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So says the mud monkey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., 115 years after the first aeroplane. Yep, uh huh, sure, http://mentalfloss.com/article..., mud monkey physics. Sorry but your reality will always be based upon your perception of it, as narrow and primitive as it is. Will we go faster than gravity, yes PS the speed of gravity is the fastest that light can go, so speed of gravity is the measure not speed of light. A child with their hands over their eyes, you can not see them, hence they can not see you, seriously your position is that silly. It makes no difference whether or not they can see us in the tiniest detail or in the tiniest thought, we still have our goals to reach and that includes spreading out into the rest of the galaxy, stop allowing your fear to define what is possible.

Yep.

I remember one of the local councils where some debris landed sent a fine to NASA for littering http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Intel is going to lose on this one, because of the Creedence Clearwater precedent, in which it was ruled that you cannot be accused of plagiarizing yourself:

http://mentalfloss.com/article...

A Van Diagram shows the intersection of boxes and cars.

http://mentalfloss.com/sites/d...

Take a drive through Nevada. Piling up on one another is not going to be an issue for quite a while.

Jefferson? You mean that Jefferson? Oh my! Don't he make Trump sound nice :-)

Social media is no worse than Hearst's or Murdoch's (as just two examples) yellow journalism, the kind that regularly gets us into wars on false pretenses. Social media has no monopoly on rumor mongering by a long shot. It's not like this stuff hasn't been done before. Old habits...

It's up to us to filter out the chaff to find the real story. You know what they say about eyewitness testimony... it's hardly reliable.

the Founding Fathers in no way envisioned the sort of breakdowns in political norms and virulent factionalism that's taken hold today

Oh brother! You're joking, right?

Squatter's rights apply to situations where the squatter has been expending resources (money, labor) to maintain a property in the owner's stead..

Nope. "A method of gaining legal title to real property by the actual, open, hostile, and continuous possession of it to the exclusion of its true owner for the period prescribed by state law. "
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Squatters+rights

You don't get a claim on a property just because you've been secretly living on it or using it.

Right: it has to be open and continuous, not "secret". More here http://mentalfloss.com/article...

You must have actually expended resources to maintain it - stuff the owner should have been doing but was neglecting to do. The squatter's rights are compensation for the resources you've expended doing the landlord's job.

Nope.

People will attempt to claim that lies are protec[t]ed under the first amendment, which is simply not true.

Feel free to point out any part of the amendment that allows for your exception. And while you're snooping around, take a glance at history.

There is no requirement that you believe lies. Take your quest for censorship elsewhere.

Or even oneself !

* John Fogerty sued for copying himself

Yes just like we harvest them for their skin to make plastic wrap.

Over at Mental Floss, Erik Sass is compiling a tremendous body of work on the topic.
http://mentalfloss.com/section...
As of today, there are 235 articles. I believe there are about 1 to 2 per week for several years. He is covering the events that lead to the War and occurred 100 years ago. Snippets from journals, letters, and old photographs help convey what it was really like then. It has been a very large eye-opener for me. As a history buff, I thought I knew a good deal about the topic...but there is so much more.

Just to be clear, I am not connected with Mental Floss or Mr. Sass in any fashion. Only a large fan of this series.

Installment #1 posted on November 4th, 2011
http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Over at Mental Floss, Erik Sass is compiling a tremendous body of work on the topic.
http://mentalfloss.com/section...
As of today, there are 235 articles. I believe there are about 1 to 2 per week for several years. He is covering the events that lead to the War and occurred 100 years ago. Snippets from journals, letters, and old photographs help convey what it was really like then. It has been a very large eye-opener for me. As a history buff, I thought I knew a good deal about the topic...but there is so much more.

Just to be clear, I am not connected with Mental Floss or Mr. Sass in any fashion. Only a large fan of this series.

Installment #1 posted on November 4th, 2011
http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Great writers don't tend to be highly intelligent (if they were, they'd get work that pays better).

