So when are they going to add a planet for rishrathra?

My immediate guess would be that some percentage of attrition is chalked up to forgetfulness, and some to "Gave up on the long line and walked away." The latter would clearly be a yellow flag to TPTB, because too much of that and it's an indication that customers aren't having fun, and may not come back.

It really depends upon when the cost of barium becomes greater than the cost of keeping you in some sort of minimal care/cost sh*t-wait facility. Note that no such facility exists today, but if relative costs change...

I'm also under the impression that antibiotics leave the body in urine and feces. How much antibiotic resistance is because of misuse, and how much is because of uncontrolled introduction into the environment through our wastes? Such a facility mentioned above might also be worthwhile for our antibiotics-of-last-resort, for instance.

Which brings up the point - none of this barium has actually left the Earth - it's all around here somewhere. The medical barium all came out in the end, and depending on what's done with solid sludge from the waste treatment plants, we know where it is. However since only a small portion of the population is ever getting this procedure at anyone time, it's probably quite dilute. This of course suggests one possible measure, and that's keeping barium patients around the hospital a day or two longer, and having special bathroom and waste treatment facilities for them.

This really comes home on the Jungle Cruise ride in the Magic Kingdom. We went on the ride on our honeymoon, and thought it rather corny. On the previously mentioned Labor Day trip (almost 30 years later) we decided to revisit the ride.

This time the tour guide was a young woman who did part of the ride in the previous corny style. The rest of the ride was schtick about being stuck here as a college student, and about how PROUD her parents were of her, college educated, guiding this corny ride, how valuable those years were to her, etc.

It sounded inspired by Weird Al's "Tour Guide on the Jungle Cruise Ride", and I rather suspect it really was. The ride was corny over 30 years ago, probably incapable of being rendered anything but, so they decided to go for the gusto, and Weird Al showed the way.

(To be fair, I don't know which came first, Weird Al's parody or the change to schtick on the ride.)

I mentioned elsewhere on this topic - they want you on their property and spending money. But at the same time, they want you to have a good time, so you'll keep coming back and spending money.

Disney already collects a ton of information about how their parks are running. It's just not noticeable during normal times. My wife loves WDW - a few years back we went the day after Labor Day and the part was practically deserted. The information collectors were much more visible without the big crowds to hide them. Twice going on the Haunted House ride we got the "wait-time measurement passes" from one of the information people. He gave it to us, and we handed it to the last attendant before the Doom Buggy started into the ride. On this occasion it basically measured our walking time and the delay in the little room.

We also got a chance to chat with one of the information collectors while waiting for a bus. He explained how most visitors felt the day's experience was good if they'd gotten on 6-8 major rides, and they do what they can to make sure everyone has a good experience. After all, that's what gets you back and spending money again.

Really that's their goal - to get you into the park, spending money, and feeling good about it so you'll do it again. (and again, and again, ...)

I won't argue with the validity of your point.

Another point of taxation would be the tires. Tires reflect the weight of the vehicle, and I'll presume that as the tires wear on the road, the road wears on the tires. It might affect the cost of your tires, but if you barely drive your heavy pickup, your tires will last longer, and you'll pay that piece of tax less often.

It's worse than just "weight" - I've heard that road wear is proportional to axle weight to the 4th power. You know those semis that have the sign, "This truck pays $XX,XXX yearly in road use taxes"? Compared to the road wear they cause, they're still under-paying.

Intel has always been about Value Add... There are "crippled" products on the market, sold by others as well as Intel. Sometimes it's so they can build one part in their fab, cripple the mainstream part with a fuse, and then charge a premium for the un-crippled part. Sometimes it's so a crippled system can be sold, and then for an upgrade fee, be "enhanced" in the field. But in any case, it's all about revenue. The annoying thing about this is that they've gone to extra expense and effort to produce the crippled part - the premium part would actually cost less without the extra crippling capability.

As a different perspective, Intel has also evolved into a performance-oriented company. I don't think that as a company they're very comfortable with this whole "power thing", and I think a limited production like this is probably the way to sell it to management and marketing.

There's also a chance that the low power parts may be a deep sort out of the distribution, and there aren't many.

I see your argument, and for every person who would look at the Earth from space and see how limited and fragile it is, there is likely another who would see the same thing and think, "WANT! MINE!"

And lest we say such views were ineffective and that Apollo didn't usher in a new world order, we don't know what things would have been like without. It could have been worse. No proof either way.

In any case, I wasn't thinking in terms of mental states, I was thinking in terms of acquiring knowledge from experience there, and transferring that knowledge here. Even without full buy-in it can affect how things are done.

My current printer is an HP LaserJet. It's getting old, but still works. Whenever it does get too long in the tooth, what is the best brand for (non ink jet) printers these days?

Sounds like it sure isn't HP. Stuff like that at the top can only filter down, and mess the rest.

Solutions based on 5 minutes of thought...

1 - Dig. If you need radiation shielding because there's not convenient blanket of atmosphere, just dig. Since it's not lead, 6 feet may not do it, but since "6 feet of concrete", it's certainly feasible to get an equivalent amount of Lunar or Martian soil or rock above you.

2 - Water. Shipping from Earth is rough. There's any amount of science fiction talking about harvesting comets or other such. We have begun to talk seriously about harvesting metals from asteroids, I don't know if we've seriously considered or even assayed comets, yet.

I would view the radiation problem of getting to Mars to be the big one, and in that case I think one solution would be to "convert" a comet into a cycler - with the human residence in the center.

From another perspective... We're rapidly doing really nasty stuff to our own biosphere. There are those who say, "You can't PROVE that you need X life form, so don't get in my way of destroying its habitat for development." There is a certain honesty to that - we don't really know everything that is necessary for the long-term COMFORTABLE functioning of our biosphere.

An attempt at a colony on Mars or the moon would go a long way toward answering those questions. Perhaps the most important side-effect of such an effort would be to reshape our policies toward our own planet.

I haven't looked into rail guns in 5 years, perhaps 10. Note that the description talks about the repulsive force between the rails. Perhaps what I'm remembering are early designs, where they were trying to intensify the filed with the controlled collapse of the rails. The articles also talk to rail wear being a big problem, which is why collapsing the rails might have been a good thing to do.

Again, I guess mine is all early information, and they felt that getting rid of conventional ordinance was more valuable than the electronics they'd save by just boosting the current.

Actually I thought a true railgun did involve explosives. The diagrams I've seen involved including the projectile in a current loop between the rails, then using charges to smash the rails together. The physical action of the collapse focuses the magnetic field, propelling the projectile. So to my thinking, the rails are single-use, and are kind of like a shell casing, except they're probably not re-loadable.

That's why I think a coil gun would be better for casual experimentation. Plus you can think of a coil gun more as a launch device than a weapon - much more interesting to some.