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It has a USB ocular which Linux recognised straight away. Feels nice and solid, with only a tiny bit of hysteresis on the adjustment knob. Nothing a child couldn't cope with.

Optics are surprisingly good quality and the light sources use a little mains adapter, which is included. No batteries required!

There are also a few sample slides included with the microscope, but Bresser sells stained slide kits separately, these might be worth exploring, not sure.

Anyway, check the reviews, I thought it was a terrific microscope for a kid.

Comments like yours fill me with a sense of despair for the future because there are so many people like you.

You despair for the wrong reason.

Essentially, you're the kind of person who would be absolutely shocked if, after you smeared dog shit on someone's face, they got mad at you for smearing dog shit on their face. Rather than note the obvious fact that they got pissed because you just smeared dog shit on their face, you'd have to come up with some justification for what you did, like, "he has freckles and hates people who don't."

I think you would be shocked to actually learn what is going on since you don't actually seem to know, or really have a good idea. This ultimately isn't about the US, it is about them - the Islamist extremists, their goals, and aspirations. Their kind was conquering and killing for hundreds of years (more like 1,000) before the US came along. Read Bin Laden's demands in his Letter to America. His first actual demand is that the United States convert to Islam. Second, he wants the Constitution replaced with Sharia law in all its glory: stone the adulterer, crush homosexuals under walls or throw them off of buildings, whip the immodest, chop off the hands of thieves, no drugs or alcohol, no interest charged on loans, and all the rest. That isn't a demand to "stop smearing shit on my face", that is the demand of a man determined to see the world under Islamic rule even if it takes 1,000 more years. This was a man who wanted to see the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, which existed until ~ 1924. Their grievances is that Islam has fallen from its former glory, and they intend to restore it. They want to retake Spain which pushed out Islamists rulers hundreds of years ago.

  What al-Qaida Really Wants

If you want to despair, then do it over the fact that this conflict could easily continue for 20, 50, or 100 more years as these flare ups of Islamist extremism do. Or Londonistan , or Eurabia

In a shrinking world, the extremists will probably never be far away.

Think about this: POVERTY, EDUCATION, AND TERRORISM

These facts should be well known by now. How is it that people keep getting this wrong eleven years after 9/11/2001?

At the The Other September 11th, the Battle of Vienna, the Islamist attackers were outside the gates trying to get in. In future battles, we will find them inside the gates, and too many of the defenders of the West ignorant and in doubt, or even ready to throw in with them.

As I wrote, you despair for the wrong reason.

Comments like yours fill me with a sense of despair for the future because there are so many people like you.

You despair for the wrong reason.

Essentially, you're the kind of person who would be absolutely shocked if, after you smeared dog shit on someone's face, they got mad at you for smearing dog shit on their face. Rather than note the obvious fact that they got pissed because you just smeared dog shit on their face, you'd have to come up with some justification for what you did, like, "he has freckles and hates people who don't."

I think you would be shocked to actually learn what is going on since you don't actually seem to know, or really have a good idea. This ultimately isn't about the US, it is about them - the Islamist extremists, their goals, and aspirations. Their kind was conquering and killing for hundreds of years (more like 1,000) before the US came along. Read Bin Laden's demands in his Letter to America. His first actual demand is that the United States convert to Islam. Second, he wants the Constitution replaced with Sharia law in all its glory: stone the adulterer, crush homosexuals under walls or throw them off of buildings, whip the immodest, chop off the hands of thieves, no drugs or alcohol, no interest charged on loans, and all the rest. That isn't a demand to "stop smearing shit on my face", that is the demand of a man determined to see the world under Islamic rule even if it takes 1,000 more years. This was a man who wanted to see the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, which existed until ~ 1924. Their grievances is that Islam has fallen from its former glory, and they intend to restore it. They want to retake Spain which pushed out Islamists rulers hundreds of years ago.

  What al-Qaida Really Wants

If you want to despair, then do it over the fact that this conflict could easily continue for 20, 50, or 100 more years as these flare ups of Islamist extremism do. Or Londonistan , or Eurabia

In a shrinking world, the extremists will probably never be far away.

Think about this: POVERTY, EDUCATION, AND TERRORISM

These facts should be well known by now. How is it that people keep getting this wrong eleven years after 9/11/2001?

