That's actually what it's like at "Mojave Spaceport". Hangers of small aviation practicioners and their junk. Gary Hudson, Burt Rutan, etc. Old aircraft and parts strewn about. Left-over facilities from Rotary Rocket used by flight schools. A medium-sized facility for Orbital. Some big facilities for BAE, etc. An aircraft graveyard next door.

SS2 has not completed testing and it is probable that there will be a need for redesign of one or more components. So, this is a really bad time to have the hand-off. Publicity isn't a good reason.

Only if in both cases it's the man who initiates it.

I'm totally fine with the plot being in Lucas's hands. That is the part that he's best at. The problem is with the script and directing; those should be kept as far away from him as possible.

Thing is, a lot of crops don't really work that way. Yes, it happens in some cases at low levels depending on the location and the species, but ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a population of feral corn just growing out in the wild? How much ecological risk is there in something that doesn't exist naturally in an area by adding an additional gene that really doesn't improve wild fitness? I can't prove that an ecological problem won't happen, but I can say that it does look very unlikely that genetic engineering is intrinsically prone to such things. It's complicated, but I feel that the fear is vastly overstating the actual risk.

Note even remotely how things work. Diversity is genetic sum of what you grow. Genetic engineering is a way of improving crops. They're not at all the same thing. What you are saying is like saying that spinning rims on cars are bad because it reduces the number of car models. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Oh like what? If you have evidence that there is some intrinsic deleterious effect of GE crops, show it. Otherwise, what you are doing is vacuous speculation. I could just as easily speculate on the 'unintended consequences' of vaccines, wifi, water fluoridation, or anything else I fell like opposing today, and it would be just as meaningless.

I call that deceiving people to advance an unscientific agenda.

Not quite. The insecticide in question is the Bt toxin. It has a very specific mode of action, affecting only coleopteran and lepidopteran insects, like European corn borer and cotton boll worm, and of course its only going to significantly affect the things that are actually eating the corn. Contrast that to insecticide sprays, and you get benefits in terms of field level insect biodiversity.

Evolution is just a theory. I demand it be labeled on textbooks.

A study once found a link between vaccines and autism. I demand that parents be informed prior to vaccinating their kids.

Is either of those anti-science? If so, why? I'm just giving people information.

Thing is, a fact taken out of context and presented to those without the basic background information is deceptive. You want to lie to the public to force your anti-science agenda.

Implying that GMO=patent and non-GMO-no patent. This is not the case. If you were well informed about the thing you wish to regulate,you'd already know that, and wouldn't be insinuating a falsehood. This is the problem here. Maybe the regulation of scientific matters should be left to those of us who actually understand the topic, and not put to popular vote of those who don't actually know the issue.

Oh, the corporate conspiracy card, that didn't take long. My university has often been accused of being part of that conspiracy. We're not, and it is an easily verifiable matter of public record, but the lovely thing about a conspiracy is that everything that disproves it is just part of the conspiracy. It's great for when you want to make wild claims with bugger all to back them.

Zuckerberg owns Instagram (well, Facebook owns Instagram), so Zuckerberg isn't exactly on the sidelines for this thing.

There is no reason that we have to pick one and abandon work on the others. I don't see that the same resources go into solving more than one, except that the meteor and volcano problem have one solution in common - be on another planet when it happens.

The clathrate problem and nuclear war have the potential to end the human race while it is still on one planet, so we need to solve both of them ASAP.

Well, not necessarily true. You are ignoring the costs to maintain the home, a myrid of utilities you have to pay every month that renters often don't, insurance, and property taxes. I'm a home owner but I don't think there is such a huge gap between owning and renting. A lot of older owners are faced with having to sell their homes after retirement and moving somewhere cheaper when they would rather stay where they are. It's more like a safety net and less like a nest-egg, frankly.

That said, I prefer to own.

-Matt

Mice are so mass-market these days that it is hard to find one that actually performs properly. I've gone through a lot of mice over the years, always preferring the hardwired mice over the wireless (dead battery == unhappy), but in the last round I simply couldn't find a wired mouse that worked well. Everything being sold was wireless.

Of late, many of the mice I've tried have simply been too big and bulky, stretching my fingers and generally uncomfortable.

I wound up going with a Microsoft Sculpt 1569 wireless mouse (w/ Nano Transceiver). The Logitech M325 wireless also works but its middle-button-scroll wheel isn't ratcheted. These small mice are nice, my thumb and two right fingers hang over the edge and stay relaxed.

Also I recommend buying a non-rechargable alkaline AA for it, which will last 6 months. The rechargable NiMH batteries usually only last 1-2 months before they have to be replaced/recharged due to nominal leakage, which is too annoying (though I suppose one could buy low-leakage NiMHs).

The middle button scroll wheel isn't a problem. Most of them can also be clicked left and right which IS a problem because it's trivial to accidently click left or click right when you are just trying to push down on it as a middle button. So I disable the mouse-wheel left/right action entirely via:

xinput set-button-map Mouse1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 0 10 11

For the transceiver I find that (obviously) the closer it is to the mouse the better. The best solution is to buy a keyboard that has a USB extension on its right or left side and plug the transceiver into that. Then the transceiver is right next to the mouse with no extra cabling. The Razer (mechanical) gaming keyboards are my favorite... very heavy so they don't move around and have the same feel as the old IBM mechnical keyboards had. 80 WPM is a breeze on them.

-Matt

Agree. This might come across as heresy, but I even dislike HHGTG as a book - it's really a series of loosely-connected jokes strung together by an absurdist plot. The funniest things in HHGTG are the asides and internal monologues - and that's pretty much impossible to reproduce in a movie (unless you do the whole thing in voice-overs, at which point it becomes less a movie and more, well, a radio play).

My favourite Douglas Adams book was Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: funny, with a coherent (albeit, somewhat wild) plot.