The 'weak federal, strong corp' model in my example is the US where - notwithstanding genuine concerns about the growth of federal power - it's still relatively weak.

The strong state micromanaging what size bananas can be sold, my model would be the EU.

Both suck.

FWIW, at reaching my mid 40's, I now recognize that I simply don't have enough lifetime left to waste on nostalgia.

If you add the time-commitment of the:
- stack of books I want to read
- computer games I want to play
- movies I want to see ....and add that to my current age, it EASILY exceeds my allotted three-score-and-some, even were I to sleep nothing more than 3 hours a night and have no gainful employment.

I rarely give a book more than 5 chapters, or a movie more than a half hour. If I don't actively enjoy it (or at least see promise/value in the writing, acting, what-have-you) I tend to drop it and move on. Life's too short to be bored, or waste it watching Twilight.

PS: I am willing to spend some of those precious minutes on a naked Natalie Portman, please add me to the subscription.

You're absolutely right; museums have a perfect right to exist.

Sad that the Monty Python show is one.

There are a couple of parts of the flight where the pilot is required to use the automation. The biggest is during cruise in what's known as RVSM airspace, where the vertical separation minimums are reduced from what was standard before RVSM was implemented. There, if your autopilot quits, ATC will send you down below the RVSM floor. RVSM is in use above some altitude in the 48 states and on transAtlantic routes. (I don't recall the exact altitude.)

The other is in flying an instrument approach to very low altitudes, known as a category III approach. IIRC, those must be flown on autopilot in order to continue below category III minimums.

Damn straight.

My first thought was "I can get paid for that?"

But then I realized, I prefer the purity of it as an avocation: I don't do it for $, I do it for the sheer enjoyment.

There is a difference between "can't" and "won't".

It may be the "right thing" to pay their taxes, but let's face it, they're just walking in Steve's tax-evading footsteps.

You know, the lease-a-new-car-every-6-months-so-he-never-has-to-get-license-plates Steve Jobs?

Or the "park in the handicap zones when you want to because you're big shit Steve Jobs" and the cops are unlikely to hassle you?

http://www.policymic.com/articles/7868/apple-icheat-how-the-world-s-biggest-company-also-became-the-most-unethical

So, our choices are apparently either:
- an overbearing nanny state in which the government makes all the decisions, or
- a weak state in which the corporations make all the decisions.

Great. That really illustrates why frustrated people turn to Caesarism, and faith in a single strong personality given despotic powers to "fix the mess".

Unfortunately, while you might get lucky and ACTUALLY get a Gaius Marius or someone genuinely interested in the general well-being of the people and nation, *rarely* is that ever sustainable to whomever inherits (earns/steals/etc) that power next....(Marius himself - in pursuit of very-much-needed reforms - could arguably be blamed for turning the Republic into the Empire)

I agree. This is what I would recommend if I worked for them: Make the "frame" of the controller standard, allow adjustment maybe in one or two directions, but then make it possible to replace the moldings with custom parts of different shapes and materials. Fancy people could even buy surfaces with natural materials like ebony, leather, silk and wool. Because, you know, sometimes you get bored of the tactile experience of plastic. I actually use my dremel tool to make custom wooden moldings for my mouse. I have large hands and love the satisfaction of making the geometry exactly match what my hand naturally wants to do.

I am not a business type, but if I was, here is one thing I would consider: Allow people to make a model of their perfect mouse, or perfect game controller, out of play-doh. Then have them take photos of it from all angles, enough so that software can reconstruct the 3D shape. Send those pictures to some new business with standard parts, 3D printing tech and a CNC machine, who could just print them out a mouse from whatever material they like. It wouldn't have to be cheap. The world has plenty of rich people who are being underserved in the tech-for-the-super-rich market. For example, very rich people typically use an iPhone 5s, but so do many ordinary folks that ride with me on the bus. Very rich people tend to use some normal Logitech or Razer mouse, just like me. And they use the standard Playstation controllers. There is no Aston Martin or Maseratti option for the tech devices that they (like the rest of us) probably interact with most often. That seems like a market gap waiting to be filled.

I admit, I was an inveterate Pythonite in my high school and college years, when it was still a cliquey-cool thing that not everyone knew about. I can - with too little prompting - recite great swathes of any Python film or most of the TV episodes, I watched them so many times.

So I was delighted when I had the opportunity and the cash to go see their live show in Minneapolis, I think it was in the later 80s.

Hm. Sad might be too strong a word. Poignant?

Here were some men and women who'd really pushed the boundaries of comedy and done some amazing things - sure, some were misses (and I dare you to watch through the Monty Python complete ouevre without recognizing that a few really sucked), but many were hits and some were downright brilliant. And now? nearly 20 years later? Rehashing the SAME tired old bits again and again like cymbal-clapping monkeys, hoping to be thrown some small change.

I'm current in the midst of Palin's first diaries, and already by the mid 1970s, Michael is complaining that their traveling show is nothing but a re-hash of their brightest moments. How prescient is that?

And now for something completely...the same?

Watching people endlessly ape Rocky Horror is one thing; it's frozen forever in celluloid. Every replay of it HAS to be the same. But with humans, that's kind of sad. Like the tired old uncle at Thanksgiving dinner that had a funny joke once, but he tells the same one every year. People grant him a perfunctory laugh, but nobody really means it. One wonders if even he believes it's genuine or is this all some sort of comedy - if not actually comical - ritual?

Uncle, PLEASE tell some other story to make us laugh. At least try.

If you don't have one, or dare no longer risk not getting a chuckle, maybe let someone else tell theirs?

The goal of a lottery (as in any gambling, really) is to make money for the person running the lottery.

So let's say in a given game 49% of the funds go to "the winner", and 51% go to "the house".

The likelihood of deviating from this average result is the MOST at the first ticket, reducing asymptotically toward zero the more tickets you buy. The more times you play, the closer your final return will be to this average (up to the point where you are the only one playing, buying ALL the tickets).

Thus the biggest chance to randomly come out 'ahead' of the average while still playing at least once is with a single ticket.

I'm sure the waves of nerd-statisticians will come out of the woodwork to prove I'm completely wrong.

Why not just a SETI lottery?

I'm absolutely serious - I've bought precisely ONE lottery ticket my whole life (knowing statistically that my likelihood of winning is the maximum at that point*). So I'm not really a "lottery player".

But I'd cheerfully buy SETI lottery tickets - one-third of the gross goes to a the pot-winner, 2/3 goes to SETI funding. Hell, it's better return-odds than many Kickstarters.

*I didn't win.

"Political violence doesn't work to actually implement social change."

Gavril Princip begs to differ.

"No, no, really.

This time I'm SURE we're right on."

-Scientists*

*ie activists posing as scientists. Real science is a matter of hypothesis and testing, not public proclamations and "demands for action".