aspect of fascism, there's nothing incoherent about claiming that the government in Washington is a left-wing fascist government, whether or not you agree with it. (I'm not sure I do, though it is certainly centralist, authoritarian, and solicitous of business interests. What I'm not sure is that it's left-wing. It seems more right-wing to me, even if not as gonzo-nutbar right-wing as the current Republicans.)

So to me to characterise it as fascist seems quite reasonable. Do remember that Fascist is not the same as Nazi. And that Nazis were considered a variant of Socialist. (I'm not sure that was ever claimed of the Fascists.)

Well, maybe they've come up with new theories, but back when I had a part-time summer job calculating IQ scores, the idea was that it as a normalized value of "g", where g stood for general intelligence. Now as I don't believe that any such entity exists, I can't accept their theory. But it does measure something, because the results are approximately replicable. So all I can say about it is that it measures the results of taking the test.

OTOH, yes, most people who both understand and accept the test as valid believe that it's measuring something real beyond it's results, and it *is* attempting to measure general intelligence.

For that matter, you could read S.J.Gould's "The Mismeasurement of Man" for some interesting history behind why the IQ test was originally developed. And what the originators thought it proved. (I don't really class IQ tests with phrenology, but the same motives inspired both of them.)

Older headphones could be used as mics, but I'm not all all sure that's true of recent technology. (The last ones I was certain that it worked for were carbon membranes. Around 1950.)

So, are you even certain that your initial statement is true? (I don't know that it isn't, but that's much different from knowning that it is.)

However, presuming that it is, then speakers could be used as mics. They wouldn't be very good ones, but probably good enough that signal processing could recover the sound. So then we come to the capabilities of the electronic system that they are plugged into.

In short, there are very good reasons why mics and speakers are generally separate pieces of hardware.

OTOH, are you aware that, at least in some people, with a sensitive enough mic you can hear some of their thoughts through the ear? The volume is quite low, and you don't, IIRC, hear non-verbalized thoughts (I'm not even quite sure what that would mean). Something about pre-verbal thoughts constricting muscles in the vocal chords, but not sufficiently that speech results. Why you can hear it through the ear I do not know.

In this case IQ is defined as the "measurement" of the test. So it's not that "You are confusing the measuring stick with the quantity being measured.", the definition is just recursive. I also want to call it invalid, but I can't. It is valid, it just isn't a measure of intelligence in any useful way. And because there IS no such characteristic as "general intelligence" you probably can't do any better.