Stephen King wrote several novels or so while working as a teacher during the school year and the laundromat during the summers. Most were rejected. His first published novel, "Carrie," earned him a $2,500 advance. The paperback rights got him $200,000. The rest was history.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/53235/how-stephen-kings-wife-saved-carrie-and-launched-his-career

It wouldn't be very fulfilling for someone with a brain the size of a planet to spend all their time with people who only talked about soaps and sport.

I used to put people to sleep by discussing why Adolf Hitler attacking the Russians and opening a second front during World War II led to his destruction.

Even so, the logic for the pacman ghosts is actually rather simple.

Have a look at this article where they explain it a little.

Of course, this simplicity is one of the consequences of the system's limitations. After all there's only so much the hardware could do and the space available in the cartridge to store the full game.

Even cheaper than that would be eye patches.

Seriously, this problem has been solved for centuries. Why are we still discussing it?

While we're at it, let's not forget the contributions to the English language that come from The Great White North:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~steffa...
http://geekmom.com/2013/12/55-...
http://mentalfloss.com/article...
http://www.americansguide.ca/i...
http://www.craigmarlatt.com/ca...

That's enough for now. Note in particular that Canadians can say "homo milk" without giggling.

If I was making that joke I would have pluralised it because...

a) Readers are, on average, slightly dumber than the editors.
b) One Fischertechnik, like one Meccano, is NFUTA.

The Terminator actually used Apple ][ assembly.
http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Pick some pacific island paradise high enough MSL to avoid global warming .if you're a skeptic, consider it an insurance policy just in case you're wrong, because no true libertarian makes absolute declarations otherwise they wouldn't believe in the need for free speech, yes? Buy it outright or take it and be prepared to defend it. My nom nom nominations: http://whenonearth.net/15-unin... http://mentalfloss.com/article... http://webecoist.momtastic.com... http://www.touropia.com/uninha... http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...

Here's a picture of some vantablack applied on top of aluminum foil. It really looks like something out of those Wiley Coyote cartoons with "portable holes".

http://mentalfloss.com/article...

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmw...

That makes perfect sense. And by the same logic, if someone uploads or shares a movie that a distributor would have paid between $10-20 million for the rights to distribute, the fine should be about $50-150k.

It's important to remember that people aren't being sued for downloading, they're being sued for uploading. And distribution rights are expensive. Apple doesn't pay Warner Brothers $1, once, in exchange for being able to distribute some new song. AMC Theaters doesn't give New Line Cinemas a simple $14 for the rights to show Straight Outta Compton on a thousand screens for the next three months.

Remember back when Michael Jackson bought the distribution rights to the Beatles' catalog for several million? It worked out to around $20-30k per song... which happens to be right about the same amount Jammie Thomas and Joel Tenenbaum had to pay for their infringement.

I'm not sure if you don't understand the underlying economics of the movie industry, or if you don't understand how popcorn time works - or both. Companies don't pay a lump sum for "distribution rights". Using AMC Theatres as you did, the studio would be paid per ticket sold to see the show (basically the entire ticket price, with the venue making income on concession sales). So if a ticket is $8, and 10 people attend the movie, AMC pays New Line $80. If 1,000,000 people attend, AMC pays $8,000,000. Your theoretical example of a Hollywood studio only making $14 in theaters can and does happen. Here is a list of 11 movies that made less than $400 gross while they were in theaters - some staring actors you probably recognize: http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Popcorn time seeds the torrent while you are watching the movie. So if I watch a movie and "upload" 4% of it to 12 different people before it ends, I only "distributed" 48% of a single movie in total. Using our $8 ticket price, wouldn't I owe $3.80? I can't imagine it getting to $50,000 - $150,000 as you suggest. The only exception to this would be the one person who originally uploaded the movie to the internet... but that would be both off topic and contrary to your 'uploads' statement so I won't address it.

Yes, and to think, the only cost was the real but abstract to the human mind risk of killing off all life on the planet (and it almost happened on more than one occasion. . .).

