I'm fine with your 'middle of the road' selection, and yes, founding fathers and original trekkers sure relied on their faith a lot to help them endure whatever crossed their way. But each trek shared the same faith, while a modern, multinational trek to Mars would have to have quotas on how many of each faith were allowed on board, and automatically you would just export all the trouble that implies. Second or third generation might be in full fanatic mode once again (and one last time, most likely).

By the way, the absence of religion is not necessarily /nihilism/, it might just be /science/.

Just the contrary, it's a very /concrete/ idea about preserving the human race. Considering how many tax dollars are being wasted year after year on stuff like saving private enterprises from going bankrupt, I figure some of that /abstract/ money might just as well be redirected towards this useful purpose. But that's just me then, and folks like Branson.

Surviving an impact that kills all sentient life on earth is all the reason I need. Earth orbit or a sprawling Moon base might serve that purpose just as well, but the existing ISS is far too small and way to fragile to ensure our species' survival. And while it's unthinkable right now, Mars shows at least some promise of eventually enjoying some degree of terraforming. Until then, set up domes and indoor greenhouses to nurture the colonists, don't forget to send all the heavy machinery needed for exploring and mining the natural resources of the planet so that they can survive and thrive on their own, and, most important of all, ban all (Terran) religion. Let them have a fresh start.

You obviously misread that info, it's a retina *burning* display (that's why you are supposed to read the manual *before* switching on the device, ...). On a more serious note: speaking as an e-ink display device owner, I just don't get why people would buy iPads or other tablets specifically for reading ebooks. I get tired easily after reading more than a few pages of text on a LCD display, whereas I can consume some 200 pages a night on my Sony Reader.

But then, maybe the Retina display will read the books for me, who knows? ;)

They are most helpful for your health, because what good is being able to instantiate as many instances of a gym as you like if you can't go to any of them?

... and there you made your mistake. While that's a grammatically and semantically correct sentence, you're more likely to phrase it as, "Morgen schreibe ich noch einen.", actually using present tense to convey a future statement. I won't bother to RTFA, so I'll never know the argument it's proposing, but there might be some sense to it. There _is_ a tendency to melt present and future in German, and maybe that does re-program everyone's synapses accordingly, maybe not.

Anyway, the whole point would even be more valid for the Japanese who don't even know a future tense.

And here, dear children, are two sayings that might convey the article's thesis, one in German, and one in Japanese:

"Was Du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen!"
"Ashita yarou wa bakayarou!"

Yes, but, see, Apple are more like Twitter than like Facebook, they don't need friends, they want followers.

Well, you could try screwing your wrists to the bezel, with the added bonus of feeling like a real saviour.

I miss Sun, too, but she was Jin's woman anyway, you know...

I know, that's why I wrote, "there's an app for that," but as far as I know, it only covers so much features of the main application.

Problem with that is: Farmville (like a lot of games on FB) is a flash game, and Flash would have to go if FB would become an Apple asset. And, while I know that "there's an app for that" (TM), it doesn't seem likely that Steve could convince Zynga to go all HTML5 just for the fun of it. Well, not against the Google millions already poured inside Zynga, that is...

Yah, Android-paranoid Facebooktime (only available on 3.5inch and 10inch screens, but never, ever on 7inch)!

Even if you couldn't imagine this, as you say, the Playstation Eye camera has a rather capable microphone array built in, which is capable enough for what you described. Some games, take Singstar for example, have had voice commands for some time now (I think, two years or something), it's just that Sony doesn't value that feature highly enough to make them put it into the firmware, and use it system wide.

I don't long for it, either, by the way. I mean, who wants to have a feature that enables their spouse to shout: "xbox, force shutdown!" across the room whenever they are disgruntled about something? Or all the inadvertent voice commands the system tries to execute whenever you are having a ball with some friends? On a more serious note: contrary to Wiimote 2.0 (or whatever it's called), and Playstation Move, Kinect doesn't seem to live up to its specifications, or rather, people's expectations. Lag is still massive, the system can't track more than two players at the same time (expect disruptions whenever party people crowd up around the players, and while you're at it: strip the cameras' field of vision of any distractions like sofas, bookshelves, rotating fans, and the like!), it's by far the most expensive motion control system of all the consoles because you'll have to buy the whole set and can't scale it up over time, like with Move.

I messed up currencies once, above, but that's not misleading at all, since prices in euros and dollars happen to be (at least for consoles and peripherals, that is) mysteriously alike. A controller that costs 59 dollars in the US will cost 59 euros overseas. Well, the euro price will normally include local VAT, so the difference is not as high as it would seem if you're just looking at the exchange rate.

Anyway, "59.99 Euro for another controller" is incorrect, as a Move controller changes hands for a mere 39.99 euros. Plus, you don't actually need the nunchuck controllers for Move games if you are comfortable enough using a Dual Shock 3 or SixAxxis controller with just one hand. Which was my point: Move doesn't actually necessitate one big purchase on day one, it scales nicely with your personal requirements.

If you decide to play it safe and just get the starter pack, play all the demos just to conclude it's nothing but dreck and hot air, you probably won't regret having spent those 60 bucks as much as you would miss your more than 200 bucks if you misinvested in a Wii or, so help you G*d, in Kinect.