And where does the employee of the company who is buying the ads come in? He doesn't have a say in how the political ad money is spent. It's the executives who decide that. It's fundamentally different from the case of people voluntarily joining together for the express purpose of furthering a political goal. There are sure to be employees who disagree with the donations, but can't speak up for fear of losing their jobs. How's that for trampling rights?

Windows 7's naming of directories as "libraries" is inexcusable. It was a well-defined term!

Citizens have the right to record any public police action in the US, whether people are aware of it or not. I'm not sure what the law is in Canada.

Of course to be fair I think even many of those scientists do produce good research, with their results either buried or cherrypicked depending on whether or not it's favorable to their corporate sponsors. Granted you'd think that anyone who stays in such an environment has to be somewhat complicit, I'm just saying they're maybe not as corrupt as you might think.

Don't be so obtuse about the energy problem - you sound like an ass.

You must be suffocating in your own smug, you poor thing. If you're so sure we can adapt and change, why not do it now before the shit hits the fan? The longer we wait the higher the chance of a Malthusian collapse. It's idiotic not to implement those sustainable solutions now, and yet you seem happy to put it off. Please, explicate your rationalizations for us!

Well said! Someone mod this guy up.

A kilohome is 1000 * 11in.

Oh, you said homes, not Holmes. Nevermind.

He didn't pay the one fire department, why do you think he'd have paid the other? Also, I'm not aware that it's illegal to start a private fire department in rural Tennessee. So where is the competing fire department?

That's basically the gender-reversed equivalent of you giving your girlfriend a black eye because she dared to ask for something, and laughing with your friends about it. She sounds like a real keeper!

SETIguy quoted Clarke higher up in the thread, something about a guy saying something is impossible.... He'd have been more on topic had he replied to you. There are all kinds of things that could make this planet habitable and discounting them without any facts or even statistics to back you up is foolish.

Wouldn't a tidally locked planet with an atmosphere have fierce winds at the transition zone due to convection currents between the hot side and cold side? Air get heated by sun, rises, spreads to dark side, cools, falls, blows at a thousand miles per hour to the day side, repeat?

Yes, we've all heard the quote but it doesn't really apply here. The guy is saying it's not just possible, it's almost certain. And yes, technically you could say 'well he's really saying it's impossible there isn't life there' but that's just being a pedant. Yes, he could be wrong but it's clearly hyperbole. When a scientist says that something is impossible he's rarely being hyperbolic. The meaning and spirit of Clarke's quote is clearly that 'far more things are possible than people/scientists think'.

So the blackmailer accidentally exposes the blackmail, and Sky is upset not because they've been working with a blackmailer but because the blackmail got out early. Classy.

Right, but you can also buy foreign currency for basically the same effect. Still not a great argument for buying gold.