Some of the dystopian ones too... Soylent Green anyone?

We should limit entropy too. That will stop all of those useful chemicals from being "converted". Reconversion to the true faith of "useful chemicals" is an expense the heretics love making us pay.

It appears that using Google can be harder than you thought. It seems that you have to ask a question to get an answer - such as "what is the average cost of adoption?". It's about $30K for a domestic US adoption BTW, and that doesn't include the "false starts" where an adoption falls through part way through the process. Or providing siblings. I guess these guys didn't think to ask Google (or a lawyer) "would the state override what seems to us a perfectly legal and sensible contract"? Should there have been a lawyer, well I guess that depends on your perspective for interpreting "should".

You appear to have found one of the government solutions to the problem of matching kids who really really need parents to parents who really really want a kid - they give a loan for 10% of the cost. Classic. (Yes I know there's sometimes other benefits from other sources to help out - but they don't always pan out either and the process is long, hard, and usually involves a few heartbreaks along the way).

Personally I always thought Mars Direct was a much better plan. I heard Zubrin talk about it once - seemed reasonable, not dependent on TV ratings, and you already had some proof of concept and a base of operations before you ever launched people at the big red rock. Of course the details is where you keep the devils and I think Murphy would be all over this one.

I can see a place for heroic leaps for science - including the possibility of a one way trip off the planet, but I'd have my doubts about the sort of people who would sign up for less than even a one cheek effort just to walk around a bit before needing a rescue which would never happen on time

What's worse is the precedent. Sure, as a culture we may be willing to put in a moon-shot effort if some legitimate (but corporate) Mars colony suffered disaster (which could be corrected by prompt Earth action). It's far less likely that we'd mobilize the effort if we're already practiced at letting "space junkies" die on their own recognizance.

Doesn't even qualify for a fair trial. No need to find the average weight of a duck (or very small rocks) in this case.

I think you'll find that the sentiment is pretty equally shared by Christians who are willing to actually study and think about their scriptures. After all, it makes it pretty hard to talk to someone about what one finds important (i.e. religion) when you're called by the same name as a vocal group which is (rightly) identified as deniers of reality. Augustine (an early church father and pretty universally acknowledged formalizer of Christian doctrine) wrote in AD 400:

If we think of these days which are marked by the rising and the setting of the sun, this was perhaps not the fourth but the first day, so that we may suppose the sun to have risen at the time it was made and to have set at the time the other luminaries were made. But those who understand that the sun is still shining somewhere else when it is night with us, and that it is night somewhere else when the sun is with us, will search out a more sublime manner of counting these days."

AUGUSTINE - UNFINISHED LITERAL COMMENTARY ON GENESIS 14 (43)

This literal 24 hour reading of Genesis is not a new phenomena, but it will continue because it is natural for people to either lazily read, or to avoid questions which may fundamentally challenge their faith (they would say: better a saved ignoramus than to face the dangers inherent in asking questions). The latter can be recognized as an attitude which is actually strongly criticized by the New Testament writer Paul.

FTFY. Preclinical, phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3 at a minimum

A simple dog? Dude, first of all have you ever tried to take apart and repair a dog? It's so tough that I've never seen one on iFixit - but it'd probably get a score worse than a MS device. Secondly, they require a complex biological fueling system; the waste stream? Bio---hazard!

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Thanks, I've had work servers run spamassassin and it's generally been pretty good regarding both false positives and negatives.

Thanks.

It's been around for what, 40 years? Working, (relatively) anonymous, and totally insecure mail transfer with tons of inertia. Never thought I'd see the day where there might be a small sliver of opportunity for another protocol to actually happen. Ars has a nice article about it too.

Well, IMAP lacks some of the features you find in Exchange (but picks up a few over POP3), but that's not client side. I remember Pine worked okay with IMAP and I suspect that any clients developed later than that should be able to handle it fine (i.e. anything that's a viable client).

And how much work is keeping your own host updated and spam filtered? I've thought about doing it before on several occasions (the Raspberry Pi seems like a cheap solution), but I've heard that keeping things smooth for a single account is generally more trouble than it's worth. How much time would you say it takes?

Standards can be well set by NGOs as well. Take a look at ANSI or ISO - the key is having a well balanced membership of the participating members. When you've seen failures of ANSI/ISO standards, the failure of that balance is a likely source.