At the The Other September 11th, the Battle of Vienna, the Islamist attackers were outside the gates trying to get in. In future battles, we will find them inside the gates, and too many of the defenders of the West ignorant and in doubt, or even ready to throw in with them.

As I wrote, you despair for the wrong reason.

I would thoroughly recommend this book by Susskind, for both the content and the most awesome title for a popular science book ever.

I think your history teachers have really glossed over the whole slave trade part during colonisation era. It made muslim-done enslaving look like employing unionised people.

Tears of Jihad

These figures are a rough estimate of the death of non-Muslims by the political act of jihad.

Africa

Thomas Sowell [Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture, BasicBooks, 1994, p. 188] estimates that 11 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic and 14 million were sent to the Islamic nations of North Africa and the Middle East. For every slave captured many others died. Estimates of this collateral damage vary. The renowned missionary David Livingstone estimated that for every slave who reached a plantation, five others were killed in the initial raid or died of illness and privation on the forced march.[Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Missions, David Livingstone, p. 62, 1888] Those who were left behind were the very young, the weak, the sick and the old. These soon died since the main providers had been killed or enslaved. So, for 25 million slaves delivered to the market, we have an estimated death of about 120 million people. Islam ran the wholesale slave trade in Africa.

120 million Africans

Right and wrong. The current system in most countries is for media devices. Not hard drives.

That's what folks in verkkokauppa.com said when they argued against, and what they saw after the payment scheme was implemented. Their sales of external HDs crashed, essentially overnight and they don't even advertise them much anymore (they used to have one for sale almost every week).

At the same time many foreign sellers sell them for same prices.

Also the lack of price difference is most likely explained by model of your choice in the comparison. I have the drive in quesiton, and it's no longer manufactured, and hasn't been for a while (it's over a year old model). That's likely why hintaseuranta.fi has only found one copy of the drive and that's in a shop that has very bad reputation for keeping site info up to date in terms of availability and amazon lists as "2 remaining in stock" for 3rd party seller.

Here is the current generation that is actually available from retailers. Price difference is very noticeable (and unlike your comparison which lists two different models, I'm listing the same model: STAC2000200

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Goflex-Desk-3-5-inch-External/dp/B005ORY2SK/ref=pd_cp_computers_0 (89 GPB)
http://hintaseuranta.fi/tuote.aspx/427574 (cheapest at 161 EUR)

P.S. Pricerunner link is here but as usual pricerunner is out of date http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pl/36-2632328/Hard-Drives/Seagate-FreeAgent-GoFlex-Desk-2TB-Compare-Prices

Yes, as an EU 'citizen' and someone who worked for the EEC for about ten years [as a consultant, to my shame] I agree with this. The apparatus of Brussels is divorced from the wishes of the great unwashed [us], non-transparent, mediocre, subject to continual lobbying [Axa, Microsoft, Monsanto], undemocratic [the votes 'for' the Euro were exceptionally thin, even in France, had to be 'done again' in Ireland] and unresponsive.

This book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Democracy-Europe-Larry-Siedentop/dp/0140287930 deals with some of the arguments about drift, neo-liberalism and democratic deficit.

Sanity is a relative thing, it's saner than Gadaffi's Libya and probably saner than the worst of corporate America, but not healthy in many other ways.

Slight bias indeed.

The man page to Moose is a good one too.

If you're in to web dev, the Definitive Guide to Catalyst is a good choice, too.

Unfortunately, I have to write this with a caveat: getting Catalyst and Moose set up can take some time. If you apt-get install/emerge/yum/whatever it, you'll probably get an old version.

If you install it from CPAN, it takes some time, since the two of them combine to require a craptonne of CPAN.

That said, once they're installed, a working catalyst web app you can hack on is as simple as catalyst.pl AppName; cd AppName;scripts/appname_server.pl

Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it.

Not sure where you have been looking but the first season has been out on DVD and BluRay for ages.

If you're buying a Casio, do *not* get the black resin strap versions of their watches because they always break within 6 months of use. They may be up to 10 pounds cheaper, but the straps aren't replaceable and I learned this to my cost with two broken-strap resin versions of the watch before I switched to the steel strap.

I've actually managed to get the strap replaced on a 12 quid Casio (this one or very similar). Strap + labour cost slightly more than the watch, but at the time I was far from anywhere that could have sold me another one at a sane price.

