No, it's only recognised to the extent that enough people wrote in "Jedi" on the last census that the Office for National Statistics assigned a code number for data entry purposes, and calculated a total for them instead of just lumping them in with "other". There are only seven options for religion on the census form: None, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, and "other, please write in".

The Office for National Statistics is not recognising religions, it's just reporting what people wrote in as their answer to the question, "what is your religion?" Other answers which have equal status include Secularism, Satanism, Heathen, Divine Light Mission, Rationalist, Own Belief System, Free Church of Love, and Church of All Religion.

It's not intended to copy Windows, it just looks like Windows the same way Gnome and KDE both resemble Windows. http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-03-01/north-korea-cyber-weapon.html?fullstory

Same in Norway. And you use your mobile phone to send a text message to state that you confirm/agree that the data sent to you are correct. If you want to make changes to the government's tax assessment, then you have to fill out paperwork of course.

No, I don't mean to suggest that at all. I just meant to say that being a benevolent conqueror and trying to rebuild a country is much more difficult and complicated than mykos suggested it might be.

I think the same thing was said about Iraq: "Surely conquerors showing up with promises of food and infrastructure would be preferred to Saddam Hussein's government..." I would not bet on re-colonizing Haiti working out better than regime change in Iraq.

Although the way this was handled sounds incredibly stupid, I can guess what was going through the VP's mind: seven months ago, a student in another San Diego school successfully detonated five "bombs" that he made using Gatorade bottles.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/jun/06/1m6bottle00527-student-arrested-3-blasts-school/?metro&zIndex=111931

With that being fairly fresh in authorities' minds, I can easily imagine them worrying that the Millenial Tech student had developed a new and improved version. It still sounds like they overreacted, but at least I can understand why.

I think you've hit the nail on the head

Zero population growth actually requires more than 2 children per woman. It would be 1.0 if every woman gave birth to one girl who survived to have a baby girl of her own. But since you get 105 boys for every 100 girls, you need 2.1 children per woman. And then add a bit more to compensate for the children who don't survive to child-bearing age. (See replacement rate)

I expect you are thinking of demographic transition: when a population with high birth and death rates experiences a change (e.g. the invention of sanitation) to low birth and death rate, the death rate drops first so the population grows until the birth rate drops and a new equilibrium is reached, typically at a higher population. If you wanted to keep the population stable through a demographic transition, then you would indeed need to drop the birth rate dramatically. But once the birth and death rates stabilize again, the population will shrink unless the fertility rate goes back up to 2.

And that is what the article observes: as countries become wealthy, life expectancy shoots up, populations grow, and fertility rates drop to a low of 1.3. But once the easy gains have been made, life expectancy increases more slowly and fertility rates return towards the replacement rate of around 2.

No, the article suggests that with increasing development, fertility rate drops as low as 1.3 children per woman but then returns to 2 children per woman, in other words to approximately the zero population growth level. There is no evidence suggesting a further increase above zero population growth.

You may have been mislead by the graph shown in the article: it has a log scale which strongly exaggerates the rise from 1.3 to 2.0 compared with the decline from 8.0, and it tempts you to extend the trend line if you don't realise that the x axis is not time, but an index which ranges from 0 to 1. More and more countries are probably going to crowd into the space above 0.95 but the axis can't get longer and there's no reason to think the trend line is going to sharply rise as you get closer and closer to 1.0.

I think item B in your list is actually the thing that we're trying to test here. So more like:

A - My brother and my parents left the same destination within 2 seconds of each other
B - Because of the difference in suspension between the two vehicles, if there had been any potholes bigger than a certain size, one vehicle would have had to travel slower than the other
C - They arrived within 0.9 seconds of each other
D - Therefore there were no potholes bigger than the size mentioned above

(There might possibly be smaller potholes, too small to affect either of the vehicles in this test. You could repeat the experiment with a bicycle, a skateboard, and one of those roller wheels you use to trace distances on a map.)

Zut alors! We are surrounded!

Yes, the mutations are random. Mutations that tend to make organisms die before breeding tend not to be passed on to offspring; we call these mutations maladaptive. Mutations that improve (or at least do not impair) the ability to have offspring do tend to be passed on to those offspring; we call these mutations adaptive.

Yes, the "adaptiveness" of a random mutation could be said to be random. However, there is no pool of "adaptiveness potential" to be used up. Think of it like flipping a coin: you can get five heads in a row, but that doesn't mean you've used up the heads potential; the next flip is still only 50% likely to be a tail.

Fossils are not necessarily indications of dead ends. We certainly have found fossils of creatures whose offspring evolved into something that is still around. For example we have found fossils of rabbit-sized things with big teeth whose offspring evolved into pig-sized tusked things whose offspring evolved into 50,000-year-ago elephants, whose offspring evolved into modern elephants.

And as the last example shows, the existence of fossils of a species doesn't necessarily mean the species is extinct. Most fossils are so old that their offspring have changed so much that we would not call them the same species. But in cases of recent fossilization (which is unusual, of course) it's possible that there could be fossils of a species as well as living modern examples of it.

You must be new here

My experience is quite different from yours. I use CFLs in my upside-down kitchen lights too: installed two years ago, still going strong. I use them in my bathroom too, and I shower daily: still going strong after two years. I have not tried them outdoors or in my dimmer fixture, but dimmable CFLs are available. My CFLs do not take "five minutes" to warm up; they are on and fully usable when I turn the switch on -- although I admit that some of my oldest ones (many years old) come on at near full brightness instantly but brighten a bit more over a second or two until they reach full. And frankly, as far as I can remember, I have never in ten years had a CFL die except from dropping it on the floor.