The geography I was taught was that the Ural Mountains is the boundary between Europe and Asia, meaning that western Russia is indeed part of Europe, though the eastern part is not.

How many times have you seen scientists starting wars over theories and results?

;
Hoo, boy. I take it you have never worked with the faculty of a university. Granted, they don't use guns and bombs, but probably only because they don't have access to them.

Oh, what laws did they have? Please tell me about egyptian law under the nomarchs?

Were you aware that the *word* "nomarch" comes from the Ancient Greek, nomos, meaning law?

Nope, they don't underlie the scientific method. They are merely tools of the scientific method. Immeasurably useful tools, but it is the scientific method at the base, not mathematics, logic or philosophy. When experiment shows that mathematical models can successfully predict observed phenomena, those mathematical models are used. When experiment fails to show that such models do so, they are tossed out. They may still be of interest to mathematicians, but scientists have no further use for them.

But what about Q?

We'll have to ask M.

you aren't getting contacted by a Nigerian 411 scammer with some dead relative or something or other and trying to deposit a magical sum of money in your account.

And then he offers to look up phone numbers for you! Perhaps you meant 419.

Case in point right here in my home state of Virginia: The state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control stores (commonly called "ABC stores"). As part of the state's alcohol laws, licensed stores can sell wine and beer, and licensed bars and restaurants can sell booze by the glass. If you want hard liquor by the bottle, you have to buy it at an ABC store, which are state-owned. They turn a profit, and that profit goes into the state's coffers.

I've never had a wireless cord get unplugged from moving my PC.

I've never had a Cat5 cord get unplugged from moving my PC. Unless it's physically broken, it latches securely in place. You may wind up on a shorter tether than you realized, but you won't unplug it, at least not unless you're much rougher with your equipment than you should be.

It must take longer to boil water in the US then. In Aus a standard electric kettle has a 2.4kW resistive heating element.

You don't see many kettles with built-in heating elements here. People heat their kettles on the stove, which will either be gas, or if it's electric, will be on a special high-capacity circuit.

I can see it now, a comic book super villain and his swarm of programmable insects.

You mean, like this guy?

And who will be blamed? Why, the researchers who discovered this incredible negligence, of course! "If you hadn't shown the hackers how to do it, we never would have this problem!"

Silly man, everybody knows, "Step #3: Profit!"

My company does this. You're entitled to reimbursement of your Internet connection charges (not the whole cable bill, of course) up to $50/mo. This actually doesn't cover my whole ISP bill (thanks, Comcast!), but hey, every little bit helps.

"Looks like you've blown a seal." "Just fix it and leave my personal life out of this."

You can't.

This isn't necessarily universal, as it's not required like 911 access, but you can certainly do it on my phone. Go into "People", select "In case of emergency" (it's big and bold at top) and you can select contacts from your contact list to be emergency contacts. These can then be called from the lock screen with the "Emergency contacts" button.