This is interesting. I was not close to my father when he died (I was about 20), which I regret very much now, and I would absolutely love to come across any videos of him talking about anything. I recently rewatched a video from his second marriage ceremony. Certainly I cried, it made me sad, but it enriched me to see video of him as a happy person. Afterwards I felt closer to him. I would love to see videos of him talking about things he did in his life.

I wonder if your view on this depends on how close you were to a relative before they died. Those who were close don't want to be reminded of what is missing?

Eeep, I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but marrying younger makes you far more likely to get divorced and end up in the "reject bin" you speak of. http://www.thecanadianencyclop... Much better advice (statistically), would be to suggest living with someone for several years BEFORE getting married.

It's free rides for a particular market (Seoul), not free rides for Koreans.

By who? A foreign government agency with no jurisdiction?

Yup. In 2009 the country's average was 7 incidents per day. List of terrorist incidents in Pakistan since 2001

Now of course, X years from now when everything has stabilized, will their government repeal these rules and delete the database? It's not really relevant since most likely they will have been overthrown by the insurgents or the US again.

It's the same thing every other religion is. A bunch of stories and directives designed to provide justification for a particular way of life. ISIS is a just product of the environment it was cultivated in. I wonder what would happen in the US if a foreign country came in and destroyed the government every decade or so for the sake of corporate interests.

I might be missing your point, but many countries, including America, had their own slaves back then too. Is enslaving "because you're not Muslim" a worse excuse than "because you're not white"? People enslaved others for personal gain, and religion/race was just the bullshit justification so they didn't have to feel bad about it.

Also I'm willing to bet a significant portion of the finalists are aware this will never happen, and they are just going along for the ride.

It's all just a show, put on for entertainment value of the masses. There will be no real launch mission because there is too much liability. They will take it as far as they can and as long as they can if it keeps bringing them money. But they will always stop short of legal liability. They will put some money forward for appearances, such as paying actual space engineers and scientists for "advice" but mostly just to be able to put those names on their public list of contacts. The chosen finalists will be people who were on the company payroll from the start and planted in the initial volunteer list. They would have to be, because anyone else would actually have to quit their job and change locations to start training for the actual mission. When it is finally revealed that it's all just a show, if they had real volunteers they would probably sue the company for wasting years of their life.

The saddest thing is that some people I work with (most with university degrees) are actually buying into the story.

Actually they did. Even moreso, citizens who had their power restored early then donated or lent their own generators to areas that needed them. I actually recall a at least one person being upset because their generator was never returned. Also while they say the 25 deaths were "primarily" hyptothermia, some of the deaths were caused by CO/CO2 poisoning and fires because people brought their barbeques inside to heat the home.

Or rather, it is comparing a basket of apples to an orchard of apples...

To be fair, the comparison you are doing here is:

This story: "two main power transmission lines were knocked out"
1998 ice storm: "over 1,000 transmission towers collapsed"

This is not apples to apples...

+1 sad but true.

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/292/