What percentage of male calves become studs? Only some very lucky ones.

I think "vacuum" in the article means the Bose-Einstein condensate with no phonons, which is the analog to the true vacuum and not actually a vacuum.

Science isn't so clear cut. The question isn't settled yet, and probably won't be settled until we have a clear theory of quantum gravity.

Farm animals are not much better off than if they were in the wild. Sure, they get food, but they are slaughtered as soon as they reach full size. Dairy cows might have it a little better, depending on your point of view, but most of their babies certainly don't have it better.

What is animal abuse? Going by what gets media and court attention, it seems like the definition of animal abuse in America is treating dogs and cats as farm animals.

It's not about the prize money. It's about the recognition and implied chance for a future contract with Amazon, which could be worth several orders of magnitude more.

Eh, drilling is pretty damaging in of itself.

Certainly not true. This means we would spend more resources on a cure.

You manage to siphon 4 liters of gasoline from the tank of a broken down truck before fleeing from a pack of motorcycle vandals. How far can you go?

Sounds like a recipe for memory tampering.

There will be an intermediate stage. It might not last long on a cosmological scale, but still maybe millions of years.

I can conceive a few circumstances. Sun, red giant phase, will engulf the Earth. Life will probably be impossible on Mars, too, by that time, but if I were forced to choose a place to live between them, I'd choose Mars.

It shouldn't be _too_ hard to develop an artificial womb. Robots raising babies might be tricky, but everything is going to be hard when it comes to Mars.

An optimist, I see. I'm inclined to believe that the future is going to suck (overpopulation, resource conflicts, pollution, fuel shortage, wealth inequity), and I don't particularly care to travel there.

I'm sure some people in government are afraid of these things too, but I think government contractors just want to get paid.

If it was alpha or conceptual, that's fine. Beta means that they are testing out a product, and the final product is probably going to be fairly similar.