Point of information - this wasn't Malaysia Airlines, it was AirAsia.

The redeeming virtue of The Interview is that it makes everything else look good by comparison. This tawdry mishmash of low-grade scriptwriting, casting, directing, acting and editing is a rare treat for aficionados of cinematic rubbish.

"Writing and shorthand notation is the only things that should be standard education."

It looks as though you've dropped grammar from a standard education.

The 'charge' for a negative review is a 'minimum of pds 100'? I'd like to see this stand up to legal scrutiny.

"Is that unreasonable? If there were evolutionary pressure (ie, short people kept being killed before reproducing), and tall people got multiple mates, I could see this change happening within twenty generations."

Twenty generations sounds like guesswork, as it doesn't take into account regression - tall parents tend to have taller-than-average offspring, but not as tall as their parents. Likewise, short parents tend to have children who are taller than they are. The same, some experts argue, applies to measured IQ.

Indonesia is preparing to build a nuclear power plant. Those of us who live with its antiquated electricity supply network, third-world standard railway infrastructure, a national airline that was banned from landing at European airports until quite recently, more shipping disasters than possibly any other country, plus world-ranking corruption, look on in bemused wonderment.

"the cake referred to was dough that was caked to the sides of the baking oven during the baking process"

Citation needed. The French expression is "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." Brioche is bread with milk and eggs in it.

"Generally only the case if your car has an automatic transmission. Rather hard to do that if you are taking a test with a standard transmission."

Nonsense. The only time you can't do it is when you're changing gear.

I presume that the simulation programmers are US-based and will create scenarios of American traffic conditions. For real-world testing, just put a few of these vehicles in a downtown Jakarta rush-hour and see how many survive. Here we've got every motoring madness know to man - and then some. I'll be first in the queue to buy any driverless car that can get from north to south Jakarta unscathed.

The British police have long since crossed the Rubicon of public trust and support. It is tragic to see a once respected and admired group of public servants become a venal, corrupt and despised bunch of bully-boys, despotic and arrogant beyond belief. In my more cynical moments I reflect that post-Thatcher Britain has at last got the guardians it deserves.

"It's not really that alt coins destroy bitcoin's credibility, it's that bitcoin itself has no credibility in the first place"

So 'real' currencies have intrinsic value and credibility? In the modern topsy-turvy world of economics, all debt is magically transmuted into credit, and duff debt is magically turned into 'sub primes'. It's all a financial sausage factory.

"And while many of its people and countries are not well off at all, there are some nations that are doing quite well financially, and should be able to create the infrastructure (including organizations and facilities) necessary for such research."

Have you ever lived and worked in Sub-Saharan Africa? If you had, I don't think you'd be asking this question.