Your comments are very similar to what I heard talking to members of the Red Elvises, thought you'd find that humorous considering your sig.

I don't know how you define Hollywood, but the MPAA members paid $15b in taxes and claims to have paid $150b in wages. Microsoft's profit has been around $8b lately. Your numbers are pretty far off.

You're looking at it totally wrong. Tourists, although sometimes annoying, contribute hugely to the economy. They stay in hotels, rent cars, buy meals and souvenirs, and so forth. Everything they buy is taxed, often at much higher rates than non-touristy items.

It's like a giant nozzle spraying foreign money into the local economy. Most tourist destinations have a bureau that spends money advertising in foreign publications because the return on investment is so massive.

Yes, when you're flying. These planes are not flying because they keep catching on fire.

If they want to save weight on a fleet of planes that are grounded because they aren't safe, it would save a lot more weight to use styrofoam instead of metal and silly string instead of wires. I bet they could save a lot more than 80kg!

This is a good point. Apparently the plane has about 4.4 kWh of battery weighing 57kg. I could build a pack out of off-the-shelf gell cells weighing 133kg. It'd take 54 of the standard 12v 7Ah ones.

You are correct, it shouldn't be exposed to the WAN. Doing so is an implementation flaw, and this flaw is widespread. uPnP has other problems, but this particular one is truly awful.

Part of the reason for the high pay and low interest is the fact that it is a risky job. It has double the fatality rate of firefighters and a high risk of cumulative damage from inhaling toxins, burns, eye damage, etc. Proper procedures and PPE reduce the risk but do not eliminate it.

Daily ridership is 50k, which is about 10% of the population of sacramento proper. Numbers seem to check out. Sure, some people travel from the burbs, but some people don't work.

Wow, GPs suggestion is pure insanity. Unleashing a horde of American criminals seems like a good way to guarantee the loyalty of NK troops.

If the wikipedia article is more informative you should have linked to it. You provided a google search link that refuted your claim. If you have such little faith in quoting random crap off the internet, please refrain from giving links to random crap on the internet.

From the top result of that search:

I'd say having faith in finding a bomb is misguided.

The difference in budget is staggering, about $9b for NK, $680b for US. It's true that the $9b is a much larger share of GDP, but the US spends their entire annual budget every 5 days.

The US horse population has varied somewhat over the years, but there are currently 6.9m. That is far from a dwindling to nothing. To give a sense of proportion, in 1867 there were 8m equines, looks like a peak of 21m in 1915. There was never any widespread killing of horses, and most horses are not allowed to breed anyway, whether populations are rising or falling. You can find some excellent references here There is a thriving wild horse population, and the domesticated ones are split between work, show, and leisure animals. The vast majority of them have happy lives. There are still literally millions of horses doing farm work, a hundred years after tractors became common.

I'm pretty sure your dystopian view of the future is also wrong. I think humanity will always need to guard against abuse of power, but the trend over our history is towards more freedom and a better life.

People forget how much things have changed. A hundred years ago nearly everyone worked on a farm. Now all those people lost their jobs but somehow found something else to do.

Natural genetics is fascinating. There is a lot of crazy gene swapping going on all the time in plants, animals, bacteria, viruses. You'll find all kinds of stuff from all over the place in any DNA. Human DNA is full of bits of bacterial, viral, and plant related genes. All DNA, plant included, has bits from all over the place.

There is something called lateral gene transfer that happens all the time in all organisms. This is a large part of how antibiotic resistant bacteria evolve. All of the antibiotics we use are based on naturally occurring chemicals that are used by various organisms engaged in a constant state of chemical warfare.

Monsanto does a lot of bad things, but natural genes are not some static pristine thing. Natural genes are furiously changing all the time with numerous mechanisms. There has always been fish and grasshopper DNA in plants, there isn't really such a thing as a pure plant.

They still have 10g fat and 500mg sodium, that does not seem ridiculously low in fat or sodium.