I love my Casio WV-58DU-1AVEF - see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Casio-WV-58DU-1AVEF-Ceptor-Bracelet-Digital/dp/B000MMCPKO/ - a huge amount. It's a cheap (30 pounds in the UK) Casio watch with the following major features:

* A steel wriststrap. If you're buying a Casio, do *not* get the black resin strap versions of their watches because they always break within 6 months of use. They may be up to 10 pounds cheaper, but the straps aren't replaceable and I learned this to my cost with two broken-strap resin versions of the watch before I switched to the steel strap.

* A huge amount of info on the default display:
- Day of the week
- Time (including seconds) - switchable between 12 and 24 hour display
- Full date and, critically, switchable between "wrong" American format (MMDDYYYY) and the far more correct "everyone else" format (DDMMYYYY) - most Casios don't allow you to switch and leave the watch in American format, which is frankly incorrect.
- An indicator to tell you that you've turned off all the annoying beeps when you press buttons (yes, I turn them off)
- A "DST" indicator to tell you that you're in daytime savings time or not
- A "satellite icon" to tell you if the watch correctly radio-synced overnight or not

* Usual countdown timer (I set mine to 25 mins for oven chips :-) ) and stopwatch as you'd expect (useful functions missing from most analogue watches)

* Daily alarm and optional hourly chime (I've never seen the point of the latter, but Casio always seem to include it)

* Press a button to find out the time and date when the watch last successfully radio synced.

* Hold the same button for about 5 secs to initiate an immediate radio sync (best to take the watch off or at least hold it very still when syncing).

* Luminescent backlight button - nice light blue background hue when you press it.

* Dual time zone option - can select the city and it will time sync to the "local" radio time service on 5 continents.

I've had a lot of cheap Casio digital watches in my time and this is the best one I've ever had.

A nice "what if" novel was written by Gibson and Sterling, based on a posited successful adoption of the difference engine in Victorian times. It's classed as Sci Fi, but is more of a novel set in an alternative history. Definitely worth reading.

Somewhere in an alternate steampunk universe there is a nice "What if?" novel about the inventors of silicon transistor computers, in a alternate history where babbage's machine was never built. They call us silipunks.

A nice "what if" novel was written by Gibson and Sterling, based on a posited successful adoption of the difference engine in Victorian times. It's classed as Sci Fi, but is more of a novel set in an alternative history. Definitely worth reading.

some guy somewhere is saying "WOW... Honey, look at what this guy built in his garage for $150,000" and his wife/girlfriend/significant other is yelling "AND ONE DIVORCE!!!!"

To which the guy responds, under his breath, "... lucky bastard..."

He must have had a good lawyer. Most divorce settlements leave the man barely able to afford this type of simulator.

Well 266 / 293 users would appear to disagree with you according to Amazon.

Or finding a PCMCIA card for an old obsolete laptop.

Assuming the slots support cardbus (and a machine that is only 10 years old they almost certainly will) that isn't all that hard

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001QER6EC/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000NOSCDU&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=038QS3P3H8C542S74C1X

Or even an IDE laptop hard drive.

Every time i've looked (including just now) i've found themin stock at my regular parts suppliers.

I don't normally plug books but this is excellent.

It covers pretty much every aspect of the debate in a reasonable way. I pretty much held your view before reading it but now I'm a lot less certain that there is anything out there.

Nintendo proved that you could sell an underpowered console at a profit from day one and still make piles of money. Apple and numerous Android manufacterers have shown that you can sell a nifty device at a decent profit margin and satisfy millions of people with $1 games.

Yeah, if anything I think it's the other way around. Casual gamers are often very casual - a $1 smartphone/tablet game may be enough, why get a $200-300 console? In 2006 there really weren't many other casual gaming options except flash games, in 2013 there are plenty. Hell, sometimes they drive an insanely crazy bargain against themselves, for example I got Hector: Badge of Carnage for the iPhone and it's a steal for $3 - actually 3x$1 so you can try it for a dollar, as opposed to paying $19,99 on the Telltalegames site. I can get Angry Birds for the PC at a bargain price of only 6.47 GBP. It's like they don't want to sell for the PC at all unless you're hemorrhaging money.

