Seeing as we haven't managed this in the real world, I'm not holding my breath. It should be easier in a game, but the more complex the world, the harder it's going to be, and I'm guessing they're getting more complex.

Hehe! The rats were shown the maze beforehand and were getting sweetened condensed milk, something like 10% fat, but 50% sugar/carbs so to be honest I don't know how it would affect their appetite. I just read TFA, not the full study - they could have mentioned this but it seems a fairly major factor left to be left unexplored.

No-one seems to have spotted the fact that the rats who were being fed fatty food may have had less motivation for completing the maze, given that the reward was more food. Am I missing something or is this entire study invalid?

This extraordinary conclusion reached with two groups of 13 people, one East Asian, the other Western. Well, that's that settled then.

But learning a new language can often alter the way you clarify your thoughts. I'm learning Haskell at the moment and it's a bit of a sidestep mentally.

Indeed. To put this in further context, the Daily Mail ran an article titled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" in the 1930s.

I'm still confused over how he's going to excise the homosexuality from the script. The book is terrific, but a great deal of the plot covers alterations in social mores, sexuality in particular. I suppose that angle could be covered in other ways, but it's certainly going to be nothing like the book. On the other hand, I can't imagine whichever studio is behind this allowing him to leave it all in, intact. Wouldn't appeal to their target market.

The way that people parrot Quantum Theory at the moment (in an attempt to explain anything vaguely unexplained) has parallels with the Victorian reliance on the Luminiferous Aether.

This thing is hard-wired and scoops everything, and the vast majority of people who are targeted won't even realise it's happening. I think it's considerably worse than what google gets up to.

There's not a great difference between that and the way that papers will alter their headlines based on stories that are popular with other papers. And the papers are probably using google's various tools to do similar things. At the end of the day, it's public information. News broadcasters do the same thing when deciding which stories to run with.

The real story here is how the agency obviously thinks it can frighten ISPs into giving them a free ride, by invoking the dreaded paedo-bashing tabloids. Pretty shabby behaviour.

That game was absolute class, I won't hear a word said against it. I got it out and played it on the emulator a month or two ago. It's still excellent.

You are neglecting to mention my very favourite sea-bird: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Shag

The Wikinews articles on the Scorpions fiasco should give you a good idea. Most of them were listed there. Thank heavens I left Virgin Media last year, what a shower.