Because the "west" never :

Buried nuclear waste in cardboard boxes : http://www.digitup.org/onsite....
Or had a river actually catch fire : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
or had a much smaller nuclear accident : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
or have at least 8 known lost nuclear weapons: http://mentalfloss.com/article...
or buried tons of toxic chemicals then built houses on the dump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What is obvious to a discerning person, is that Google is engaged in a social engineering campaign, not terribly dissimilar to the campaign waged by Kellogs in the late 1800's and early 1900's. http://mentalfloss.com/article...

You say, ". . . assumption that their differences are significant to influence . . ." And, I say that you are being judgemental and subjective. When 80% of a group of people tell you that they are not interested in something, THAT IS SIGNIFICANT! It's alright for you, and Google, to try to understand WHY that group of people are uninterested in $activity. It is NOT acceptable for you and Google (or Kelogg's) to try to force changes in those people.

Unproven assumption? How about empirical data?

Historically, males have been the risk takers, and females have by choice taken fewer risks. Guys do outrageous shit, and girls seldom do anything terribly outrageous. That's the way it is.

I say, "Fuck off, Google!"

All of that said - if there are any of you who overtly or covertly DISCOURAGE girls/women from working in STEM careers, you can fuck off right along with Google and company. Freedom. Freedom is all about doing whatever the hell you WANT TO DO!

Sure, you can be sued for violating the copyright on your own creation. John Fogerty was, in one of the most egregious misuses of copyright law to date: http://mentalfloss.com/article... Yeah, John Fogerty got sued for writing a song that sounded too much like a John Forgerty song. Go figure...

A big screen TV is no longer a rich man's luxury. The best displays are about $2,000. If you pay more, either you're paying for a brand, or you are buying a jumbo screen that's 65" or higher. Which even then, it isn't going to exceed $10,000 unless either you buy snake oil shit (think the 'monster cable' of TVs) or you buy something that's so big it can't even fit into the living room of a typical mansion.

The rich man's luxury these days depends on the kind of rich man you are. Some like coke and sex parties, some like menageries, some like exotic car collections, some like Learjets, some like live-in sushi chefs, and some like to own one of every kind of weapon in existence.

John Mcafee for example loves coke and sex parties.

That's the way it always has been. The rich aren't satisfied with consumer goods and never have been. Here's just a couple examples from the 1920s. Drugs and underaged girls aren't a recent invention.

> It's simple, if it's copyrighted, it's copyrighted. It doesn't matter that it's a derivative of your own earlier works.

It's not that simple.

It didn't stop that idiot Zaentz from suing John Fogerty over John Fogerty. i.e. He believed John Fogerty had plagiarized John Fogerty via his earlier work "The Old Man Down the Road" which sounded too much like "Run Through the Jungle."

How the hell can you be sued for creating a later work when you wrote earlier work?? How can the later work NOT be derivative when it is _your_ *style* ?? This is completely retarded.

When you have the same bloody 4 chords repeated over and over as Axis of Awesome points out, copyright gets ridiculous. What's next? Suing people because they used the same 3 notes? 2 notes? 1 note?

BIFF!!! KAPOW!

Awwww you got Mr. Kowalruski good! You knocked that walrus out!

He's so ashamed he can't get his flippers on the keyboard!

again!

LOL, have you seen the internet before? Or people for that matter?

Because, really, the aggregate behavior of the internet is only slightly less mature than an 11 year old with ADHD.

For as long as there have been humans, if you have an open, anonymous forum, you will get this kind of stuff.

The idiocy is pretending the world will magically behave to standards of being "adults" just because you think they should. In fact, that's bordering on irrational, because it's simply not founded in anything.

If you want nice things, make 'em yourself .. don't rely on the fucking internet to do it for you. And sure as hell don't be surprised when someone puts in a penis joke.

Humans are collectively base, puerile, childish, obscene, intelligent, contradictory, funny, stupid, smart ... and everything else you can imagine.

Deal with it.

I'm firmly of the opinion that any crowd sourced data both should and will have dick and fart jokes. Because it's funny, and it demonstrates that the idea of expecting humanity to conform to your standards of behavior is idiotic, and completely ignorant of reality.

