Meh. IMHO, a biological holocaust would be far worse. Radiation sickness isn't contagious. Plus, you might think a place or thing is sterile but you'll never know until it's too late.

This is why electric vehicles at this point in time will fail. They aren't cheaper to buy. They aren't simple and fast to charge. They don't have the same range.

This dovetails in nicely with my theory as to why Muslim extremists want to kill everyone else: No bacon.

It's really remarkable what he concludes about the Starglider in that the confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligences pretty much blows most religions out of the water because they are all Earth-centric/human-centric.

@cletar: So was Apollo. The original estimate was 10-20 billion dollars in 1960. It ended up costing about 25 billion which is roughly 145 billion today. Only 10 billion was spent on Constellation. Of course the lack of a serious competitor caused the pace of the project to be glacial.

@filecabinet20036: Similar reports were written about Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Hell, Congress wanted to kill the program after Apollo 1 which was a crap design. Obama doesn't have a manned space program. Maybe if he hadn't blown a few trillion dollars on a botched healthcare bill we'd be mining the asteroid…

@Cryptic: Drug companies often fund university research through grants. In some ways it may be cheaper to do this because research students aren't paid employees. Pfizer has a University Relations Program. Harvard has partnered with Sanofi-Aventis.

@cletar: In favor of Orion and the Constellation program. "Our second goal is to develop and test a new spacecraft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, by 2008, and to conduct the first manned mission no later than 2014. The Crew Exploration Vehicle will be capable of ferrying astronauts and scientists to the Space Station…

@boylegd: Oh, you mean like the Oklahoma City bombing? Now here's a conspiracy theory for you all: McVeigh supposedly went to the Philippines and met with radical islamist groups there. The building gets partially destroyed and they manage to clear the debris and build a park over the site in record time. The WTC…

@skywalker24: Who? Do you have any references for this or are you just bolviating. Iraq is in pretty decent shape (this comes from friends who are currently there and have served since the beginning). Obama didn't want anything to do with Afghanistan and as a result nearly screwed the pooch on it by stalling surge…

Well, given that Obama and the Dems effectively killed off NASA's actual space activities in favor of having the agency become a PR group for making Muslims feel good about their scientific contributions (all of which took place hundreds of years ago), I'd say the Republicans can't do much worse.

Okay so I'm not quite old enough to need prescription glasses but their standard 1.25 glasses are a bargain. Three pair for less than the price of one at CVS or some place.

IMHO, it's more about urbanites versus ruralites. Take a look at electoral maps broken down by county rather than by state and you see a high percentage of counties voting Democrat are in or around major metropolitan areas. By contrast, rural counties usually lean more towards the Republican side.

Wired had an article on this a while back. It was interesting but the author wasn't seriously trying to vanish but rather pose a challenge to people to find him.

Can I put my theatre seat in a Steadicam rig while I watch this?

Can I put my theatre seat in a Steadicam rig while I watch this?

That cover image is way cool. If they can maintain that level of quality, I'll see it just for the effects.

@SquareWheel: These are conditions of awareness not a classification. When anyone is asleep they are in white. When you are engaged in a fight, you are in red. The point is that while you're not asleep you should endeavor to be in yellow i.e. aware of your surroundings.

Her eyes bug me...get it? She's got bug eyes. Jeez I crack myself up.

Simply taking a self-defense class may not change the mindset of those likely to be victims. Most people walk around in a fog with ear buds tuning out the world around them.