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Ah, thanks for putting "Rampantly Offensive" in your review title Ars, now I can safely close that tab and disregard the rest of your opinions. I'm not interested in reading a review that even assumes something can rampantly offensive. Obligatory SMBC http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2164

Link

First let me state that, to paraphrase an SMBC comic don't listen to people talking about something they are not an expert in.

Second, rarely do the "you can't have life/intelligent life because..." people have both a biology degree and an astrophysics degree. You need both to make those kind of comments.

Thirdly, we now just about jack-sh!t about the majority of the mass of the universe. Most mass is "dark matter", and of the stuff that isn't dark matter, most of it is in the objects we call black holes at the center of galaxies. So we have no freaking idea at all about whether the majority of the universe is capable of supporting life/friendly to it.

Fourth, to paraphrase a visually dramatic, but (aside from this quote), fairly innane movie "Life will find a way". The entire thing about life is that it adjusts ITSELF to the universe, not the other way around. We are a life form that likes 1 g, 1 atmosphere of pressure, etc. not because those conditions are helpful for life but instead because THAT is where we evolved. Yes, 100g and 100 atmosphere would be harder to create life in, evlove in, but at the same time, we cant survive in 4g, 10 atmospheres, but life can easily evolve to do so.

The best argument there is against intelligent life being wide spread is the lack of signs/contact. But that says nothing about unintelligent life, and assumes that life would use radio waves. It is as likely that other intelligent life forms are dark matter based - and never discovered radio - as it is for there to be no other intelligent life in the galaxy. Or simply that radio waves have disadvantages we don't know about. A quantum physics related random shifts in signal over long distances could obscure intelligent content, rendering radio waves indistinguishable from background radiation.

Probably some others, but this will do ... pig.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2189#comic

Okay, not an xkcd link, but smbc is good too: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2189

New rule for Science Journalism: If your article can be summarized as "No.", don't write it.

I remember something else that many experts claimed would be a passing fad. And they certainly seem to have been completely correct when they said it about the internet...

It is, the next big thing will be chewin' on skunks.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=760#comic

obligatory SMBC.

Talk about ripping off SMBC comics ... http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2213#comic

So properly authorized programs shouldn't be able to make any changes on a system?

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2237#comic

Rather, it's like they were using Amazon Fresh when they suddenly learned this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=876#comic

no, but I can link to the related saturday morning breakfast cereal comic.

This is why experimental scientists hare theoretical scientists

Could just not use the phone in the bath....

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225

Re:How many digists of pi do you know?

...one?

http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1192#comic

Doesn't that mean we have become GODS? I think it does... lets just agree that it does...

Not quite...

Late April Fools joke? Otherwise... http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2159#comic

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075

I'd honestly bet that illegal drugs legalized and regulated would very likely cost the same or more as now

That's an interesting , I'd also be quite glad to make a similar bet... against you. Except, I've got the benefit of seeing how prohibition went...

Unfortunately for the scientists at Sao Paolo State University, there's thousands of years of research in the opposing field of study.

Appropriate smbc reference.

obligatory comic: smbc

This topic is featured on the current SMBC comic!

You must have a free exchange of ideas in order to get to the truth. Discriminating only holds you back in the end, for you will find yourself discriminating against the truth. Perhaps we will find one day that much of the "entire dept." is in fact wrong. But not if we don't allow other theories.

It was this comic.

admittedly, there is a sort of cultural decay (in the US at least) where hard work appears to be optional and thus awful; real money is perceived to come out of ruthlessness coupled with a mystical (i mean that in the worst possible way) "cleverness". now, if real success hinges on this mystical component anyway, why work?

I'd say that perception is quite reasonable based on the observable evidence, with the caveat that the 'mystical' component is pure dumb luck. Not to say that intelligence and hard work have nothing to do with success, by any means, but they generally just move you about within the "half decent income" bracket, while some insidious moron who happens to get a reality show makes more in a year than you will in a decade, for a fraction for a fraction of the effort. You wonder why working hard seems to be a poor prospect? Because there are far greater rewards to be had for not working hard. Basically, this.

There's also a very similar SMBC cartoon (although a little later than the XKCD one).

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2164

Correlation implies Casualty!

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1801

“Anecdotal evidence isn't valid!”

“Yes it is! I once used an anecdote as evidence, and later it turned out I was right!”

Please stop giving them ideas.

Cops will be the good guys when they are replaced by robots. Until then, they are just as lazy, corruptible, malicious, greedy, biased, and negligent as the rest of humanity.

Let's face it, it won't end well.

This reminds me of a comic about an engineer at a philosopher conference.

All the so-called great philosophy questions can be answered definitively if you allow for the terms to be properly defined.

Defined by whom? And what is this "properly"? You think the point of that comic is that if we'd only let the engineers handle philosophy, they'd figure it all out right-quick?

The profession of the philosopher is to refuse adequate definition to these questions, so that they are unanswerable by design; their work is no better or more useful than religions assertions.

This is about as ignorant as an engineer mocking theoretical physics ("Oh, so your particle accelerator's going to help me build bridges, huh?") or a programmer mocking theoretical mathematics ("Play with your pretty partition function approximations, we have Real Work to do on these databases"). If you truly think religion or philosophy offer nothing to human knowledge, you are even more blinkered and dogmatic -- not to mention foolish -- than the zealots you seek to ridicule.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2117#comic

This reminds me of a comic about an engineer at a philosopher conference.

All the so-called great philosophy questions can be answered definitively if you allow for the terms to be properly defined. The profession of the philosopher is to refuse adequate definition to these questions, so that they are unanswerable by design; their work is no better or more useful than religions assertions.

Works the same way in English

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075#comic

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1857#comic

Every advanced Tech will eventually be used as a cat toy. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1828

this comic seems to be accurate and appropriate every time a slashdot article title ends with a question mark...

SMBC's new rule for science journalism.

Wait, we need support now?

For a change away from xkcd: "Horrible Truth: All technological progress is due to Humanity's unearned sense of entitlement"

Ob. SMBC

Maybe that should go for Slashdot headlines as well.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1987

I reserve the right to terminate myself before the zombie hordes start devouring my flesh.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1765#comic

I think politics has its own brand of crowd sourcing. This sums things up nicely.

And then long story short, Southern Methodist Episcopalian Wesleyan Church is exactly right.

A few days ago smbc comics was hit with a Java exploit in the form of a popup that installed a trojan on users machines. People affected were discussing it here; from this it looks like mostly Windows machines were infected, but at least one user claims Ubuntu was affected.