If anything, it's better - at least Mars is quite well mapped now.

Don't fool yourself; the UK spends less per capita* than the USA. Your insurance is also on top of government spend. We get the NHS for our money, what does your government spend it's health budget on?
Is it as good as a system where a 15yr old can have temporal lobe brain surgery from some of the best neurosurgeons in the world? I got that more than a decade ago at Great Ormond St. Hospital. for my epilepsy. Your private insurance would probably count that as a "pre-existing condition". Do you think they would have paid for he operation? What if the operation didn't cure the epilepsy after your parents were forced to re-mortgage to pay for it because the insurance wouldn't? That's the real state of US health care. I'll stick with the NHS, thanks.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_per_capita,_US_Dollars_PPP.png

BS. NICE only issue guidelines, and if you really disagree with them, you have the option to get private treatment (e.g. from Bupa) who will give you access to treatment regardless of NICE as they are not part of the NHS.

Rule -1: Don't allow stupid people.

Wrong. Let's take major North Indian languages closely related to Hindi as my first examples 1)Punjabi - Sounds a lot like Hindi, but written in a totally different alphabet. 2)Gujarati - Sounds totally different to Hindi, but uses only a slight variant of the Hindi alphabet (Devanagari).
South Indian languages come from a totally different branch of the language tree

You're mostly right, the main reason you can't get away with speaking English to the average working Indian is largely to do with India's literacy rate; having said that English is more popular as a second language in parts of South India than Hindi, a big reason for this being that North Indian languages are etymoligcally (sp?) close to Hindi whereas South Indian ones are miles away. Having said that, even among the literate middle classes - people who learnt English at school - there's the problem of lack of use. Few people need to regularly use English when Punjabi\Gujrati etc. will do, so naturally struggle when called upon to use it. Personally, I have the reverse problem, being born and brought up in England, I fully understand spoken Hindi & Punjabi but struggle to speak them without my Hampshire accent and have totally forgotten how to read them.

Ideally, yes. Unfortunately, they are allowed to vote, so that the people who *do* listen to them can get elected.

Did you even read the title, let alone the summary or TFA? If not, here it is for your convenience: "Placebos Work -- Even Without Deception" - I think that's a hint that they might work even when you know you're taking them.

They've solved the problem with bundle 2 anyway - you can choose to give more money once they've sent you the download link. I paid $10 straight away (after the first bundle, I was sure I'd like at least one of these; also some went to charity) - I've already upped it to $20 for the whole bundle after starting the first game (Braid). As, once charity donations are taken into account, that's less than $4 per game - I may well up it again if I really like one of the others.

No, it was reviewed by other Biologists - like it or not, these kids are now published biologists. Age has nothing to do with it.

They weren't guaranteed publication; from the wired article:

However, I'm inclined to agree with the justification given in the paper abstract:

and see no reason for denying publication.

I think that this is an urban myth as there is a similar story about the Southampton Higher Institute of Technology who allegedly had to change names after seeing the stationary... and I'm sure I've heard it elsewhere about other institutions as well. Who knows where it really happened now, if at all.

As I said above, a ".child" or ".kids" domain is a better idea that .porn or ".xxx". There are many reasons for this - no need to make anyone move domains, no need to try and work out what's porn and what isn't, and it means the rest of us can carry on using the internet as it's meant to be (.com, .org, .co.uk etc. domains won't have to worry about material that's a little risque but not porn).

A ".child" or ".kid" is a far better idea - restrict young children to that domain and let the rest of us use the internet as it's meant to be.