Give everyone a robot. That robot can go earn a living for them.
Disclaimer: this is a joke. Please don't tell me how this is not practical.
a star tens of times more massive than the sun that exhausted its nuclear fuel, exploded, then collapsed to form a black hole.
If it exhausted its "nuclear fuel," how could it explode?
When they say the fuel is "exhausted", what they really mean is that there is no longer enough to maintain an equilibrium with gravity. There is still a lot left. As gravity sucks down the remaining fuel it increases the pressure, heating it up enough for a big fusion reaction.
Ender's Game is the quintessential classic military sci-fi book.
I have to disagree with that quote. Ender's Game is an anti-war book. If you want the quintessential classic military sci-fi book, read Starship Troopers.
You say "it's there, we've detected it" -- isn't that not strictly true? I mean, aren't their theories (MoND) that could potentially explain things w/o Dark Matter. Not saying they're likely, just that as I understand it they aren't completely ruled out....or am I wrong?
You're technically correct. We've detected something or some phenomenon, and there are theories that can explain that something without dark matter, but like you said, they're not likely. Perhaps I was a little too dismissive of the fringe theories. Without direct evidence of what it is, all we really have is Occam's razor.
I believe that for the most part, people don't have a "natural" talent for what they are good at -- instead, they have a strong desire for it, which makes the many hours of work they put in seem more like fun than work..
Is the "strong desire" for particular things genetic? For instance, programming is fun for me, and was fun the first time I tried it. But I know many people who consider it some kind of punishment.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso