Early this evening, the Council of Elders announced a planetary day of mourning and magnanimity.

K'Nord, Speaker for the Council, spoke thusly:

"Citizens and Podmates, the Council is pleased to announce that after seven and a half full years -- the longest campaign in the history of the Martian Defense Force -- the diabolical mechanized adversary from the blue world has been defeated. Our defense forces, counted in the billions, have finally surrounded and denied the invader the light and warmth it needs to survive. The blueworlders have acknowledged defeat and ceased contact. Ths invasion, at least on this front, is now over.

Let us raise our glasses to mourn the lost gelsacs of at least half our press corps, some of whose entire careers have been dedicated to coverage of this conflict -- and in a spirit of magnanimity in victory, we -- the victors of the Conflict at Endeavour Crater -- must also raise our glasses in awe and respect of our longest-lived and most challenging foe."

Shortly thereafter, a wizened old retired Councilmember, his gelsacs having long ago been ceremonially ground into a fine tartare and shared amongst the Council, wiped a perchlorate tear from his eye: "Well-done, blueworlders. Well-done."

A) your luggage This trick doesn't work with checked bags, since airlines tend to check bags through to the final destination. Hidden-city travel is a strictly carry-on-only tactic.

B) where did we lose this person They know where they lost you, since they scanned your boarding pass when you boarded the first flight, and they didn't scan your boarding pass at the gate for the connecting flight.

C) we now have to delay the flight to make sure our count is correct This is the only potentially obnoxious consequence--some airlines may delay a flight by a few minutes to allow a "lost" passenger to get to the gate. But if an airline has a takeoff slot they're not going to give it up to recover one wayward traveller. And they do a headcount of passengers on board before every flight anyway--if it matches the count they get from the scanned boarding passes, they're good to go.

D) is there a security risk to the plane Nope. They know that you and your carry-on were on the first plane, but that makes you no more dangerous to that aircraft than any other passenger. They know that you're not on the second plane, since you and your carry-on never boarded. They know you don't have a checked bag in the hold.

I have a credit score - a rather good one - but I've never spent more than I have. One does not have to carry debt to have a credit history.

Remember that a person is also being extended short-term credit even when they are paying off their balance in full every statement period. And that's not just the case with use of credit cards (which remain the easiest - and sometimes only - way to make purchases or payments in some situations). Thing about utilities like gas, water, electricity, cable, telephone, (non-prepaid) cell, internet...if you're billed at the end of the month after you've used the service, then you're being extended credit--and in many cases the status of those accounts will be reflected in your credit report.

I'm pretty sure I read this story in 1952: The Martian Way , by Isaac Asimov.

...Except it was Mars that needed water, not Dubai.

...And they got their icebergs from Saturn's rings, not Antarctica.

But aside from that, totally the same plan.

I assume that your belief is informed by the restrained and nuanced portrayal of the US Leftist media by US conservative outlets. Ahem. (Incidentally, the "conservative" outlets seem to spend a lot more time talking about the "liberals" than vice versa.)

The non-US world has access to Fox just as readily as to MSNBC. In assessing reliability and trustworthiness, they've adjusted their Bayesian priors based on continuously supplied evidence about which networks give the most airtime to hypocritical, self-serving, lying sacks of shit.

Seeing as 96 percent of google search results about Trump come from liberal media outlets

The figure in that article places Infowars as being just center-right, and the Koch-supported Reason straddles the left-right centerline.

If you draw your line that way, you're probably the sort of person who complains about reality's liberal bias.

On 2017 net income of $48.35 billion ($48350 million), that's a tax rate of 0.116%. Tell me again why we needed another corporate tax rate cut....

It's an interesting question--what does it really mean for NASA to "do it themselves"? NASA has a very long history of contracting out the development and construction of launch vehicles. Remember, for the Apollo program the Command and Service Module was built by North American Aviation (as was the Saturn V second stage), the Lunar Module was built by Grumman, the Saturn V first stage (S-1C) was built by Boeing, the third stage was built by Douglas, the F-1 and J-2 main engines were designed and built by Rocketdyne.... I don't think anyone would dispute that the Apollo Program was a NASA project, but a great deal of the design and construction work was still contracted out.

The difference now is that NASA gets to choose its contractors after they've demonstrated their capabilities to build and fly the hardware. The "old" way was to decide in advance who got to have the monopoly and pay them to develop the technology; this "new" way involves choosing among members of a small oligopoly who already have the capability mostly off-the-shelf. There are tradeoffs - financial and planning - to either approach.

A widescreen aspect ratio doesn't have to be dumb unless the people who design apps and interfaces refuse to make good use of the hardware.

My Windows taskbar has been vertical, running up the right side of my screen, for probably a decade.

One of several reasons that Opera was my web browser of choice for several years was its native support for a vertical tab bar. I could have dozens of tabs open, and be able to see all of them, and read their titles. It was tremendously useful, while it lasted.

PowerPoint has started putting context-sensitive tools and controls on the right side of the screen instead of just at the top, and the slide thumbnails on the left.

Chrome now makes the status bar at the bottom of the window invisible - freeing up an extra line of space in the window - unless it has something important to display (e.g. when you're hovering over a link and want to see the URL).

Reading/comparing/referring to two documents side-by-side is pretty darned useful in a number of different contexts. (Of course then each application window has to have a sensible layout for portrait-oriented display, as well....)

Yes, it's an added burden for developers to have to consider how their application might be used on displays with different aspect ratios. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't do so, and especially not that they should fail to consider how to present their product on the most common format today.

Actually...the article points out that a major source of avoidable expense and delays is collisions that take place in narrow and congested waterways--and often with inanimate, stationary objects. Inadvertent groundings, collisions with moored vessels, difficulties in constricted canals and locks. Insurance is a big cost.