Oops. Fat mod fingers.

Peter Molyneux making sweeping overstatements? Say it isn't so!

It's probably nothing to do with black holes, but one of the pioneers of solid-state lasers was on The Life Scientific this morning. If it's available in your area it's well worth a listen.

The Hobbit isn't too bad if you skip all that interminable singing.

Hill starts are quite easy when you get the hang of them: keep one hand on the handbrake (parking brake), and bring the clutch up to the biting point until you feel the car struggle a little against the brake then slowly release the handbrake while you give it a little more throttle.

It's almost exactly the same as pulling away normally except you let the clutch bite a little more before you release the brake. Failing that, you find the owner of the other car and tell them what an inconsiderate tool they've been; either they move or you find yourself unconscious only to wake with the offending vehicle having mysteriously vanished.

There's ample evidence for animal worship by palaeolithic humans. I was specifically thinking of the Celts, but it doesn't seem that far of a stretch for me to assume that humans in general would try to treat their prey well. Humane slaughter formed quite a large part of abrahamic religions still practiced today, but even the oldest branches of those don't stretch back quite as far as flint as far as I know.

If that's not good enough a citation then fine, you win. Now I'm curious how you can justify the ethics of bow hunting just for mere target practice in case civilisation somehow comes to an end. You might as well argue that soldiers should have to practice with longbows in case their guns all decide to fall apart at exactly the same moment.

Because they hadn't invented guns yet. Give a subsistence hunter a choice between a bow and a rifle with free ammo and see what they choose. Even back when people were hunting with bits of flint on the end of sticks they cared about reducing the suffering of what they killed; that's to say nothing of wanting a more reliable means to bring down one's next meal.

I didn't say anything about kicking her out of society, but having someone who can seriously suggest such an idea shouldn't be in a position to give an ostensibly reasoned opinion on ethics and, due to their position, have it given weight by others.

In the UK we have "whole life sentences". These are used very sparingly and were recently the target of an EU challenge on human rights grounds; the challenge was unsuccessful, but at least they are very rare.

Also an episode on Trek. "Hard Time" was the title I think; it was one of the many episodes where O'Brien was the whipping boy.

But hopefully not for too much longer.

Cloakroom attendants are used to seeing human waste, that doesn't mean I do my business on the floor. Firefighters sometimes come across charred bodies, but that's no reason not to take basic precautions against fires.

More likely in my opinion is that "reduced" will mean "less than everyone else's when we put the prices up". Did average premiums go down when seatbelts became prevalent? What about ABS or any of the other safety features that are now so widespread?

I'm not worried about this actually happening. It'd be shot down by the ECHR and at best would just give the Telegraph another reason to complain about them.

I'm more concerned that someone who calls themself a doctor could even concieve of such a thing; I'm going to have to assume that Ms Roache isn't that kind of doctor, otherwise I'm in danger of losing any lingering faith I have in the innate goodness of Man.

Is it really necessary to scan every face? I'm no expert when it comes to Rubix cubes (I've only ever managed two sides on mine), but isn't a cube similar to a dice where you can look at one side and infer what state the opposite face is in? When the previous machine was heralded here on /. I recall that the Mindstorms robot only looked at 3(?) of the faces. That seems like a while ago so there's a good chance I'm mistaken about that.