In other news, the recent lunar eclipse happened during a full moon.

Fuck those little bastards. They think they can sing whatever song they want and get away with it? What gives them the right? They are pretty much stealing from music industry executives. I say make them pay, retroactively even. And if I ever hear any of you so much as hum a single bar of the theme song for the show The Greatest American Hero, I will be reporting you to the proper authorities! A free education while they leach off the system and their parents isn't enough for them, oh no, they will not be satisfied until they are able to sing any song they wish without paying the publishing company that owns the song. You see, the world isn't going to end now, it is going to end when those little rug rats grow up and it will be all because they thought they could sing someone else's song for free. Well guess what, not on my watch!

I fail to see how these quandaries would be, as i suppose you feel they are, unreasonable to bring to light. I also neither see clarification as to why you feel these questions are invalid nor do I see solutions to their inherent problems. The primitive brain, id est, the brain stem, is not where the higher level thought centers that are able to ask these questions are located. Evolution is a continual process, there is no pinnacle nor ultimate goal; there is no grand design. There are most certainly people smarter than me, though I am highly intelligent.

Maybe you, my fellow Slashdotters, can offer insight. When people ask me if I believe we have been visited by creatures from other planets I point out that nowhere in the Universe will you find a place with unlimited resources and interstellar space travel would require a great deal of resources. To devote the time and energy into a project as massive as visiting another star system would be a massive undertaking which would need specific goals and a high probability of the mission being successful.

That's no ordinary website, that's the most foul, cruel and bad tempered online store you ever set your browser to.

YOU tit! I soiled my internet botnet I was so scared.

Look, That online store has free shipping on eligable orders over $25.

CHAAAAAARG!!!!!
...

RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!

Where was Tim The Enchanter during all of this? And is it wrong that this is the first thing I thought when I read the summary?

My new goth band, Moon Death Spiral. Who wants to be in it with me? We can sing goth songs about astronomy, physics and math.

A few days ago I was thinking that having cattle prods at each seat would be a good idea. You could have a release switch in the flight attendant's area or in the cockpit so no one can just pull them out whenever they liked. How could the "you can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand" set be opposed to that? Seriously, why not?

The government of Rhea is pressing charges against Julian Assange for espionage for the releasing of thousands of their classified diplomatic documents.

The most dangerous thing in schools now-a-days is all that learning. I mean, if people can think critically then they can question your authority, correct? As an added bonus, if they are too dumb to even know what a pencil is then the world would be that much safer. I vote we cut to the chase and ban learning all together.

Addendum: model rockets could be fun for kids that age too.

Honestly, anything that you can do together is your best bet for getting them interested and keeping them interested. Something you can design, build and implement would be fun. Also: dangerous stuff is fun! There is a book that came out a while ago called "Backyard Ballistics" that could have some really fun projects in it, and you can teach them important safety lessons.

I really liked Lego as a kid. I rather enjoyed trying to come up with something then trying to build it. I also really liked those electronics labs, especially if they made noise (no wonder I play with an analog modular synthesizer now). But really, if you live close by the best thing you can do is spend time with them, share your hobbies and interest with them, buy a telescope and teach them how to use it, show them Jupiter, the Orion nebula, the Andromeda galaxy. If they idolize you, as nieces and nephews often do, chances are they will take an interest in anything you show an interest in. Also, Thinkgeek (the evil store that wants all of my money) has some awesome stuff.

And having a war with Nerf guns is always fun.

Rubik's Tesseract.

Agreed! My first though after reading TFA was if the home star of the planet doesn't have the heavy elements you would expect to find in the star or a planet system then could the planet have been picked up at some point? Could the tidal forces of a galactic merger pull a planet free from it's parent star? If so, could the gravity of another star capture the free planet?

Just what do you think you're doing Dave?

...Stays inside a spacetime invisibility cloak .