As for the xbox/ps3, I think they both know the next generation will last much longer than this one - just look at graphics card reviews and how far they have to crank it up to 2560x1600 at Ultra/Extreme/Enthusiast/Maximum quality level and the most punishing AA modes to show the difference. The next gen consoles will have full HD and "enough" shaders for a 1920x1080 screen and will not be outdated for at least a decade. They're waiting because they want to have a little edge over the other - better to have an edge in 10 years than be first to the market for 1 year. Microsoft couldn't honestly couldn't care about their positioning relative to the Wii U, it's their positioning relative to the PS4 that matters to them.

The kit I'm using is a Sony BDVE280 5.1 surround system. All of Sony's recent Blu-ray players have similar load times though.

At $5 per disk, I would not have them because of the player cost, unless I find a great price on a used one somewhere.

The thing is... millions of PS3 consoles have been sold, but millions of those PS3 users aren't buying bluray, because it's more expensive, and because you can't take it round a friend's house (with certainty).

This is a bluray player for £60, which I found within 10 seconds on google.... about the same as 6 new DVDs. If you're claiming that the player cost is a problem... it's not.

Note - I own a PS3 and no bluray videos.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Galaxy-10-1-WiFi-Black/dp/B005FFQ5X6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331419863&sr=8-1 http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad Looks like anyone who can afford a Galaxy Tab can afford an iPad to me.

Your strategy (tit for two tats) is worse than plain tit for tat as a strategy in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemna, if not by much. There's a very good section on it in Critical Mass, along with lots of other interesting stuff.

If you would like to read a book that explores this concept further, I can recommend Blind Faith by Ben Elton.

I actually prefer store bought media material - known format, quality assurance & convenience. It takes me less time to find it in the store (hell even ask the staff) to get it than trawl through spam, traps, seo bullshit & so on. However availability is an issue - 'net has almost everything, stores not so much. Unless you want to order and wait, even then.

This availability factor can be a great annoyance. I discovered several years ago that the Dreaded P.D.Q. Bach Collection [*] was not available from any store in Finland, and that furthermore the stores within reach said they could not even order it. I ended up ordering it from Amazon UK, which involved waiting weeks and paying their shipping fees.

[*] I use the third movement of the Pervertimento for bagpipe, bicycle, and balloons from disk 2 as the primary ringtone on my phone. The third movement is mostly bagpipe and string quartet, and is rather attention-getting, in its own way.

Also the WAF (wife acceptance factor) who very much likes dropping the disk in the home cinema drive and doesn't like computers.

All of our CDs and BDs and most of our DVDs have been ripped to the media server. It's even easier to use than dropping disks in the home theater.

Setting up Linux to print to any decent office printer is usually a very simple affair: just find the printer, then select the manufacturer and model from the huge lists provided by CUPS, and off you go. Whether it's an HP LaserJet, a Ricoh, a Xerox, etc., it can print to any of these things. But a $30 piece of shit inkjet? Forget it

Here's a $30 printer that works perfectly under Linux, not that I've tried this particular one. It's more a matter of brand than price, some companies just have shit support and others are quite good.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-W3000H-BN-monitor-black-WQXGA/dp/tech-data/B0015LWB00/ref=de_a_smtd

  2560 x 1600
LG W3000H-BN 30"
$1000

I suggest you give this a bash if you believe that.

Aside from that, 6 degrees is also the exact trajectory we're on amongst the various trajectories projected given a various assumptions .

For an overview of what all these degrees would mean;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_1wL7_yn2g Recommended reading:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0007209053?tag=marklynasorg-21&camp=1406&creative=6394&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0007209053&adid=0TVTAMT868WYZQ76V3D1&

"Given good content to work with, any programmer could figure out how to make it beautiful using LaTeX .. However there isn't a mature, standardized workflow to get from LaTeX to epub", infernalC

"The second talk came from Andrew Ford, who focussed on converting a LaTeX book to ePub format, using the example of his wife’s cookbook of vegetarian recipes. Andrew explained that the ePub format is a combination of XHTML and CSS, and that LaTeXML has allowed a relatively painless conversion process. Looking beyond ePub, conversion to Kindle format (which unlike ePub is closed)."

Or youn could teach them how it wasn't: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006QMT7FA

Pending any world-wide figures, it'll have to do. I don't think there's much reason to assume PC vs console breakdown in the UK is much different to anywhere else.

