This bill doesn't generate Federal revenue.

Karl Marx was describing Communism, not socialism. HTH.

No. Going into orbit is a matter of velocity. You can go as high as you want, but if you're not going very fast sideways, you won't orbit.

The speed you need to go sideways to orbit goes down as you go higher. The speed you need to go sideways to stay up via aerodynamic lift goes up as you go higher (and air pressure goes down). The crossover, where generating enough lift would require going faster than orbital speed is the Karman line. Above that, you can't stay up via aerodynamic lift, you must orbit or come down.

Atmospheric drag makes it impractical to approach orbital speed at less than about 200Km, but in theory, if you had a big enough engine and streamlined enough plane, you could fly along at less than orbital speed up to about 100Km up; beyond that, you must stay up by orbiting: it's impossible by flying.

So stories about flying a plane to space are silly, because the most widely agreed on definition of space is the altitude that it is theoretically impossible to fly a plane at.

"It just happens to be such a convenient number in their preferred units?"

No, they just don't engage in spurious precision. They could have said 107.2527 Km (or whatever the calculation came to exactly), but that would imply their calculation was that precise, and it isn't.

Picking a value for something that doesn't have an obvious definition but people would like to agree on the definition of is what old, official-sounding (because they are) standards orgs are for. If you want to argue with their choice, feel free, but attacking it for not supplying unwarranted precision doesn't make much sense. Better arguments can be had by questioning their definition of "space". But then you're going to be arguing that 100Km is too low (which I might agree with), or arguing a balloon can take you to space (which I find ridiculous).

"what would make a good fundamental 'minimum altitude' to say 'space'?"

My intuition says if you can/do get there using the atmosphere to generate lift (planes & balloons), it's clearly not space.

The typical distinction is more arguable but, in my opinion, a reasonable principle:
If the atmospheric drag at a given altitudes orbital velocity is too high to allow you to orbit, it's not space. If the atmosphere is thin enough to allow you to orbit, it's space.

That's a somewhat fuzzy definition, but that's appropriate; "the edge of space" is a fuzzy concept. But: it's a fuzzy line whose bottom is maybe as low as 100Km up (really, orbits below twice that are impractical). 33 Km isn't space or near it; It's the stratosphere.

I'm not sure where the uncertainty in your 50% chance of making orbit comes in, but if that's your line, you're arguing for 100Km, minimum.

One can argue endlessly and pointlessly, (but maybe enjoyably) about exactly what altitude should be called space. But it won't stop me being driven crazy by every stupid article about high altitude planes & balloons that says they went to space or "the edge of space". Articles that reference "the edge of space" invariably mean well less than half way to any reasonable minimum definition of "space". "The edge of dirt" would be more accurate.

Maybe not to YOU. But to whoever sold them that $16 CD full of shitty filler...very much so.

There's a 4-way intersection/stoplight in a residential neighborhood in Boulder, CO that is "speed sensitive," with signs to go with it. The light defaults to green for the more major of the two streets. Stay going the speed limit or under while on the major road, and it stays green. Go over the speed limit (which is easy to do given the size and topography of that road) and you get a red.

I'm not sure if it's still in use or not, but the way the album sales chart was calculated 10 years or so was through a service called Soundscan. The way it worked (in a nutshell) is that certain stores would submit their sales numbers to Soundscan, and then Soundscan would run those numbers through an algorithm to "calculate" the sales from other, non-Soundscan stores. I have no idea how accurate these numbers were.

There was a case I know of where one label (a larger independent label) got wind of which stores were the Soundscan stores. This was tricky information, because one album sold in these stores "represented" many more albums sold from the other stores, baed on that algorithm. So this label would send bands and artists on tour, and focus all of their in-story appearances on these Soundscan stores. This, of course, led to more sales in those stores, which tended to inflate the label's sales numbers for less effort than honest sales would have taken.

It was just my name, with the "from" address being some other address I didn't recognize. He assumed it was me because it was my real name.

No third party has gotten anywhere in the last 150 years. On the other hand, vast, radical changes in the platforms of the two major parties have occurred thanks to the efforts of activists working within those parties.

If you want to tilt at windmills, vote third party in presidential elections. If you want to effect real change, pay attention to major-party primaries for local elections. There will be more diversity of position that at higher levels, and the winners will be the ones running for higher office in the future, or influencing who does. Also accept that voting for the candidate who is closer to what you want is sensible, even if they are not a perfect fit.

Your political agenda may or may not have any chance at all. But if it does, that chance is by coop-ting a major, not replacing one. Ask the religious right, for example.

You're free to disagree with any of that, but I think my larger point is inarguable:
  If you want to significantly change American politics, casting your vote for President won't be enough, and is a ridiculous place to start.

After your research, no doubt you can answer a few questions for me:

Does he support abortion rights or oppose them?
Does he support an individual mandate for health insurance or oppose it?
Does he support setting a timetable for withdrawal for Afganistan or oppose doing so?
Does he support cutting payments to providers under Medicare Advantage or oppose doing so?
Does he support the US military intervention in Libya or oppose it?

Those are just off the top of my head, but according to my research, the answer to all those questions is "Yes, he supports and opposes that". I don't actually have a problem with politicians changing their minds, but the main thing I see Romney being consistent on is that he hasn't changed his mind

The chance that the polls are systematically biased in one state are not independent of the chances that they are systematically biased the same way in another state.
    For example, if polls under-represent those with cell phones and no land lines, and that skews them toward Romney, that's likely to be similar across states. Same thing if pollsters attempts to correct for that effect over does it and systematically skews them toward Obama. Repeat for a variety of other possible sources of systematic bias.
    That's the main reason Nate's own aggregation of his state-by-state probabilities comes out substantially lower than the naive one done by the linked site.

So if I and most of my coworkers decide to voluntarily exercise our individual right to freedom of association, and form a group to negotiate on our behalf, I take it that's OK. And if the company voluntarily negotiates a deal with us according to mutually acceptable terms, that's all good. And if one of the terms of that deal is that the company agrees not to hire people who aren't members of our group...

Unions, and "union shops" are an emergent result of people exercising their individual rights collectively. To whatever extent you think such outcomes represent market failures -- bad emergent results from the exercise of reasonable rights -- these would need to be corrected via regulation. As they are in various cases; just as regulation prevents some employers from using their reasonable right to fire who they wish to quash employees freedom of association.

I believe it goes something like this:

1. charge customers for caller ID on incoming calls.
2. charge customers for the ability to hide their ID on outgoing calls.
3. charge customers for the ability to "see" hidden ID's on incoming calls.
4. go to number 2. rinse and repeat.