Unbelievably, I couldn't give a shit whether Americans are watching it or not, but here are a few incredible television shows created by the BBC which spank most - I did say most - comparable American products:

• Life on Mars
• Ashes to Ashes
• Top Gear
• Downton Abbey (which I thought was rubbish, but I hate period drama - rave reviews from others though

As far as journalism goes, The Daily Mail is an embarrassment. It's an affront to journalism which is purely aimed at tacky sensationalism which has only the most tenuous relationship with the truth.

But this conversation wasn't about "the UK's" journalism, it was about the BBC's journalism, which - while it has some weaknesses I have been known to bitch about - can only be regarded as among the best in the world. The ABC in Australia is the only organisation I can think of with a comparable code of journalistic integrity and surprisingly, the only better journalism I've ever seen comes from Al Jazeera of all places.

If you are handing out challenges though, how about you name just one solitary US news outlet which can be trusted to reliably provide balance to the news stories it broadcasts? Just one. I'll wait.

By the way, did you enjoy watching the Olympics live on NBC?

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is a bullshit argument at best, I really wish supposedly intelligent people would stop trotting this shit out. The law and the government is "supposed" to be there to serve the people, not spy on them. This "nothing to hide" bullshit is saying "What's that? You would prefer to have a little privacy? Aha! Now I know you are guilty of something, it's just a matter of catching you!"

Yet still they try, which is why the GP is correct. Instead of focusing on the bullshit celebrity news and presenting an old man's bladder infection as worthy of "breaking news", perhaps the journalists should start thinking about presenting relevant facts in a neutral tone and allowing readers to form their own opinion. You know, like real journalists.

So, 1700 miles per Freedom!

But a terribly British thing.

Yup, looks pretty free to me

....does that mean according to the above discussion on American word usage, it is actually referring to "metaphorically" believing in creationism?

P'shaw, you Americans and your fancy fast moving lingual shifts, you are just confusing people now.

I think you will find a lens which has a low F ratio is known as a "fast" lens.

Looking at a telescope for example, my 10inch Newtonian Reflector has a focal length of 1200mm and an aperture of 254mm, which ends up giving it an f ratio of 4.7, which is considered reasonably "fast" in optical terms. By comparison, a long tubed refractor may have an f ratio of 15, which would make it "slow". The "fast" or "slow" is referring to the amount of time it takes to get x amount of photons to the eyeball/imaging device. The same applies to camera lenses, where an f/2.8 is a fairly fast lens, but an f/22 (or a telephoto lens stopped down to f/22) would be considered to be extremely slow.

If you think about the distances involved, then it is completely possible that clouds of dust in a particular configuration could make the light from a supernova appear to be in a cross shape.

If you have a look at this image of the great rift near Cygnus, you can see how these dust clouds obscure the stars behind them.

Also, I think its pretty safe to say people at this time were reasonably familiar with the relatively transient lightshows provided by the aurora. They may not have understood what caused them, but they saw them often enough for them to be considered fairly commonplace. For a light in the sky to be noteworthy, it would have to hang around for a significant amount of time. In 1987, a supernova took place which took 85 days to reach maximum brightness and gradually faded over the next two years.

Depending how distant the supernova is, (among other things) determines how bright it is and therefore, how likely it is to be visible to the naked eye. Betelgeuse is estimated to be 640 light years away and when it goes supernova, it is expected to be naked eye visible during the day. Given the one mentioned in the chronicle was visible shortly after sunset, it would seem it was a fair bit further away than Betelgeuse.

Finally, while it is completely possible for a sun pillar to appear to have a crucifix shape, I would again say this phenomenon while pretty and interesting in itself, is probably too transitory and common to have been included among chronicles which were recording such things as the deaths and coronations of the most powerful people in the land.

All conjecture, I know, but when you are dealing with 1200 year old non-scientific records, nothing can be nailed down. You simply have to work with conjecture and plausibility.

Wouldn't normally say this about an AC post, but I do believe parent needs to be modded up.