In terms of digital distribution, I'd presume this is a relatively small proportion, as it's substantially more expensive in the UK (don't ask, I don't know):

Amazon UK - £8.99: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Crysis-PC-DVD/dp/B002BWONOY/
EA Origin UK - £14.99: http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/pd/productID.225985400/sac.true

(this continues with other releases, for example SWTOR is £37.70 boxed http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-DVD/dp/B005DD6R6A/ or £44.99 to download http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/html/pbPage.SWTOR_EN/ )

Pending any world-wide figures, it'll have to do. I don't think there's much reason to assume PC vs console breakdown in the UK is much different to anywhere else.

In terms of digital distribution, I'd presume this is a relatively small proportion, as it's substantially more expensive in the UK (don't ask, I don't know):

Amazon UK - £8.99: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Crysis-PC-DVD/dp/B002BWONOY/
EA Origin UK - £14.99: http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/pd/productID.225985400/sac.true

(this continues with other releases, for example SWTOR is £37.70 boxed http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-DVD/dp/B005DD6R6A/ or £44.99 to download http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/html/pbPage.SWTOR_EN/ )

Edit:

Just to add more info, here's an example of the ReadyNAS (NV+ RND 4000) I was referring to, with my review of it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3MK92814ZSDKM/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B000VKJEBK&nodeID=340831031&tag=&linkCode=

Stick 4 x 1TB or 4 x 2TB in there with X-Raid (Raid 5) and enable NFS, AFP, and SMB. Recipient or multimedia device should be powerful enough to view 1080p media, through any of the protocols above via XBMC :)

You should read "Flat Earth News", it offers a wonderful glimpse into the world of reporting and news agencies like Reuters and what passes for fact checking there.

People who think that conspiracy theories are cool definitely should read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Twice. It's not the conspiracies that are dangerous.

And on that subject, do have a look at his latest, The Prague Cemetery. Very scary stuff.

(Speaking of FP, if your trip takes you anywhere near Paris, make sure to visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers! You can see the working Pendulum in the church next door; plus, the museum itself is Nerd Heaven, and the nearby Métro station is a brilliant bit of steampunk décor.)

People who think that conspiracy theories are cool definitely should read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Twice. It's not the conspiracies that are dangerous.

And on that subject, do have a look at his latest, The Prague Cemetery. Very scary stuff.

(Speaking of FP, if your trip takes you anywhere near Paris, make sure to visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers! You can see the working Pendulum in the church next door; plus, the museum itself is Nerd Heaven, and the nearby Métro station is a brilliant bit of steampunk décor.)

What should I be learning, reading, thinking about in order to make this transition successfully and avoid growing pointy hair?

So many answers to this question it would be impossible to give a full list, so I'm going to assume that the obvious management strategy / leadership skills books will be covered. I'll just add one suggestion:

The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki

What you should be learning is how to talk to people, how to read people, how to motivate them, as individuals, and, very importantly, how to appraise their progress. For the latter I'd suggest regular (though not necessarily very frequent) individual meetings, a piece of paper, a pen, and an open honest conversation.

Naturally, bringing up Office means any UI arguments are automatically invalidated :) Office did things differently to everyone else for some reason, and everyone accepted and grumbled about it. But all the other apps were of a consistent standard. This was cited as part of Windows' lower TCO, and there was a book on how to make your application conform to the Windows UI style guidelines.

I think today's UI styles are back in the cowboy era of web design where you can do anything anywhere you like, and so designers do exactly that to differentiate themselves. I also think that they'll start to conform again when people have got used to the new stuff, or get so annoyed with geocities-style interfaces.

Why is that keyboard twice as much on amazon uk?
There are solar mice

I will try and debate with you, but from previous experience I'm pretty sure what will happen. It will get to a point where I will say, that doesn't exist any more, or that evolved away and we don't see it, and you'll say aha!, so you don't know it all, it was clearly god. :p

Yeah, most likly something like that will happen. I can assume neither one of us will change our minds/opinions on the subject matter. But I will continue because like a parable "Iron sharpens iron", with out someone (with knowledge) attacking what I "believe" I would find it more difficult to expand my mind for more understanding and knowledge. I find that when someone attacks what I believe I have motivation to defend it and therefor learn new things. (e.g. I will have to read up on Lipids)

But this disregards the fact that we don't need to know all the answers, we just need to use the simplest conclusion by extrapolating from known data.

I think you might be trying to refer to Occam's razor, where the theory requiring the least amount of assumptions is the preferred theory.

And god is not a simple conclusion because then we are just asking who created god.

