C.S. Lewis, Anglican and actually closer to Catholicism in theology, wrote, from 1938-1945, a science fiction trilogy known as the Space Trilogy that explores alien races in the context of Christianity.

I first read the trilogy when I was an atheist, and it helped remove that particular hurdle in my later study of the world religions that lead to my conversion to Catholicism.

Ebola is (according to the summary) completely contained in Nigeria and Senegal. This 2014 outbreak is all over West Africa, and according to TFA (I know, I know) the patient had just returned from Liberia, a West African country where the current outbreak has (obviously) not been contained.

Someone bringing this virus back is not so surprising. The big deal will be when we have our first case of endemic transmission -- when someone *catches* the virus here.

Is that on Netflix? Because I would totally watch that.

How so?

It's the #1 best-selling electronics device on Amazon, and I believe it has held that spot continuously ever since it was released. It's also one of Best Buy's top sellers. Every non-geek I know who has one loves it. I don't know if that equates to "setting the world on fire", but it's been pretty darned successful.

Exactly. The approach does have a lot of benefits, but there are some negatives as well.

Meh. I don't think it's that random and in any case I have no trouble whatsoever with finding the buttons I need on any platform.

Who cares? Okay, so it's prettier if it follows the platform styling, but the style has no impact on usability.

This is only a problem if you lack a good window manager with proper focus-follows-mouse behavior. On Linux, I prefer the multi-window environment. It's much more flexible, especially if your workflow includes needing to interact frequently with other apps.

Cite?

Nonsense. There is a fundamental difference between something that is barred by the laws of physics and something that is perfectly possible, but just beyond our current ability. Oh, it's possible that we'll discover new physics that make supralight and time travel possible (it's even possible that the same discovery will enable both), but it's more likely, I think, that both are simply disallowed by the laws of nature.

Construction of brains, however, is incontrovertibly not barred by any physical laws... because it's done many times every day.

I don't think it's far off at all. I suspect that we'll understand and be able to construct artificial intelligence before we can replicate a human brain, but I don't think either is more than 100 years away.

It's perfectly conceivable that we'll have achieved sufficient mastery of genetic engineering to begin modifying ourselves in non-trivial ways by then, so you may be right. But this, also, is not so far away.

And the 10,000 other, similar, issues? There are lots of things that need to be done but no one really wants to do. If the solution is that everyone must do those things themselves then we lose much of the advantages of specialization.

So... you're suggesting that we apply the open source notion of "everyone works on what interests them" to all productive labor? While I'm a big fan of open source, that approach has real and obvious problems. Are you going to volunteer to maintain the sewage treatment plants?

On what platform?

I find that GIMP's UI is just fine with a proper window manager. On OS X it's very painful, though, and I would expect the same on Windows (dunno, I haven't used Windows in about 15 years).

Oh, god. Mel Gibson's 1990 Hamlet was awful. It was the most asinine thing I've ever seen. Shakespeare for people who really *are* dummies. Reportedly it was director Franco Zeffirelli's attempt to make Shakespeare "less cerebral" and more accessible to the masses. What a choice to try that with! The whole point of Hamlet is that he's so damned smart the only person who can really stand in his way is him.

My point was that you've got to find an actor who can give a knowledgeable performance. Not some meat-head action star stunt cast miles out of his depth. I'd rather watch Arnold Schwarzenegger Hamlet.

I think the best film adaptation of Hamlet I've seen was Kenneth Branaugh's 1996 version, although it is long, long, long at 242 minutes (to Gibsons' 134 minutes). Olivier's 1948 Hamlet is generally highly regarded, but it's too sentimental for my taste. Haven't seen Derek Jacobi's 1980 BBC performance, but I've heard good things about it. I've seen snippets of the David Tennant Hamlet, and it looks promising, although it's hard to shake the impression that it's Dr. Who playing Hamlet.

Exactly. Security screwed up, and then they HAD to deal with it. It's not mere security theater to have a security checkpoint. Those checkpoints are demonstrably important.

Not many of us remember, but until 1973 there was no baggage screening, no metal detectors, and no id requirements for getting on a commercial flight. The number of skyjackings had climbed rapidly since the mid-50s so that in 1972 there were 11 skyjackings of commercial flights around the world, seven in the US.

After security checkpoints were introduced in the US, there wasn't another skyjacking in the US for three years. Then an occasional one now and then, as people found loopholes. There was one passenger airliner hijacking of a flight FROM the US in all the 1980s and none in the 1990s.

My conclusion is that the security measures put in place by 1990 were highly effective. 9/11 fit the pattern of the early dribs-and-drabs hijackings, the difference is Al Qaeda made an effort to do multiple simultaneous exploitations of the vulnerability they'd found. There hasn't been a hijacking of a US flight since then, but given that the last passenger hijacking BEFORE 9/11 was in 1987, it's likely that this long dry spell is mostly if not entirely due to banning blades from carry on luggage. That's not to say that EVERY other change since then is security theater. I think reinforcing cockpit doors and changing pilot training was a reasonable response. But a lot of the enhanced pat-downs, magic scanners, no-fly list shennanigans and such are no doubt bogus.

Your analysis depends on two assumptions. First, that at the daily peak the amount of solar produced exceeds the total demand for electricity. That's actually quite likely to happen in the long term in certain locations -- sunny, densely developed residential neighborhoods for example -- but not in others -- in a neighborhood that has a steel mill. Maybe in the short term in a few places if the adoption of rooftop solar accelerates even more.

One of the ways to alleviate this would be to improve the distribution grid so that the excess supply could be sold further away. But lets say the day comes that the peak solar production exceeds the total electricity demand. That brings us to the second assumption.

The second assumption is that electricity is charged at a flat rate all day long. Clearly if lots of excess solar is being produced at noontime, you could easily reduce the cost you charge to electricity consumers (or pay back to electricity). We already do peak vs. off peak rates for industrial users.

This combination of grid improvements and reduced peak rates will encourage people and businesses to concentrate their power usage around noon. Maybe you'll charge our electric car at a higher rate, or maybe even charge large industrial or household batteries. The losses hardly matter, since we were throwing away the sunshine anyway. Increased noon usage will offset the tendency for electricity rates to fall during peak generation periods.

Am I saying the utilities won't lose a little money in a few isolated spots in the short term? No. What I'm saying is that we're hardly facing some kind of insurmountable singularity. Certainly not any time soon, nor in the long term if we can bring ourselves to prepare for it.