To most people the internet is a toy, a diversion, a source of amusement ... that Google wants us to write them a product they can use to sell more ads ... that's not our damned problem.

The internet is one thing, and one thing only: a Steaming Heap of Innovative Technology, in the hands of a billion poo-flinging monkeys.

Don't expect it to trend towards mature and erudite behavior. So far society hasn't done that on balance either.

I'm putting this guy's speech on the level of this. Compare and enjoy.

> English is the most beautiful language, and it keeps getting better. It needs no fixing and iIts not going anywhere. So get used to it [if you haven't already].

I see someone forgot the sarcasm tag.

English is a pretty fucked up language simply due to its inconsistency

* When the same word can both be a noun and verb, this is a problem.
This IS a valid sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
http://mentalfloss.com/article...

* words containing "ough" are inconsistent
http://www.say-it-in-english.c...

* Stupid homonyms

How is 'read' pronounced? I read the book -- like red? Did you read the book ? like reed? Why does tense change the pronunciation?

Which witch? Whether Weather?

* In some cases we *transform* "ay" to "aid"

Lay -> laid
Overlay -> overlaid
Pay -> paid
Say -> said

* In other cases we *add* "ed" to "ay"

belay -> belayed
delay -> delayed
inlay -> inlaid
relay -> relayed

* J wasn't invented until after the 1611 King James Bible. Is J pronounced like Y or not??

  Hallelujah -- like y

Why the hell would you invent a new glyph for the same bloody sound when you _already_ have one??

* Is G is hard or soft?

Is gib pronounced like gib or jib ?

* Stupid plurality

We'll begin with box, and the plural is boxes, But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese, Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice, But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men, Why shouldn't the plural of pan be pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine, But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet, But I give a boot⦠would a pair be beet?
If one is a tooth, and a whole set is teeth, Why shouldn't the plural of booth be beeth?

If the singular is this, and the plural is these, Why shouldn't the plural of kiss be kese?
Then one may be that, and three be those, Yet the plural of hat would never be hose.
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren, But though we say mother, we never say methren.

The masculine pronouns are he, his and him, But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim.
So our English, I think you will agree, Is the trickiest language you ever did see.

I take it you already know of tough, and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you on hiccough, through, slough and though.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it's said like bed, not bead! For goodness sake, don't call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat, (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
A moth is not a moth in mother, Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose - Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward. And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart. Come, come, I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language: Why, man alive, I'd learned to talk when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried, I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.

* I before E except after C
  beige, cleidoic, codeine, conscience, deify, deity, deign, dreidel, eider, eight, either, feign, feint, feisty, foreign, forfeit, freight, gleization, gneiss, greige, greisen, heifer, heigh-ho, height, heinous, heir, heist, leitmotiv, neigh, neighbor, neither, peignoir, prescient, rein, science, seiche, seidel, seine, seismic, seize, sheik, society, sovereign, surfeit, teiid, veil, vein, weight, weir, weird ??????

And it can be hilarious.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/56279/who-originally-said-im-not-doctor-i-play-one-tv

Which is also the reason why "dentists" in advertisements wear stethoscopes.

Herbal supplements are available in standardized preparations. Synthetic preparations (created under so-called "lab conditions") can be impure and vary considerably in purity as well. Extensive and continuous product testing is required in either case. Counterfeit prescription drugs are a growing problem. The idea that an "herbal preparation cannot be consistently effective" is BS. Generally speaking, herbal supplements are safer than prescription medicine, even if you don't know the purity and even if you don't follow the directions.

As long as we're fear-mongering, I'll just leave this here for your enjoyment: How Much Rodent Filth Does the FDA Allow?

