So when NASA tells us that invisible planets light years away are real we all clap, but when it tells us that climate change right here is happening some how it's all a big con?

No for the past 30 years you've been competing on the world stage ... and failing ....

The problem is that you want trading partners that will sell you cheap stuff, but want to sell your own stuff at far higher prices ... a free and open market doesn't work that way

Seriously think about how kids learn how to use and appreciate money - using an ATM card is just not the same as holding coins, counting them, feeling the weight in your pocket.

And (USA I'm looking at you) start including sales tax in advertised prices - explaining to a 5 year old that yes he has enough for that ice cream, but he has to calculate 6% in his head and add that to the price, is just insane

I've looked back through this thread and can't for the life of me figure out who SJW is that you are responding to .... is it someone you just made up?

You are confusing the state budget with the ratio of federal taxes and money received back from the feds - they are quite different things

California's budget is deeply hamstrung by Regan era meddling that makes hard to raise money for simple things like schools - it's the main reason why the state's schools used to be rated #1 in the nation and are now at the bottom

You are quite wrong - look at the real numbers Californian's pay more in taxes proportionally than they receive back in benefits from the federal govt.

It's the bible belt states, Trump's big supporters, who really suck at the teat of federal government, paid for by those very people in California you deride

REF: http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

you don't need to change the constitution to get a winner of the popular vote become president - the constitution says the states decide how to choose electors, used to be in some states you didn't get a vote your state govt did, the whole people voting thing is a relatively recent idea - if enough states, those representing at least the number of electors+1, choose to assign all their electors to the winner of the popular vote it simply happens - no constitutional change whatsoever

Of course it should - essentially Trump won by an accident of geography ... largely because of a system designed for the days befopre the invention of the telegraph where throwing someone on a horse and sending him off to represent you in the final caucus to vote for the President was the most practical thing to do.

Times have changed, a national vote is completely practical, certainly less unwieldy than sending someone to vote for you.

It's also time we got rid of a system that effectively gives every voter in Wyoming 3 votes for every 1 a California voter gets

And yet, this does little to prevent compulsion. In fact, this punishes the voter, not the one compelling the "proof." The voter can be screwed both ways. If you want the law to prevent employers or whomever from compelling voters to show their ballots, punish the compelling party, not the compelled.

Oh for heaven's sake, the Hawking knows the planet is a sphere, if you use a vertical dipole sure you don't send a whole lot straight up, and you radiate more of your energy horizontally away from the antenna .... and while the photons head out in a donut away from that antenna, which is poking up from the surface of a sphere, as they move away from their source the ground falls away and any photons that don't hit anything ... radiate away into space in that same donut shape, inverse squaring to infinity (and beyond!)

yes, there's also vapour escaping from around that point for 10-20 seconds prior to the explosion - were they pressure testing the upper stage tanks? (unlikely with live fuel) or loaded the wrong tanks by mistake?

Totally understood. The trick is: you can tune your own signal/noise. Its very handy and I get essentially all my news via Twitter these days.

Its all on Twitter man...

pigs with wings? devils in uggs?