Google doesn't use the hella prefix consistently. Example:

1 hellagram = 1.0 × 10**27 grams

1 hellabyte = 1.23794004 × 10**27 bytes

Shouldn't that last one be a hebibyte or something?

I guess I could use them for children's birthday parties huh?? Just hope some little girl doesn't think she's cute and rubs it in her hair to make it staticy and BOOM!!!

You've heard, I suppose, the story of George, who played with a Dangerous Toy, and suffered a Catastrophe of considerable Dimensions?

Resources exist to be consumed, and consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None, I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.

-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Ethics of Greed

Imagine what would happen if terrorists took control of a train and flew it into a building!

A frightening thought indeed!

I feel had the Lib Dems allied with nobody after the election, they'd have gained more long-term respect for sticking to their manifesto.

Oh, bollocks. If they'd done that, nobody would have bothered voting Lib Dem ever again. What would be the fucking point? You vote for a third party and then cross your fingers and hope for a hung Parliament, so that you can maybe get some of your policies enacted in a coalition. If the Lib Dems had been presented their golden opportunity, a hung Parliament, which happens a couple of times in a lifetime, and had just walked away... Never mind doing a deal with the Tories, that would have been the supreme betrayal of their voters.

A Freedom/Repeal bill is great in principle, but it'll never happen in practice. Quite apart from the problem that any repeals will pilloried as Soft On Something, the coalition have very different ideas on what the little people should be free to do: Cons tend to be pro freedom to smoke tobacco and anti freedom to smoke cannabis, and the Dems are t'other way around, for example.

Chances are they'll both be able to agree on repealing 'Stuff That Labour Did'.

Actually, since the Repeal Bill was a Lib Dem manifesto pledge that made it into the Coalition agreement, it might be worthwhile seeing what it was the Liberals had in mind. This might change because the Tories will have their own ideas and they might even bring in some public suggestions from that website (it is just about possible), but I'd expect the bill to end up looking a lot like that one.

No, it's just a God (well, government) given opportunity for libertarians to have a rant, which let's face it, they're very good at.

Bearing in mind that the government is an alliance of broadly left-wing sandal-wearing bearded social liberals and broadly right-wing money-grubbing City-whoring economic deregulators, this might genuinely be a great opportunity for British libertarianism. One way or another you've got a sympathetic ear!

when i saw that when cameron moved into number 10, he only had a simple bed, 1-2 ikea brand stools and whatnot. i said to myself, well, someone who is living that simple has to have some good qualities at least.

Careful with that. He's no common man; both Cameron and Clegg are fantastically posh, so much so that they don't need to flaunt wealth with conspicuous consumption. He's still got his town house in Notting Hill as well; no need to move the best furniture into the prime ministerial residence, is there?

But that's not the scariest thing, the scariest thing is seeing class rooms of children reciting the pledge of allegiance.

Terrifying, isn't it?

Or the black cab driver who, when asked by a tourist how many African-Americans there were living in London, replied 'Oh, I don't know... a couple of thousand or so maybe?', much to the confusion of his passenger.

This poll's only been up for a few hours. It's half past three in London right now, which makes it, what, half past ten in New York? So the east coast Americans have just finished their coffee and are now signing on to Slashdot for their morning slack-off. Their votes will only now be coming in; and California is only just waking up. Meanwhile Europeans have had all day to vote, and of course that date means nothing at all to us. Hence the heavily skewed result so far.

the entire 15 or more billion years old universe

13.75 +- 0.11 billion, according to the latest WMAP figures.

In the US, Christians are about 80% of the population, but over 90% of convicted criminals.

If I were ever to be convicted of some dreadful crime and sentenced to a long time in prison, you'd better believe I'd find Jesus. It plays well with the parole boards. I doubt I'd be the only one; that must skew the statistics pretty severely.

then gently shove products towards Earth orbit with the gravity of the Sun to power it.

It's not quite that easy. You can't just point stuff at Earth, give it a shove and wait as it rolls downhill, because space being nearly frictionless, it will roll right back uphill on the other side and end up back in the asteroid belt again.

Your cargo is currently in a circular orbit between Jupiter and Mars. You have to brake it with one rocket burn to convert it to an elliptical orbit with its aphelion where you are now and its perihelion on the opposite side of the Sun at Earth's orbit - timed so that Earth is there when you arrive! Then when you get there, you're going far too fast - your course is going to loop you around straight back to the asteroid belt. So you've got to brake again to join Earth's circular orbit, which means yet more fuel to burn.

There is a very obvious way of stopping at Earth without carrying the fuel for a second rocket burn, but it isn't going to make you popular with the resident civilisation and might damage the cargo too. Also, you don't necessarily have to fly the basic Hohmann ellipse I described: you can go more slowly with a constant-low-thrust ion drive and play clever tricks with gravitational slingshots, which can get you there with far less reaction mass but will take FECKIN' YEARS. Might not be a problem for dumb cargos of ore. Or you can go there more quickly with a mighty superengine like an Orion or a nuclear salt rocket. Of course those are going to be only marginally more popular with the public than the 'look Ma, no brakes' plan of delivery.

Why don't we read up on what actual Islam is, versus the supremacist Arab culture that permeates and corrupts it. Karen Armstrong did a wonderful job of pointing out what Islam actually is, and how Arab culture with it's tradition of jahilliyeh has since permeated and corrupted it

Yes, that's a great idea. Let's all read about what some people claim actual Islam ought to be, as opposed to what a billion-plus people actually believe and practice in their daily lives. You know what? If 'actual Islam' has been 'permeated and corrupted' by something else, then 'actual Islam' is what we technically call 'extinct' and 'irrelevant'. What we're dealing with here is 'Islam' warts and all, not your idealised Islam you find in books by this Karen Armstrong of yours.