Actually I think the world population is such that you need to add one or two bits.

Cheese Kurds would be a little cannibalistic.

Fracking has granted the United States independence from OPEC, and turned the US into the largest exporter of oil. The US now has the pricing power on the world oil market. This has huge geopolitical implications.

Back in the 2000s it was completely different. All of the geopolitical wonks were pushing renewable energy as a means of OPEC independence. And now that independence has been granted, but we still have the oil.

Meanwhile, as others have stated on this thread, the immediate problems from fracking have been mostly fixed, including the earthquakes. Long term, I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen with all of that dirty wastewater going back into the ground.

So on balance, there's a good reason for the leadership in both parties to be on board with fracking: oil still rules the world, and fracking lets the United States rule the oil markets.

This is the only way to legally vote by remote electronics in Texas. Must be registered in Harris County. And must be voting from outer space.

Now known as Cavazos. The country decided to maybe not name bases after traitorous losers.

Airplanes are usually limited to land at only around half of the total weight they can take off with.

This isn't normally a problem for normal trips.

If they went to a higher landing weight, the landing gear struts would have to be designed quite a bit stronger. This would make the landing gear heavier, and that would reduce the useful payload weight in the plane.

Not sure the tank periscope system was properly accounted for, either.

None of the current ICBM platforms were designed for missile defense. Missile defense simply did not exist at the time.

Sentinel is busting its budget because it's renovating and rebuilding all of the ground segments: all of those decrepit silos and computer systems. It's still money well spent in my opinion.

Missile guidance is not a computationally hard problem, and it hasn't changed much since the 50s. Terminal missile defense is a fantastically hard problem, and wasn't mastered until the last decade or two. And the current generation missile defense capabilities still haven't all been demonstrated in combat.

Having said that, I would generally expect NATO's missiles to work as advertised in a hot war. And I would plan for Russia's missiles to be somewhat less effective than they advertise, but still a credible threat.

I'm just repeating what happened or what the plan was the last couple of go arounds, with Napoleon and Hitler.

Napoleon did occupy Moscow, but it didn't help him very much.

Hitler was turned back just short of Moscow, but the Russian government had all sorts of continuity plans that involved moving further east. Entire factories were uprooted and shipped into the Urals.

1. Even with nuclear annihilation, NATO could still get to Moscow in a three day operation. It's just a question of which cities back home are still standing.

2. Moscow is not the big prize you might think it is. Russia can just retreat hundreds of kilometers further east and carry on.

3. NATO can do the thunder run, but they are not equipped to win a massive land war in Asia. You really gotta listen to the Sicilian from Princess Bride on this one.

ABC is a network that doesn't have an FCC license. Each individual local station is an FCC licensee. They're the ones that are responsible for the content they air.

Question, when you move to a new place in Spain, do you need to register residency with the police?

I don't know if Spain does that or not, but I think Italy does some version.

The United States doesn't have that, and doesn't have a national id card. Although most people effectively register themselves to get a driver license, that is only required if you drive. So voter registration nominally provides some way for the government to get the information on residency, which is important for figuring out which local elections you need to vote in.

Now recently, in the last couple of decades, some states started requiring photo id verification to vote. This defeats the purpose of having a separate voter registration system, because you still have to go to the driver registration system to get either a driver license, or a non-driving photo ID. Nevertheless, the separate voter registration system has hung around in every single one of these states, because the real goal is to prevent people from voting.

Not enough mushrooming in that case.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... = -1/12

Here's another factor: The ISS is in a high inclination orbit that is excellent at overflying most of the US and Russia. Not so great as a base for deep space missions.

Both of these astronauts were multiple-mission space veterans before they left. They have space shuttle experience. Sunita has prior command experience on ISS. These two are basically the most veteran professionals that NASA has on the roster.

They have now been resupplied with clothing on a Progress module. I think it was like 45 days before that showed up.

They have both stated that they're happy for more time on orbit, and I'm mostly inclined to believe them.

I went to labcorp for a while when I needed monthly blood draws for my doctor.

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Side effects include all of your contacts calling you freakin nerd.

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Without a draft it's just a Keynsian jobs program like CCC or Teach for America. Not the worst idea in the world.

No. I would like to go back to beans, please.