Totally fabricated. NASA with a high-altitude test plane throwing out rocks to simulate showers.

I know this for fact: when younger, I went out on the roof and watched a beautiful meteor shower (persieds believe was 'named')...

...but then they announced budget cuts to NASA. There was less money in astronomy. Shuttles started getting issues launching to cover up this reduced budget. During every subsequent 'meteor shower' that was scheduled... the skies were overcast all night, and the sound of planes could be heard infrequently.

The truth couldn't be more obvious: NASA could no longer afford to dump rocks to fake the showers anymore. The showers were scheduled though, even if the money for the special effects was lacking. Instead, they just seeded the clouds to force poor visibility so the myth of the meteor shower could continue onwards. Even as I type this now, the weather forecast gives days of sunny weather, but overcast or rainy evenings. How much longer must this go on? We must either return NASA's budget back to its Hollywood Effects heyday, or admit to ourselves... space is just really really empty, and 'space stuff' is just a lie.

...I've slammed down the e-brake before doing that. Also nearly put a car in reverse (it didn't let it engage though) trying to drop it into second.
Been driving automatics for years now, and still hate them...and get smirks when pound the foot off the floorwell: "Third gear?"

Considering how many movies are just derivatives, retellings or reimaging of previous older works... that's an interesting view.

I'm of the view ideas can be limited in scope, underutilise the potential, and be poor in execution; something ripe for continuation or revisioning in the hands of another. i.e. canon can just plain suck, so fidelity to such is a waste.

There are methods for population control that exist beyond genocide. Just choose to not have kids. Of course people then whinge about freedoms and such so that idea isn't palatable as a law, but it DOES exist beyond "One Child" Policy...just give incentives. A tube-tied/snipped bonus, either gender, that pays out either lump or over time, whatever. Void by preexisting children. NOT void by adopting (get both? baby bonus and not having kid bonus?).

Won't help in third world/uneducated/religious moron areas, but you can solve that part by 1-educating/helping them, and 2-containing them until they solve themselves out (like rabbits do).

Yes, I can, because I don't own a smart phone, and expressly for those reasons. I also don't post pics of relatives or give out information of their behaviours online, with OR without their permission. No twitting, no facebooking, no blogging of habits. There is no hypocrisy here. [Not exactly material, but I've also jailbroken and secured phones for friends: I am conversant with the tech, merely have no use for it personally].

No, I don't contradict, because they NORMALLY give up their information freely (posts, pics, updates) and it's gotten so prevalent they aren't even cognizant that they do so anymore. As I said, it's tangentially related, not directly. It isn't that she didn't secure her phone, it's that she let her phone give her information out all the time, and had gotten so used to it as to forget that it did so. Afterwards she didn't turn it off, she was FINE with that feature. Starting to believe the phrase 'overshare' is disappearing from the lexicon.

DIRECTLY my point was regarding the the mass of 'johhny's first communion' 'jack scoring in little league' 'my kids at the hotel pool' 'katey's report card'...a wealth of shared data. Yet, the moment an institution asks for it (as opposed to just collects it online by itself), that information is sacrosanct. The data (or at least a decent portion) is out there to be collected, but a formalised request for it, one that could possibly be of actual benefit for the target, makes it a knee-jerk bad.

Do note I'm saying 'could' and not 'would', as I'll make no claims on that. Personalising education to the child would be beneficial...provided was done with the child's interest and not some political/corporate agenda.

...how many of these 'concerned parents' are spewing that same data daily over facebook, without a care?

Tangentially related: the other day, my neighbour called up her niece concerned - facebook update informed her that both she and her mother had went to a hospital, and had been there for a few hours. The niece's opening response: "who told you?". She was convinced someone blabbed, when all along was 'use geolocation services' or some such on their phones. They simply had no idea what information they were freely handing out. Have to wonder if some kids had tried to sneak into a bar before, only for their phones to rat them out.

Excuse me while guesstimate the hypocrisy inherent in them refusing something that actually might be of (good) use.

I dated a psychology student once. Now i'm not saying I agree with scientology...

Didn't you just prove his point? Power military that was handicapped by policy...lost a war (i.e. Vietnam).

Previous Korean conflict you had the south and its allies against the north and a shared 'border' as it were: you had friendlies to worry about.. All the NK weapons aim south pretty much, and the Americans wanted to appear moral.

A power just wanting to raze the entire area, uncaring of fallout, could employ much more...effective tactics. The very fact that North Korea claims so much as part of its military just makes them that much more fair game. Russia could slaughter North Korea, it's just a matter of how much political fallout they are willing to endure for those tactics.

Horses are the only thing that flow quickly and easily through the series of tubes, unlike poker chips.

It's even worse... for games like Dungeons & Dragons or Lord of the Rings, steam launches a launcher...which then sits in the tray to download updates and such. From that launcher, the game can be loaded, and it persists past closing the game.. and that launcher is what steam tracks for 'hours played'. What you end up with is steam informing you that you've played the game 168 hours this week... but you never actually had the game on at all. I'm listed at over 8,000 hours in those games, nowhere near the truth.

Plus, it masks any other games you've loaded in the interim (or at least as far as the steam 'in-game' status). Couple this with that a lot of steam games can be played without launching them through steam, and you're left with a completely disingenuous metric.

Dunno... nothing beats the taste of a succulent apple, still quivering on the branch...


"How do you prefer your salad?"
"Still photosynthesizing".

Didn't Palpentine have a lot of worlds he propped up with a puppet government that weren't directly in the Empire but might as well been, serving to refuel his fleets and such? Expanded Universe being rather confusing and such for the non-hardcore... but to my knowledge there wasn't JUST empire and rebels..there were a lot of 'neutral worlds' and other alliances and such..that just bent to the Empire due to military or economic power.

"Riley was 13, in sixth grade, when she posted on Facebook ".

The pilot seems to think they were suicidal by the way they were talking; they weren't ignorant there wasn't sufficient fuel for the flight.