Don't you mean "for parsecs"?

Oklahoma is discussing doing exactly that, http://newsok.com/support-for-death-penalty-remains-bipartisan-in-oklahoma/article/5399877/?page=1.

It's anyone that buy something from a company that tehcyder doesn't own stock in.

Just remember this when you get your tax return ready. Will you be throwing in an extra 30% above your required tax payment because paying only what is due would be "acting like bastards"?

It's a shame that in this day and age we have not advanced to using the pictograms.

I believe the current usage for pictograms is "emoticons".

I believe you are forgetting who the customers of Google are. Hint, they're not you. The people who give money to Google are their customers - the advertisers. The "customers/users" you mention are not customers at all, they are the product Google delivers to its paying customers. The searching they do for you is how they produce their product.

Sure. All you have to do is make sure your keys are at least as long as any possible file you want to preserve, using at least all the possible characters in the original.

Power is under control of the state and each state's power board subsidizes electricity prices thoroughly and always runs in losses, without a care for better infrastructure or future planning.

This is simply not true at all. There is at least one state, Texas, where electricity prices are set by the companies that generate power and the companies that deliver it. Remarkably, those companies have built capacity as it is needed including wind and hydro sources, and all the while made a profit. Sorry to hear how inefficiently your state is run.

The reason you need people in space is that people adapt, improvise and overcome obstacles when things go wrong, and Murphy rides on every mission. Look at Apollo 13. Because there were people on that spacecraft, they were able to complete the minimum mission, getting themselves home alive. Of course if this had it been two robotic vehicles, we could have just said they're only robots and let them fly away like the Voyagers. The point is that people adapt. Look at the Mars Exploration Rovers. They are running down as they collect dust on their solar cells. If there were people driving around there, they'd tear the cover off one of their procedures manual and tape it together to make fenders to keep the dust from being thrown up by the wheels, and they'd simply brush off what did collect.

And there's another reason people must go into space. Look at what Ender was able to do to the Formics in the movie because they put all their eggs in one basket, never leaving their homeworld. All it takes is one massive collision or one alien invasion and we're done.

I don't think it's apathy, it's that the video format is so worthless for this, and perhaps that the plan Lessig is apparently describing doesn't even begin to address the problem he claims it solves. A voucher system doesn't take money out of the campaign process, it only gives the government control of who gets the money - which means government controls who gets elected. That's far worse than the system we have now.

These other countries that he points to have something that we don't have in the US, and that is state-run television. You can't just go giving away stuff, like tv commercials, that don't belong to you even if you are the government. He suggests that it would only involve $3 or $4 Billion a year.

I hope this drive of his fails. It only creates a system infinitely worse than what we have now. The 2012 elections cost a total of $6,285,557,223. Now Lessig claims that spending two or three times that much is taking money out of the process. He is wrong. All he is doing is creating a new bureaucracy to suck up a good chunk of that money for themselves and decide who gets to divide up their leavings.

I wasn't really thinking about debates, although that is one of the most obvious examples of bias in media in our current system. I mean more subtle things, such as who gets their picture on the covers of the news magazines, and the way some candidates get their every speech mentioned in the news, while others are ignored. Inviting candidates to the Sunday morning talk shows is an implicit endorsement. Newspapers interview, and publish press releases from, the people they deem important; they ignore those they don't, though they may be willing to sell them ad space if they have the money.

The problem with plans to take money out of politics is that it gives media control of the process. Of course they are all for these reforms.

How will your plan reduce the overwhelming advantages enjoyed by incumbents so that challengers have a fair chance of winning more than 10% of the time?

The two major parties have done everything in their power to make sure that minority candidates have virtually insurmountable obstacles to their getting onto a ballot in the first place, and even then these candidates are rarely given serious coverage by the media. If you were to actually succeed in taking the money out of political campaigning, then how do you keep the news media from completely controlling who gets elected by their control of who is able to get their message out?

Don't suggest that a "Fairness Doctrine" will provide equal coverage to all candidates, because there would certainly be a test for "viability" of candidates before they get any taxpayer-provided funding, and only major-party candidates would ever pass that test.

Check with Nucky Thompson. He can get you a great spot on the boardwalk.