Actually I always hear the opposite complain when "God" is "used to explain everything". Hence the "simple" solution.

To the argument of who created God, I believe is not a question which makes sense as you are asserting in the question a messurment of time into someone which exists outside of time. (E.g. if time was a 2D plane instead of viewed as a 1D line of past/present/future how you say how old you were?), hence by asking an entity which exists outside of time how old he is, how would you answer that?

Lets look at the theory of cause and effect. A "effect" has a cause. Hence the universe existence would have a "cause" (unless you are prescribing the steady state model). The "cause" can not have been made from any physical / energy source because you are then relying on something's own existence to explain how it came to being. Which violates the no creation of energy law of the universe.
Oh please dont try to say quantum fluctuation of virtual particles as that is one big cop out of an answer. (i.e. what created the energy again)
The "theory" which requires less assumptions is creation of a universe by an (super) intelligent being. The theory of the big bang requires many adhoc assumptions to explain each stage the BB when though. Occam's razor would favor a creationist.
(Read the book Dismantling the big bang for more details in that.)

I have studied some biochemistry in university, I know how complex a modern cell is. The first cell could easily have been a simple replicator inside a lipid membrane.

This is where the argument of where you would say "it doesn't exist anymore" would come in.
Please define what "simple" is when it comes to replicators.
Are you referring to crystal like structures or a fully blown dna reading machine?
Having a crystal like structure doesn't produce the machinery to replicate, it can self assemble into a organised shape predestined by it's chemical properties. Although these structures show highly ordered arrangements, but all they ever be are structures align to there chemical nature.
The simplest self replicating thing I've read about is an artificial self replicating hex like structure that was on slashdot about 2 months ago, which could replicate by heating the solution then cooling it down again. This needs many human interferences for it to be self replicating. E.g. the right sollution, and heating cycle. Again this artificial thing couldn't become more complex due it's shape being linked to it's chemical properties.

The replication from organic things

"Without gravity, we'd die."

Citation needed. Note that none of the astronauts have died due to the lack of gravity.

And to see how evolution proceeds without gravity we just need to look at the sea. Sea lions, dolphins and whales are all descended from mammals that used to live exclusively on land.

Sea lions etc. are just as much influenced by gravity as we are. The problem is in our organs. Whether you're surrounded by air or water on earth, the gravitational pull on your organs are the same (they are, in a sense, always submerged anyway)...

The problem is not the survival of the individual, but our spices. There are experiments on rats indicating that they can't get pregnant in zero gravity...
Citation: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Packing-Mars-Curious-Science-Space/dp/1851687807/ref=sr_1_2 - just read it; highly recommended. On a similar note; http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/#more-417

Anyhow, seeing the rapid drop of energy prices, I assume the solution is near, when energy becomes essential free, everyone gets a jetpack!... ... Oh wait! I am holding the card upside down!

Reminds me; I once read a sci fi - can't remember which - there were a passing reference to other races who had burned the fuel on their planet before reaching spaceflight. They were forever trapped in the gravity well. I assume the same will happen to us.

Not that it changes much. Saving between 0% (robotic probe) and 0.00001% (a crew of few thousands) of the population will not really make a dent, especially when you add the fact that it mission will either be bias towards christian theocracy or aggressive capitalistic pseudocommunism (how much do you trust e.g. China to represent American, if they are the ones "rescuing the race"??). All in all, regardless of the outcome, the probe will not be representative for most .. The rest are left to die...

Goodnight, and happy dreams! :-)

Not true. The church sponsored scientific discovery. In a world created by God, the laws of nature are God's laws, and worthy of study.

The adjective 'medieval' is now a synonym for superstition and ignorance. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In "God's Philosophers", James Hannam traces the neglected roots of modern science in the medieval world. He debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth was flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere. Contrary to common belief, the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science, nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution. No Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. On the contrary, as Hannam reveals, the Middle Ages gave rise to staggering achievements in both science and technology: for instance, spectacles and the mechanical clock were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Ideas from the Far East, like printing, gunpowder and the compass, were taken further by Europeans than the Chinese had imagined possible. The compass helped Columbus to discover the New World in 1492 while printing allowed an incredible 20 million books to be produced in the first 50 years after Gutenberg published his Bible in 1455. And Hannam argues that scientific progress was often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, "God's Philosophers" brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and St Thomas Aquinas. Besides being a thrilling history of a period of surprising invention and innovation, "God's Philosophers" reveals the debt modern science and technology owe to the supposedly 'dark' ages of medieval Europe.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gods-Philosophers-Medieval-Foundations-Science/dp/1848311508/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321560353&sr=1-1

http://jameshannam.com/

The history of the Lyons company is pretty interesting too.

