I'm blinded by science!

Heh. Anyone looking at my friends' gun safes would be disappointed.....three expensive guitars fit into each. What guns?

You can only get a license for the space modulator if Earth obstructs your view of Venus.

I'm just sayin'

They want to deregulate business to benefit unfettered greed and to deny the social contract.
They want to regulate personal sexual/social behavior to increase social control.

It's a toxic marriage of unregulated capitalism and unchallenged religious fundamentalism....

Or someone who just walks around and sits for a long time and doesn't talk much. Crazy comes in different flavors.

I like the idea, but in practice, sailboats are pretty identifiable. Boat people tend to know who belongs and who doesn't, so you'll get called out more quickly because you're a break in routine.

Humans: built to notice anomalies and complain about them :-)

(can not log in. dislike this computer intensely)

Uh-huh. **Nods vigorously**

I've done some long-distance bike touring and sometimes I, um, didn't plan as well as I should have - which is to say I ran out of food (though, fortunately, I only ran out of water once). But I got through it, and wound up losing weight in the bargain. Humans can survive in some very deprived situations, and I've been through a few very minor examples, and I have to say I was surprised at how much privation can be borne without serious long-term effects. I also learned that fish by itself, no matter how well-grilled, just doesn't do after a couple of days - something was missing (don't know what, I'm not a nutritionist) but when I got back to a place where I could buy food, I ate about two whole pizzas in an hour.

I also drowned a smartphone in a desolate area, which meant I couldn't call for a couple of days (until I got it replaced in the next city of any size I got to), and hence wouldn't have been particularly trackable if someone had been of a mind to track me (as if....I was a boring keg-shaped fifty-ish guy on a beat-up bicycle). The roads where I was travelling (western US, desert/mountain) weren't heavily trafficked, and I wild-camped (which is to say, slept off the roads hidden behind trees or rocks). I suppose a concerted attempt to find me would have been possible, but not without using way more resources than would have been reasonable in terms of people and vehicles. It's amazing how invisible you are when you're a hairy, vaguely stinky guy travelling on a bike with heavily patched bags - people assume you're homeless, if they even notice you. And when you're in the real boonies, unless you do stupid stuff to make lots of noise, no one will bother - you're a needle in a haystack.

In urban areas, the 'being-taken-for-homeless' thing is just weird - you're invisible (e.g., you just don't exist for some people), so I don't think anyone would have remarked on me any more than the 'real' homeless. It means that I can sleep under a bridge on a rainy night; because it's so common for the homeless, it doesn't occasion particular notice. Of course, one well-meaning guy who saw my unshaven self on a street walked up with a fifty-dollar bill, handed it to me, and said "Go do something to help yourself - don't waste it....." so I stayed in a cheap hotel and took a bath on his dime ;-)

I think that the whole disappearing thing is blown out of proportion. There are a lot of middle-class coders here, and lots of people in that way of life can't really see disappearing because they've got a routine. Just go for a hike or ride from a more urban area towards a less urban area, and don't shave or take anything more than perfunctory baths for a week or two, and you slide into a category of human that middle-class Americans just gloss over. Even with a security apparatus hunting for you, chances are good that if you're perceived as local homeless and don't call attention to yourself, no one will ever notice you unless there's way more scrutiny than the PTB want to engage in - I think the implied goal of the bad guys in the hypothetical example is to disappear the protagonist without a whole lot of publicity.

Wise survival food

Potato chips?

Allegre displayed his bias when he blamed the illnesses on leftists.....

The best use of high-speed rail is regional connections. From San Francisco to LA, or Portland to SF, or such, makes great sense because net-net, it's faster than flying when TSA time, flight delays, security theater, and other idiocies are factored in.

Plus, most of us in the US have never seen a US train that runs on passenger-only tracks. Current rules prioritize freight over passengers, and that makes rail travel slow and unreliable. It's dumb, but money can buy dumb when it benefits someone.....

Exactly. I use a train to commute daily (in the US, in California) and am seriously disappointed when I compare the rail network of the US with those elsewhere. Even short-run trains here are barely functional, barely funded, and just a step above a freight train.....

Oh noes - pulsars are actually TV stations of inconceivable power?

"Never go up against a Sicilian when Death is on the line!!" - Vizzini, shortly before making a loud 'thump' and falling dead.

No mod points, but +1. The Saturn V was like early railroad companies, which often only built a single track along a route. While it was cheaper, it significantly constrained schedules and made travel along those routes more expensive. The Saturn V was another single-track effort; once it was established as the de facto technology, the costs of altering the technology were too high to contemplate.

Sigh. We silly monkeys. We need to learn long-term thinking....

Causal Domain Shear? Oh noes....but Orolo will be very pleased. ;-)