They better be better plans than the last two times the USA tried it and got its butt kicked (1175, 1812). :-) Or is it six times the USA has invaded?
http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Of course, if the USA really has to invade Canada, like say, if lots more oil is discovered there and the USA political system need to redirect who gets the profits from it, or if Canada experiments with a "basic income" again and the USA fears "contagion", then everyone will be screaming if there are no plans. :-) See also Chomsky on:
"The Threat of a Good Example"
http://www.chomsky.info/books/...
"No country is exempt from U.S. intervention, no matter how unimportant. In fact, it's the weakest, poorest countries that often arouse the greatest hysteria. ... As far as American business is concerned, Nicaragua could disappear and nobody would notice. The same is true of El Salvador. But both have been subjected to murderous assaults by the US, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and many billions of dollars. There's a reason for that. The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, "why not us?" ... "

I guess Canada is safe for now because it is not weak and poor?

It's a no win situation making such plans or not if your job is to consider every eventuality.

Still, sometimes the best way to win is not to play. This was written by a Marine Major General and two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Smedley Butler:
http://www.warisaracket.org/ra...
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."

Consider, for example, the Strv 103 tank that Sweden designed. They are designed for home defense on Sweden's mountainous terrain, not going abroad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
"It was known for its unconventional turretless design, with a fixed gun traversed by engaging the tracks and elevated by adjusting the hull suspension. ... The Strv 103 was designed and manufactured in Sweden. It was developed in the 1950s and was the first main battle tank to use a turbine engine. The result was a very low-profile design with an emphasis on defence and heightened crew protection level. ..."

That design reflects Major General Butler's point.

Although they have since gone more conventional in their designs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

The really laughable thing about all these plans is that, as was said in "Brittle Power" (or maybe "Energy, Vulnerability, and War"), quoting from memory from 1980s books, "a troop of boy scouts could shut down the USA's vital energy infrastructure" given the fragility of oil pipelines where every segment is essentially a single point of fail

Of course we all benefit from patents, copyright & trademarks, right?

There may be a battle brewing in the sound of cars. ~20 years ago, Harley Davidson tried to trademark the sound of their motorcycle, but that didn't pass. Many others have though and we can expect more as 'sound branding' becomes more widespread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://mentalfloss.com/article...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

I haven't heard floppy drives for a while. Also, dot matrix printers. And the sound of rotary telephones as you're dialing them. Actually, Mental Floss had an article about this.

All languages are derived from a precursor language. What makes a derivative 'crappy'?

If any language is a crappy derivative, then English has the most going for it. Maybe as a native English speaker you never realized, but English is a terribly inconsistent language concerning spelling and pronounciation.

I'm not sure which humans you are referring to, but none of the one's I've met breed anywhere close to as much of rabbits. Rabbits can produce 1000 offspring in their lifetime. Even the most prolific humans only produce 20 or so offspring in their lifetime. Funny though, if you compare mass of the full grown humans to that of the rabbits, you might get close to the same amount. 20, 200 pound humans would weigh 4000 pounds, which would equal 1000 rabbits at 4 pounds. Which seems about the right weight for a rabbit.

> So...as an American can we borrow a few of your ideas?

What do you mean? American already did ...

* First Electric Light Bulb
* Basketball
* Heart Pacemaker
* JAVA
* Garbage Bags
* Radio Broadcast
* Portable Walkie Talkie
* Insulin Process
* Newspaper
* Kerosene
* Wondebra
* Odometer

References:

* http://www.dealathons.com/blog...
* http://mentalfloss.com/article...

...but people are still dying of starvation and lack of water on THIS planet. =\

I know space exploration is very important, but shit, let's get real here. I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.

That's a good point, and that's why we spent several trillions of dollars on welfare and foreign aid since the space program began.

The question you didn't ask, but should, is "What are our priorities in spending?"
You say welfare is more important than space exploration. It appears this is correct because we spend vastly more money on welfare.
Nasa takes about a half percent of the federal budget. What percent would you have it be?

Here's where all the money is really going. This kind of shows how relatively trivial is the amount we're spending on NASA.
http://mentalfloss.com/article...

Materials:

Primarily constructed of poplar wood, vacu-formed plastic, rolled sheet metal tubes for both the engine pods from the back of the struts to the start of the nacelle caps, and plastic for the main sensor dish and detailing (light covers, etc.). The front and rear of the engine pods or nacelles are of wood. The nacelle grill plates brass. Rolled steel wires were also inserted through its original pipe support for lights. ...

