Nice job sliding the anti-firearm propaganda in there, but don't forget that firearm ownership happens to be very common in "wholesome" parts of the country where crime is rare and weapons are treated with respect.
Huge honking load of bullshit in my personal experience. I lived most of my childhood in a "wholesome" rural southern community of about 40 households. By the time I was 13, I had had a shotguns pointed in my face twice by different gun-toting NRA Tea Party types. Once for trying to visit a girl I went to school with. Once for trying to bring my run-away dog back home. Scout's honor, I had done absolutely nothing wrong. As a teen I was again threatened, though more subtly, by a different neighbor because my family took the neighbor's friend to court because the friend built a fence across our driveway. This neighbor also shot my cat with a BB gun and laughed at me for crying when she died.
There are legitimate reasons to own a gun, but as far as I can tell, the people most interested in owning guns are seriously fucked up and should not be trusted with firearms.
How exactly do you test solutions for catastrophe of unknown nature
By having built a simulator that can reproduce all possible conditions and seeing which kill methods work. If solution does not exist, then do not drill. That is what the oil industry would have done if they were the trustworthy people conservative asshats claim they are. However, the evidence seems to suggest these are sociopathic criminals without regard for life, human or other. They are another perfect example of why free market capitalism does not work.
Assuming anyone is really considering the nuclear option, do we even have enough data to do a reasonably accurate risk-benefit analysis? For instance, can we really know that a nuke will not fracture the rock and allow oil and gas to continue to spew, but now from hundreds of unsealable places? What was the failure mode for the Russian's use of the bomb technique? Unless there is excellent data that says to a very high degree of certainty that the nuclear option is less risky than letting the damn thing leak for another two months, I can't see using it.
Of course, after reading TFA, it looks like this is yet more political FUD from Slashdot. When are kdawson and timothy going to be fired? As best as I can tell, they are both paranoid nitwits with political agendas and a severe lack of nerdhood and it shows in their work.
How about creating jobs that also produce a product that is more useful to the entire country?
Are you trying to open up a war about whether the research that results from spaceflight is worth the investment?
My post was poorly worded. I'm all for the government spending a lot of money on space exploration. In fact, I'd like to see the military budget cut in half so that we would have way more money to spend on space while also paying off the national debt. My point was that instead of employing people on crappy space projects (much of Constellation), we should instead employ people in worthwhile, non-dead-end space projects that will efficiently lead to regular people living off-world.
Also, I think that you should have asked what I meant before you flew off the handle over your imagined beliefs about my unclear post.
Fast, cheap, good: pick two.