The first I owned was a Pied Piper. https://www.old-computers.com/...

Got it for the FDD capacity, 1M (not 720k as per the article; had a different software suite, too). Cool little machine for the times.

There is an (almost) simple way to deal with gerrymandering - Take note of the fact that it's impossible to gerrymander a Senate seat. And since the House is supposed to *represent* the population, well, make all House seats at-large, too. Will this work? Absolutely, especially if one of the alternate vote-counting schemes is implemented (e.g, Ranked-choice, or Proportional Representation, or both?). Why do I say it will work? Because Congress made it illegal.

Wikipedia - " A congressional act passed in 1967, 2 U.S.C. 2c, " requires House members to be from single-member districts, the only states allowed to have at-large members of the House are single member states (like AK). Why? Look at the date: 1967. Right when the Civil Rights movement was kicking off. If we had at-large voting from that time, why, "them dam' Nigras" might have got some folks in Congress and we can't have that. Why, if all they have to do is organize, instead of live in the right neighborhood, why, they might get some power, and we definitely can't have that. (And yes, most of this paragraph is derisively sarcastic).

So- go at-large for the House (Hell, I don;t care *where* in the state my Representative lives, just how they're gonna vote on the issues) and institute a reasonable voting system (and find a reasonable way to eliminate single-member states), and, once you repeal the above mentioned act of congress, you're good to go. Be interesting to see what CA and NY end up looking like.

Ancient China had a similar system, except that officials were appointed by the Imperial government through a series of civil service examinations. My above post has a bit more detail, and articles in wikipedia and other sources are available for in-depth info.

alexgieg's idea is a pretty good one. I'd add the following flourishes - 1) Corruption charges leveled at officials are always dealt with in two phases; the first phase is the trial of guilt or innocence, the second phase is a sentencing; 2) the guilt or innocence trial of corruption charges are never tried in either the official's "home" district (the group that voted them into office) or in the area that is leveling the charges, they are always held elsewhere. Each group (the official's home district and the charging district) may appoint and send a small committee of observers to this trial, and they may not be barred from attending under any circumstances. 3) the sentencing phase is always held in the charging district, and the sentencing panel (jury?) is always composed of 1/3 from the charging district, 1/3 from the "home" district, and 1/3 from other, random districts (Note - if the charges were pressed by people from the official's "home" district, that sentencing panel will be composed of 2/3 from that district, since both charging and home district are the same; Sucks to get caught screwing your own people, as it should). Sentencing is entirely at the discretion of this panel (As an illustrative side note, I would love to have seen such a sentencing panel for, say, the Enron trial; Imagine the result if the sentences were at least partly designed by the people that the Enron folks had screwed; Lovely).

But if they really want low-tech, why aren't they using VAWT? If you have the tech to build a bycycle and generator, you have VAWT, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say fr solar....

Makes a noise like a Dalek? :D

You know, I wish that, both in the UK and in my own country (the US, quelle surprise), that there was a nationally required, five year course beginning in 8th grade (or UK equivalent) each year consisting of watching, in oder, the 5 series of "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister", followed by intensive discussion of the issues, asides, ramifications, etc. Requiring a student to go up against Sir Humphrey Appleby would be singularly formative to critical thinking.....

"Bottom line: go see it."

Wrong.

Even the reviewer says it's only Trek-by-fiat, Trek-because-we-put-the-label-on-it.

Don't reward a money-making business by giving it money when sells you a cheap imitation labelling it genuine.

Fine, it's a great space opera. So is "Star Wars". In fact, "Star Wars" is a _better_ space opera. I suspect JJ will get those movies right, because all it will really take is a big SPFX budget, lots of pyrotechnics, and a half-dozen cliff-hangers and weird-ass plot-twists with no real regard for faithfulness to the original.

But a Rolecks is not a Rolex, no matter how shiny the micro-thin gold-plate is. If you buy the Rolecks, you kill craftmanship and vision. Watch it? Fine, but borrow the DVD from the library. Download it from any free source. But *don't*, by the Great Bird, *pay* for a bleedin' ticket. Use the only stick you have to make them start *doing* *it* *right*.

Now, A side note to JJ: Dear JJ- Next time you feel the need to make a Trek movie, don't. Just don't. But, if you can't resist the paycheck, or the fanboi ego trip ("Look, Mom! I'm makin' a Trek movie!") then here's the backup suggestion - Gather the group that did the digital remastering of ST:TOS and give them final approval on any aspect of the movie they want - script approval, casting, but especially final cut approval. Nobody overrides them, no contractual sleight-of-hand. Become "JJ Abrams Presents" a Trek movie, not "A JJ Abrams Film" Trek movie, OK? Because that group gets two things you don't - Trek and Art. Yes, they left in cheese in the remastering. most of that was deliberate. Respect paid to the original artists who did what they could with what they had. Most of it was "cleaning the painting". But what they enhanced, they enhanced. Yep, some of those old episodes are crap. Escaping the Network/Studio-Exec-Dumbs-It-Down-or-Cuts-The-Budget-to-Shreds curse is impossible. But that remastering group gets Trek. And you don't.

The most dangerous line of scientific inquiry is a scientific inquiry into "dangerous" lines of scientific inquiry. It's OK, I'll wait till you catch up.