So, what's wrong with USB anyway? I LIKE the fact that I can plug my android phone into a $2 car charger, and not have to buy the $35 sold at the phone store.

What? iDevices charge from a regular USB socket. Just get something like this which turns a car lighter socket into a USB A power socket - works fine with iDevices or Androids - just check the reviews to make sure it delivers enough juice.

Meanwhile, unlike standard USB, the iDevice dock connector also carries analog audio in/out and video, essential for the cheaper speakers/accessories.

Being able to survive a plane crash isn't as important as being able to survive a car crash. Planes don't crash verry often.
It's also harder to prepare for. A SAS survival handbook, some guns, some wires and fire stuff will get you a long way when civilisation crashes, but a plane/car crash is a brute force event. Preventing to be crushed is not easy.
Unless you're talking about surviving long enough to be rescued after a plane crash. That's much the same as surviving a civilisation crash, although one can assume a civilisation crash would give oppertunity to gain some resources (raid a shop or a warehouse). If you have that opportunity after a plane crash you're pretty much saved already.

Thankfully oil never receives government subsidies, and eventually we will be able to develop planet size one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amco-8566-Orange-Citrus-Squeezer/dp/B0002V23BQ to keep us going another 3 months.

A better book - The Goldilocks Enigma. Doesn't really come to any conclusion, but it treats all of the hypotheses equally.

you've chosen to resort to personal attacks in lieu of a rational argument

That's right. I did. And given that you actually bothered to go through my comment history, you surely noticed that this is something I don't do many times. Especially on these kinds of subjects.

The reason I chose to do so is that, simply, I find it quite impossible to debate rationally with people that hold the beliefs and world-view that you obviously do. The fact that you simply parrot propaganda that has been shown over and over again to be just plain false and mischievous, and would do so even to the point where you would try to push it to someone that has been to (and I assume is from: user "the entropy" ) a country that has been savagely devastated only 5 years ago by the people whose actions and intentions you seek to defend, is pretty much revealing that rational argument is not possible. You will simply deny any objective facts presented and ultimately launch the definite ad-hominem attack of anti-semitism, compared to which my simple remark pales. You see, there's a pattern you people follow.

Before I proceed to actually comment on the links you posted, let me tell you this: you are very lucky that it is me doing the ad hominem attack. Israeli ad hominem attacks are normally in the form of letal high speed lead projectiles, otherwise known as bullets. Any Palestinian or Lebanese person will be able to confirm this to you, if you ever have the courage to confront these people in person, without having them at gunpoint.

The links you posted are ridiculous. The Israeli Declaration of Independence is meaningless to the purposes of this discussion, not to mention that it is hardly an independent and unbiased source of information.
About the other link you posted on the partition of territory, I assume you intend to emphasise this part:

During the first 6 months of 1949, negotiations between the belligerents came to terms over armistice lines that delimited Israel's borders. On the other side, no Palestinian Arab state was founded: Jordan annexed the Arab territories of the Mandatory regions of Samaria and Judea (today known as the West Bank), as well as East Jerusalem, while the Gaza strip came under Egyptian administration. During this time, Jordan and Egypt did not normalize the living conditions for the Palestinian refugees, neither did Israel after 1967. All Jewish inhabitants were expelled from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip until the Israel occupation in 1967.[citation needed]

You'll want to notice the [citation needed] indicator. It means that anyone could have written this (it could have been you, AFAIK) and it is not referenced from any source, therefore it holds zero credibility.

In the remote chance that you'd actually be interested in learning the truth about this conflict, I recommend the works of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. Bear in mind that this is probably forbidden literature in your political circles and that if your propaganda masters find you reading this, they'll take away your good-boy badge. Read at your own risk:

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

you've chosen to resort to personal attacks in lieu of a rational argument

That's right. I did. And given that you actually bothered to go through my comment history, you surely noticed that this is something I don't do many times. Especially on these kinds of subjects.