The model's principal designer, Walter "Matt" Jefferies, worked with concepts provided by Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry. At first, Paramount Studios constructed a rough 4-inch balsa and cardboard prototype. A 3-foot "pilot" model mostly of solid wood was then built by model-maker Richard C. Datin under subcontract to the Howard Anderson Company. Enlarging the plans for the 3-foot model resulted in the final 11-foot model shown here. The Anderson Company again turned to Datin who contracted it out to Production Model Shop of Burbank, California, with Datin supervising the construction while he did the detail work.

Paramount donated the model to the National Collection in 1974.

http://mentalfloss.com/article...

One small problem with that is many of the heads are actually full bodies, making moving them that bit harder.

Easter Island statue

Over $25 million dollars was spent to install a battery, transmitter and microphone into a cat, with an antenna in its tail.

They dropped the cat off to eavesdrop on two men in a park near the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC. The cat was hit and killed by a taxi while walking across the road.

The project was expensive, gruesome, and a failure. It was abandoned in 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

http://mentalfloss.com/article...

That's what they want you to think. The truth is that there is now an entire army of CIA spy cats.

Over $25 million dollars was spent to install a battery, transmitter and microphone into a cat, with an antenna in its tail.

They dropped the cat off to eavesdrop on two men in a park near the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC. The cat was hit and killed by a taxi while walking across the road.

The project was expensive, gruesome, and a failure. It was abandoned in 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

http://mentalfloss.com/article...

You're new to molecular genetics.

http://www.curioustaxonomy.net...

http://mentalfloss.com/article...

http://www.npr.org/templates/s...
Fruit Fly Scientists Swatted Down Over 'Cheap Date'

The whole issue is who gets to decide if the clain is false or not.
In Belgium the comany I used to work for we received several claims from SABAM for people uploading things through e.g. napster and other sharing programs (So this dates back a while) asking first for the name and address of the people doing this.
Legal told me to caugh it up and I told them no, because of the law on privacy. They must come with a legal order, otherwise WE would be punishable as a company. That was something they did not want to do.
Next SABAM asked us to block the sharing of content, to which we said no as well (unless court order).

The idea behind all this was that I, nor anybody in the company can legaly determine if there was a copyright infrindgement or not. I culd have a legal document of being allowed to stream Metallica's music and they just don't like that I have that.

It is similar to saying "I do not like that you park in front of my driveway." and I say "But that isn't your driveway. It is illgal poured asphalt." If we can not figure it out, we go to court, but untill then, I park there.

It obviously helped that at that time I read an official letter from the court letter that as long as no money was involed. e.g. people sharing music, SABAM should not bother the legal system. The moment money would be involved (e.g. burn CDs and sell them) they would be happy to help.

The courts should decide who is right and who is wrong (not commercial entity like e.g. Judge Judy

This is dated information. If you take legal advice from me, you owe me 10 quadrillian Euro.

so out of all the shit that needs fixed on earth, your proposal is to spend billions of dollars to see how long it takes for moondust to get on a sliver of glass

fuck you

Yes, actually. This is what I want to spend my money on.
We've spent trillions, on trying to fix shit that ain't ever going to get fixed, and I'd like to take a break and look at something pretty for a while.
Some money spent here:
http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/...

But, just to put things into perspective, look at what we're really spending money on:

http://mentalfloss.com/article....

You think that we can't spend part of our cigarette budget on something else.

My library has a digital subscription to Mental Floss magazine, which I check out every time I remember it (I'm doing so now, thanks for reminding me). The best part about newspapers and magazines (analog or digital) is that, when I pick them up, I read stories I would not otherwise seek out. Mental Floss is especially cool because of the interesting trivia represented as infographics, and their featured interviews are almost always awesome even if not very well known (two recent ones: Bill Watterson and Neil deGrasse Tyson [before Cosmos, that is]).