And obviously there are a lot of homeless people who need psychiatric help, but after Regan, they're never going to get it.

This is one of those myths that just won't die.

Defunding of psychiatric hospitals generally occurred AFTER those hospitals lost patients that were allowed to leave after the Psychiatric_survivors_movementsuccessfully fought for deinstitutionalization.

Mental hospitals lost about 80% of their residents when those patients were given the choice to discharge themselves.

Allow me to modify the bit you quoted, then. I usually try to be more careful, and I apologize:

...If he would at least qualify his criticism of private space industry's probability of establishing a Mars colony...

Why do we decry the ability of the private sector to do stuff in space? I'm not saying "they absolutely will establish a Mars base!", I'm taking issue with anyone saying outright that it can't be done. It's a silly statement, regardless of whether it's made by a well-respected Doctor of Philosophy in Astrophysics, or someone who is somewhat less qualified.

Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, and he's curt and painfully correct on many far more controversial topics. I just think that on this statement, there is room for disagreement.

...but there was only progress because there was a huge push to out-compete the Soviets. It's not as if NASA grew engineers in a lab, they hired them from the public sector. They did create the field (easy to do in a vacuum), but not most of the technology. I'm all for upping NASA's budget (I'd pay an extra grand a year in taxes without complaint), but that's not going to happen. Saying that private industry *can't* do spaceflight is as silly as predicting that they couldn't have done commercial air services. We just need to be supportive of whoever is succeeding as much as we're collectively able to be.

...okay, but that's discounting competition and price pressure. The incentive is to be cheaper than the alternatives, so people will buy your space services, right?

Revenue is not profit. It's entirely possible to increase revenue while losing increasing amounts of money.

While I'm at it:

Wealth is not income.

"Literally" isn't for emphasis.

Feel free to add to the list.

I was hoping that my comment about commercial entities trying to make things *not* cost too much would have been noticed, but I guess not. Also, you seem to be replying to someone else's comment (or you're being deliberately incoherent...not sure which).

They didn't work for NASA in the 60's and 70's...why would that be different today?

Assuming that the guy who started paypal, tesla, and spacex doesn't understand that space is dangerous is just stupid.

Honestly, it's a severely myopic view to say that Tyson (who is brilliant) has some insight to correctly predict that history won't repeat itself. I think the folks at Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnel Douglass, et al have had just a slight impact on advancing things like aerospace beyond what NASA could have done on their own.

How else do we learn more about the dangers of space without being able to go there cheaply enough to gather useful data? Mr. Tyson is probably incorrect. If he would at least qualify his criticism of private space industry with "probably won't", then maybe I'd be able to take it seriously, but he didn't, so I can't.

No, I am making a technical point, irrespective of morality and ethics. MH42 incorrectly believes that there are moral implications from these technical points.

You are completely wrong and you do not understand what you are talking about.

"Murder" is just a word. There is no *need* for it to apply to every unjustified taking of a human life, therefore there is no *need* to "destroy" -- or even change -- anything.

My pointing out the fact that "murder" doesn't include abortion does not, in any way, imply that abortion is justified. Murder is just one *type* of unjustified homicide.

Why not just admit you have no idea what you are talking about, instead of spouting unintelligible nonsense?

What I was saying is that you were speaking in a legal context. Therefore, the words you use have specific technical meanings. And it is a *fact* that "murder" does not apply to "abortion" in the legal context. And this has not one damned thing to do with morality. This doesn't mean abortion is not wrong, or is justified, it only means that, in this context, it is not murder. It's a fact. Your denial of it only makes you look retarded.

It's irrelevant; because the hypothetical proposes a fairly stiff standard of evidence to meet (and would only kick in when both that standard is met and a text-reading driver does something unpleasant enough to get the courts involved);

Very logical and therefore probably invalid in a civil case.

This rule was created so that lawyers can go after more people in the the hope they'll find someone with deep pockets. Juries aren't going to let a sympathetic victim go without payment if there is someone that is able to pay.

No, they've made zombies.

True.

False.

And I don't mean by that, that abortion is not the unjustified killing of a human. I mean that "murder" is a legal term of art, and not a moral description. Whether or not it applies to a specific taking of a human life is a technical matter, not a moral one. That is why we have multiple terms for the taking of human life: "manslaughter," "murder," "act of war," and so on. Whether or not abortion is murder is strictly a legal matter.

This is a fact.

If you had said the Court said that to protect a woman's private decisions between her and her doctor, we must allow the unjustified and immoral killing of a human life, I'd have agreed with you. But you used, in a strictly legal context, a legal term of art that simply made your claim incorrect.