So a Swedish citizen give approximatly six times the foreign aid a citizen in the US does?

Yeah, you're right. That is pretty embarrasing.

Actually, let my elaborate a bit on that. Something that really made me think about my own country in a more positive light was the talk "If Americans want to live the American dream ... they should go to Denmark", which talks about social mobility in different countries and the talk "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class".

I find that as I grow older I'm more and more in favor of free education, free health care and all the other benefits that I get from living in a country with high taxes. The alternative just doesn't look good from my perspective.

Scandinavia.

Here's a state you'd most likely call socialist, high taxes and everything, and they're doing quite well. Also, it's more or less the same in the other nordic countries and the Netherlands.

Let's see. With the slices of spectrum I've had access to I've: Used it for networking (802.11), used it for controlling my computer (BlueTooth+other protocols), listened to radio broadcast on it (AM+FM), used it for operating the sattellite I helped build (AX.25) ...

Other possible uses include baby alarms, remote car keys, walkie talkies, ...

Of course, some of those slices of spectrums are licenced to private organizations, some are more or less free for all, and just one of them was ours to play around with as we deemed fit.

As time goes by a it will only rise in price - I for one am only happy that my government doesn't sell of the airwaves, but lease them out instead.

...must resist urge to answer yes to some of those questions.

That's funny, that sounds almost like the music industry. I've never looked at my papers in that particular light.

Thanks for the insight!

The hull is most likely not that thick. It's only there to keep the air pressure high enough that the astronauts can breathe it and be sturdy enough that they don't poke their fingers through it by accident.

Also, a thicker hull wouldn't protect them from space junk etc. The junk is traveling at orbital velocity (otherwise it wouldn't be in orbit) so any impact is likely to penetrate the hull, no matter the thickness.

Every kg to space is expensive, so hull thickness most likely isn't a top priority.

Oh, I didn't know it was available in Danish.

I've used the NeXT (or nExt, NexT, or whatever their crazy capitalization is) for an introduction to control theory for engineering students at the university. It's a great way to quickly hobble together a prototype in Lego and some prototype software and watch it in action, and thereby get them motivated to learn a bit of theory.

I don't know if it's localized, but Lego Mindstorm should do the trick. Rather expensive solution though.

Oy, don't leave us Danes out of all that promiscuous fun!

Why do you religious people keep saying that atheism is a religion? Are you afraid of letting go of your god-illusion and living without your mind-crutch? Perhaps even to the point of denying that other people don't need the same comfort in order to live their lives?

Voluntary donations sounds like a fine idea. If it wasn't a tragedy of the commons type of situation, that is.

If you based your taxes on voluntaring, then the economically best action for the indivdual would be to pay nothing and freeload of everybody who paid something. That doesn't sound like anything that could work in any society. Paying taxes only works because we are forced to do it (or find another country to live in).

I'm not the author of the parent post, but I'll answer you anyway.

Taxes is what you pay to the state for being a citizen in it. Being a citizen nets you quite a lot of benefits, to name just a few, in my country we get free health care and free roads. I wouldn't insist that everybody else pays taxes, but I'd definitly insist that they pay their fair share of taxes if they wanted to be a citizen in my country and/or live in it. If they don't want to pay the taxes they can go find themselves some other country to live in, and I'd be happy to be rid of the freeloaders.

Why was this modded flamebait?