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Because of course it was.

Calculator and graph utility to compare up to 5 numbers and their paths to 1 using Collatz Conjecture

It's not even really less expensive. Turf is so expensive, ROI is far in the future anyway.

This encoder as a tribute to the ingenuity of the old 90's Look Alike Cipher invented to send full, word-based messages on early pagers. It's a great example of communication innovation under severe technical constraints.

This is good in a way. People with outdated skills are getting new training, as long as they are able to avoid schools with poor career performance.

1. True. Organic compounds have been found in Nebula. We don't know if gravity and "ground" are necessary to turn it into life. 2. Although the study uses the traditional term for the background radiation "Cosmic Microwave Background", technically, it likely wasn't microwaves at that time, but closer to the visible light spectrum (maybe even beyond that). We only see the background radiation as microwaves now because the EM waves have stretched out due to expansion of the Universe.

Hyperspace, laser bolts, complaining AI, and space wizards aren't scientifically accurate? ;)

Yeah, this is fake news about fake news. I would say that this is ironic, except that this is such par for the course, it's more pointless than anything.

Right now, this is more about searching for other life.

The book was published around the same time as the study. I'll be keeping an eye our for newer sources. There's been a lot of interesting discoveries in recent years.

Google would be a good match, but dangerous to us. Salesforce would be less of a match, but not so dangerous to us. Salesforce did try to create their own similar application that never really took off.

The article goes into other cultures briefly. It doesn't focus on those because it took longer to discover the roundness of the Earth there. This article is focused on first discovery, and the myths about the myth (like Columbus trying to provide the roundness of Earth). This article also doesn't well cover that the Bible texts refer to the Earth in terms of being flat dozens of times.

I don't agree with this premise. From what I learned about redistricting when I was a candidate for California's citizen redistricting board (which almost completely eliminated gerrymandering in CA because legislature no longer has authority to define districts), under-representation is a big issue. From my impression, Republican and Democratic party bases are much smaller than everyone thinks. Neither of them would be in control of a drastically increased body without a collation with many many other groups. Also, many laws are currently in place that prevent third parties from participating in the primary system on equal footing with Dems and Rep. If those limitations where removed, that by itself would see an erosion of Dem and Rep party affiliation. The hold that Dems and Reps have on US politics is much more tenuous than they'd like everyone to believe.

Ah, due to the two party system that has a stranglehold on the US system and the nature of our primary system, there are A LOT of unaffiliated independent voters. There would likely be a lot of unaffiliated candidates if the number in the House was drastically and suddenly increased. There would be no party whips to whip. There might not even be enough representatives of the major parties to even form a collation, at least in the start.

States are gripped by the gerrymandering process at all levels from state legislature all the way up to the Presidency. Literally the only exception is our Senate. If we repeal the 17th Amendment, party stranglehold on state legislatures (compounded by the issue of gerrymandering) support artificial control by one party over all of the state's representation at the federal level.

There is no need for our state governments to have direct representation in our Federal government. All representatives should be voted upon by the people directly. The idea that the state governments themselves need representation at the Federal level was misguided from the start, in my opinion.

That failed Amendment didn't seem important enough to the founders, but nowadays, it makes good sense. At the very least, it would have forced consideration of this issue throughout our history, rather than being able to forget about it since 1911.

As for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, I'm not favor of that, as this is the only hedge we currently have against gerrymandering that keeps our House in the hands of the two parties. There's a reason that there is commonly a party mismatch between the House and Senate. Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely.

I also agree with you regrading Citizens United, but it really shouldn't need an amendment since the idea of a corporation existing on its own is a modern day fabrication in the first place. However, since the courts went a bit sideways on this issue, it seems like an amendment will be necessary.

In the US. the President is voted upon separately, and often is the opposite of the party that runs the House of Reps. Party footprint in the House has little baring which party in the White House.

Europe kinda caused the current mess with copyright law in the first place. Current rule of copyright protection of 70 years past author's life started there. The length of time for copyright protection and the level of protection during that time has gotten ridiculous.

This article is mostly just a list of pithy standalone comments. Any one of these comments would make good subjects to talk about on their own.

As per usual for Thomas Sowell, he pretends to offer insight when he actually attempts to confuse the issue. He relies on outliers and misunderstandings to make his point. For example, he says that someone who earns $200K from the sale of their home will show up as an equal statistic as someone that earned income of $200K yearly. No. No. No. That's not how it works. Money made from homes where the profit less than $500K is not counted at all as income for your own residence because it is understood that this money will likely go right back into the next home you buy in that same year. Now, if you are buying and selling homes for profit as a business, then that IS a business, and counts as income from that business.

His conclusion? "This means that statistics on income inequalities are often comparing high multi-year earnings with lower single-year earnings -- that is, comparing apples and oranges." He is taking an extreme minority of cases (which he calls "high multi-year earnings") and comparing that to the most common cases of normal yearly income (which he calls "lower single-year earnings") and saying these two are happening in such parity that the statistic about household incomes is "comparing apples and oranges". No, Mr. Sowell, it is you who are comparing apples and oranges.