Good point. The English civil war and the French revolution both went the way they did because the ‘rebels’ had armies which equalled or exceeded those of the government. Same with the other regicide that comes to mind, Nicholas II of Russia in 1918. So much depends on whether the military remains loyal.

Absolute monarchies tend to come to a very sticky end, as happened in England in the 17th century and France in the 18th.

I know just enough about the light spectrum and the red shift to understand why this is funny (thanks Prof. Brian Cox!), but it underlines how shallow my knowledge is. So much cosmology, so little time…

Yes, agreed. He seems to regard life as a zero-sum game, in which he can’t win unless someone else loses, so he doesn’t understand the concept of win-win. It’s a kind of cognitive bias which is a serious weakness in someone who apparently imagines himself to be a master of ‘the art of the deal’.

I’ve had a few QSOs though amateur satellites. I bought a dual-band antenna from a company in the US and used a cheap Chinese handheld and my 20 year-old FT817 for the uplink and downlink. There was a surprising amount of activity, really tricky to make myself heard.