"Spanish flu" came about because all countries infected before Spain were at war and had press censorship in place. Therefore, the first real public record of the pandemic was in Spain...

That's silly. Look, GDP measures economic activity. Research and development is a form of investment in technology, which is one of the forces in economic growth. Because not all or even most investment is done by the government, investment is best measured by GDP rather than government budget.

Wikipedia has normal flu mortality at 0.1%.

People may be interested in the book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History on the Spanish flu.

It mentions that these killer strains of flu are an anomaly in a virus that mutates rapidly, and so the general trend is for an outbreak to become less and less deadly as it continues (i.e., subsequent generations revert to the mean). Also, there were multiple strains in play at different times during the whole 1918-1920 crisis.

Is fifteen cents per page a normal on-demand charge? Books with nothing special about them will cost a few dollars to print conventionally. Blackwell's costs are higher I'm sure and they have the retail share as well. But still, $55 for a book that might otherwise retail for $10-15?

It's selection, actually. Prior to the '70s, if you ran, you ran in tennis shoes and were naturally talented enough to bear it. Everyone with less-than-perfect form was selected out by injury. Some Olympians run barefoot: they're the 0.00001% of humanity most genetically fit to run. Now injuries are rising because of much greater participation in running. People who have no business running by their natural body are now out there with technology filling in the gaps, and the technology isn't always a good match. In my experience you are almost certain to injured by shoes contrary to your needs. Pronation is the obvious trait separating shoes for supinators/neutrals/pronators, but you should also look at firmness of the shoe and the motion of the shoe, i.e. does it push you towards your heel or towards your forefoot. Having a poor match will amplify whatever problem you have. If you run and are being repeatedly injured, you want to speak with someone who knows running shoes. Bring in your old shoes, to examine the wear pattern. You can also do gait analysis at many large running stores or a sports physiologist, though I don't know if it's worth it. Personally when I got into running, I wore soft (mushy, really) shoes that pushed to the heel and were for supinators, which I am. I was repeatedly injured and in the end fin I am happy with some very hard, rigid Zoom Airs that are basically neutral and have a very quick motion from midfoot to forefoot.

The Army has long wanted to air-drop tanks into combat alongside paratroopers. One of the big weaknesses of airborne operations are that such light troops lack much offensive punch and are vulnerable to enemy armor attacking them. See the M551 Sheridan light tank.

Is there anything about the culture or government in the UK and Australia that makes them so prone to using CCTV, censorship, and all of this?

Your share of the game's development budget will be measured in cents, unless you're rich. What's wrong with inspiring a generation of kids for that little money? I'd imagine many intelligent people went into aerospace after Apollo and so made our lives better far in excess of what was spent.

You totally miss the point. Having one product from a company compete against another product from the same company and calling it a competitive marketplace is a joke. For an end-user looking for a commodity, consumer computer, the "just works" straight from the box variety, there is no viable alternative for Microsoft. Therefore, their requiring that she buy two of her products in order to use one is a ridiculous abuse of their monopoloy power.

It seems likely that their government would just buy from ISVs in another country. Microsoft can't see it, can't stop it, can't be held liable. Remember the recent case of HP selling a significant amount of printers to Iran in just such a way?