Indeed. They do it on Letterman all the time. Video of Governor Christie eating clams while doing the state of the state message, and such. If they can do that in a relatively short amount of time in whatever format the show is mastered in, I'm sure a couple of idiots can do something perfectly passable in low-def iPhone looking video.

The number of photons we get back from the retroreflector on the moon is very, very low in relation to what was sent up there. I would wager that Mars is just too far away to get a measurable response.

There are plenty of fat people who smoke crack. They don't generally last past 50, but they exist.

I thought the whole point of a retroreflector is that it reflects back at the sender no matter where it is "aimed".

I don't know if it was the NWS or the EU agency that did it, but the predictions for Sandy were pretty much dead on accurate. North up the coast to Long Island, sharp left turn into Jersey and then back North to dissipate. Storm surge corresponding with high tide at Battery Park (whatever time it was), and they got that right too.

The NWS, or whoever, got the storm right. Same with Katrina. How it will effect the infrastructure it hits is a different story and doesn't seem to be the NWS's problem.

It's a cognitive bias thing. There are 50,000,000 more people in the US than there were 20 years ago, so even if the rate is down, the raw numbers are still high. And via Fox, MSNBC and CNN, we are exposed to a lot more of the violence than we used to be. AND, we were 20 years younger then, and probably didn't care as much about noticing the violence that was going on.

I don't believe the ordinary citizens are the actual target. I believe that law enforcement is more or less interested in "the evildoers" and not Aunt Mable's recipe chat. But the unintended consequences are exactly what you detail. The really bad guys work around the barrier, and more lesser crimes gum up the works. We as a society want the worst criminals to be the ones that are most likely to be stopped and/or punished. But people aren't perfect, and what seems good on paper has unintended consequences. I agree with you on what the effect will be, just not the motivation.

The mouse thing wasn't fear, it was respect for the laws and customs of a foreign land, and courtesy. That mouse works fine in the US, but how was he supposed to know if that frequency wasn't being used by something important?

Americans' version of freedom is something like "if I'm not obviously breaking a law, leave me alone." And for the vast majority of people, that's true.

That's just it. You can't blame a dog for licking you. Law enforcement wants every tool it can have to do its job. They aren't necessarily bad or jack booted thugs, just trying to do what they do. If I was a signals intelligence person, of course I'd want to be able to tap ALL the phone lines. I'd only want to do it legally, but that wouldn't stop me from demanding the option was there. And I'm sure law enforcement/intelligence, more or less, wants to do the right thing. Unfortunately, giving power to the government when you trust it means they have that power when you don't trust it.

I mean, look at this stupid IRS scandal. All the people screaming about the abuses of power are very closely intersected with the people who wanted ACORN investigated. If we allow or demand that the IRS investigate the entities we don't like, that means they have the power to investigate whoever they want, depending on the political winds.

The trouble is in Congress for their lack of oversight and forethought. Compromise is supposed to more or less cancel out partisan lunacy, but instead they just act like children and "Casablanca" inspectors. Shocked, they are, that abuse is going on.

And yet they obviously do it. Their vehicles are most efficient at a steady speed, and fuel efficiency is money to anyone who drives for a living. How long it takes is meaningless if they lose money in the process. They know that there is a maximum speed for any traffic condition, and it is in their best interest to go slower than that. Because the closer they get to the max speed, the more they risk wasting gas braking and accelerating. Maintaining optimum speed isn't going to save them any significant time, and it will cost them money. So it is in their best interest to go slower than the optimum speed for the road.

You are right that they are doing what they think is best for themselves, but that is not necessarily what is actually the optimum behavior for themselves or for the rest of the people on the road.

That's a point of law I was trying to figure out one time. If the same offense can have a different punishment depending on how you are caught, there is something wrong with that. But I couldn't figure out how to find law that applied to it. The legislature is allowed to cede criminal enforcement to administrative enforcement, but it doesn't seem like they ought to be able to have it both ways.

One of my personal stress relievers is putting the fear of god into the hearts of people who drive like assholes. If they are trying to squeeze their turn through a stale yellow light and I get the green while they are still in the intersection, they are going to see the front end of my car coming dangerously close to them. I know I'm not going to hit them, but they don't know that. The only way people learn these lessons is through instant fear. I've also developed the practice (that makes passengers crazy) of pretending to ignore people who are going to hit me. If the accident will be their fault, let them figure out how to stop it. I know I'm ready to avoid them, but they don't know that.

They don't give a shit about traffic flow, they care about maintaining a steady speed because it is tiring and costly to accelerate and decelerate. So they set it and forget it at some speed, and the rest of the traffic can go fuck itself. Have you ever driven past a long backup in the other direction? Ever notice what the truckers are doing? Blocking traffic. In their idiot minds, forcing everyone into single file for miles and miles is more efficient than just zipper merging at the merge point. It is ridiculous, because that just gives the drivers who cheat even more advantage, pushing the backup further back.

The ripple effect is the cumulative effect of the processing delay in the brain. If everyone is the same distance apart, as each car slows down, the delay builds up and communicates to cars further back in line to the point that they have to brake increasingly harder/faster to maintain their safe distance. If the front car keeps going the same speed, then the rear cars will have to slow down.

Protect and serve society as a whole, not individuals.