The reason I chose to do so is that, simply, I find it quite impossible to debate rationally with people that hold the beliefs and world-view that you obviously do. The fact that you simply parrot propaganda that has been shown over and over again to be just plain false and mischievous, and would do so even to the point where you would try to push it to someone that has been to (and I assume is from: user "the entropy" ) a country that has been savagely devastated only 5 years ago by the people whose actions and intentions you seek to defend, is pretty much revealing that rational argument is not possible. You will simply deny any objective facts presented and ultimately launch the definite ad-hominem attack of anti-semitism, compared to which my simple remark pales. You see, there's a pattern you people follow.

Before I proceed to actually comment on the links you posted, let me tell you this: you are very lucky that it is me doing the ad hominem attack. Israeli ad hominem attacks are normally in the form of letal high speed lead projectiles, otherwise known as bullets. Any Palestinian or Lebanese person will be able to confirm this to you, if you ever have the courage to confront these people in person, without having them at gunpoint.

The links you posted are ridiculous. The Israeli Declaration of Independence is meaningless to the purposes of this discussion, not to mention that it is hardly an independent and unbiased source of information.
About the other link you posted on the partition of territory, I assume you intend to emphasise this part:

During the first 6 months of 1949, negotiations between the belligerents came to terms over armistice lines that delimited Israel's borders. On the other side, no Palestinian Arab state was founded: Jordan annexed the Arab territories of the Mandatory regions of Samaria and Judea (today known as the West Bank), as well as East Jerusalem, while the Gaza strip came under Egyptian administration. During this time, Jordan and Egypt did not normalize the living conditions for the Palestinian refugees, neither did Israel after 1967. All Jewish inhabitants were expelled from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip until the Israel occupation in 1967.[citation needed]

You'll want to notice the [citation needed] indicator. It means that anyone could have written this (it could have been you, AFAIK) and it is not referenced from any source, therefore it holds zero credibility.

In the remote chance that you'd actually be interested in learning the truth about this conflict, I recommend the works of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. Bear in mind that this is probably forbidden literature in your political circles and that if your propaganda masters find you reading this, they'll take away your good-boy badge. Read at your own risk:

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

you've chosen to resort to personal attacks in lieu of a rational argument

That's right. I did. And given that you actually bothered to go through my comment history, you surely noticed that this is something I don't do many times. Especially on these kinds of subjects.

The reason I chose to do so is that, simply, I find it quite impossible to debate rationally with people that hold the beliefs and world-view that you obviously do. The fact that you simply parrot propaganda that has been shown over and over again to be just plain false and mischievous, and would do so even to the point where you would try to push it to someone that has been to (and I assume is from: user "the entropy" ) a country that has been savagely devastated only 5 years ago by the people whose actions and intentions you seek to defend, is pretty much revealing that rational argument is not possible. You will simply deny any objective facts presented and ultimately launch the definite ad-hominem attack of anti-semitism, compared to which my simple remark pales. You see, there's a pattern you people follow.

Before I proceed to actually comment on the links you posted, let me tell you this: you are very lucky that it is me doing the ad hominem attack. Israeli ad hominem attacks are normally in the form of letal high speed lead projectiles, otherwise known as bullets. Any Palestinian or Lebanese person will be able to confirm this to you, if you ever have the courage to confront these people in person, without having them at gunpoint.

The links you posted are ridiculous. The Israeli Declaration of Independence is meaningless to the purposes of this discussion, not to mention that it is hardly an independent and unbiased source of information.
About the other link you posted on the partition of territory, I assume you intend to emphasise this part:

During the first 6 months of 1949, negotiations between the belligerents came to terms over armistice lines that delimited Israel's borders. On the other side, no Palestinian Arab state was founded: Jordan annexed the Arab territories of the Mandatory regions of Samaria and Judea (today known as the West Bank), as well as East Jerusalem, while the Gaza strip came under Egyptian administration. During this time, Jordan and Egypt did not normalize the living conditions for the Palestinian refugees, neither did Israel after 1967. All Jewish inhabitants were expelled from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip until the Israel occupation in 1967.[citation needed]

You'll want to notice the [citation needed] indicator. It means that anyone could have written this (it could have been you, AFAIK) and it is not referenced from any source, therefore it holds zero credibility.

In the remote chance that you'd actually be interested in learning the truth about this conflict, I recommend the works of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. Bear in mind that this is probably forbidden literature in your political circles and that if your propaganda masters find you reading this, they'll take away your good-boy badge. Read at your own risk:

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians