Not in the UK.

Indeed, but arguably the purpose of recognising nominal consideration is that such consideration is a demonstration of intent to create legal relations.

We're talking about a commercial deal here, so presumably if money actually changes hands there is a strong implication that a deal was intended even for nominal consideration. I'm just wondering whether the accidental 1p pricing case is so far from reasonable by the objective observer standard that a lawyer could argue it. (I don't know the answer to this, nor claim to; as I said, I'm not a lawyer, just someone who's come across some of the issues.)

Evolution is imperfectly results-driven, being stochastic rather than deterministic. A trait that confers an advantage may not come to dominate, for a variety of reasons. It may be (necessarily or accidentally) linked with a trait that's a disadvantage. It might not be enough of an advantage to overcome bad luck. It may diverge into a new species that's then wiped out somehow.

Yes, yes, something about peppercorns.

It remains necessary for there to be a meeting of the minds for a contract to exist, and I still can't see how an objective observer would conclude that a merchant intended to sell expensive goods for consideration of 1p.

It's explained in Doctor Who: Time Lords have neat communication abilities that they can share with others. That way, everything sounds like English to the Doctor's companions.

I've seen two positions on the definition of a derivative work. One is that the GPL goes much further than the law does, and a court will scale it back. The other is that, if you're taking advantage of the GPL, you need to abide by their definitions. It will be interesting to see what a court decides.

This has become a significant issue for my friends and family this holiday season, to the point that in some cases we have just walked away from the Amazon ecosystem entirely and bought elsewhere.

If you can change prices so fast that a customer can't look up something we're interested in buying, call their partner in to check it before confirming the order, and then add it to a basket, and the price change can be literally doubling the price from a good deal to a complete rip-off, then the experience of shopping with you is going to suck.

Throw in the inherent risks with any on-line purchase of stuff not turning up on time or being damaged on arrival -- both things I've heard widely reported in recent weeks in the UK, including specifically in connection with Amazon in some cases -- and going back to the High Street to buy anything you can from a bricks and mortar store is quite an attractive alternative.

If only the people going to High Street shops to browse and then getting their phones out and ordering from Amazon hadn't killed off 90% of the good shops. :-(

How did it compare to the heinous crime of being accused of having sex with a game reviewer?

FYI, I don't think your description of how contract law works is correct across all of the UK. For example, consideration is treated differently in Scotland.

In any case, for a transaction literally charged at 1p, one might reasonably argue both that this is not sufficient to constitute consideration and that there was no meeting of the minds given that an objective observer would obviously not expect expensive merchandise to be sold for only 1p under these conditions.

(I'm not a lawyer, but as someone who runs businesses including on-line transactions I have spent plenty of time talking about these issues with people who are. Actual lawyers are welcome to dive in and correct me.)

The GP post didn't say anything about taking your payment. Contractually speaking, that is often a more significant act than merely showing a web page or sending an e-mail acknowledging an order.

And that sometimes makes things interesting in the case of responsible retailers who don't charge your card until they are ready to ship, because you're in a kind of limbo as a customer if you've placed an order but the merchant is delayed before sending it.

As I understand it, Amazon is generally reasonable about how it handles these situations. For example, if you have placed an order but it hasn't shipped and been charged yet, you can probably change or cancel it. But you have to watch out with less scrupulous trading partners, who will happily try to eat their cake and have it by claiming your order is final yet also claiming that have no obligation to ship it until they take the payment.

For those who understand, no explanation is necessary.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Realise this fundamental truth, grasshopper, and you will reach enlightenment and celebrate in the glory of the smashing orangey bit.

Technically, all the weather is a direct result of global warming, in the sense that we wouldn't have this exact weather without it. Weather is chaotic, after all, and a small change in conditions (like half a kelvin of warming) will lead to great changes in outcome. Without global warming, we'd have different hurricanes etc.

What we can't know is whether a weather condition would have an analog in a world without human CO2 production that would have been more or less severe. Sandy was partly due to global warming, but what would be the chance of getting something that destructive without global warming?

Growing arctic ice thickness? Arctic ice is getting less and less area. I wasn't able to quick find anything on thickness, but isn't volume what we're primarily interested in? We seem to be losing that at both poles. Decrease in tornado activity? Was there an actual prediction for more tornadoes? How much decrease? Right now, we can look at a significant change in tornadoes and say "that looks funny", but I don't know how else we're supposed to interpret it.

Germany did pretty much steamroll Western Europe up to the coast, except for Spain and Portugal. Taking Britain was going to be a lot harder, and everybody knew that. The German plans to invade southern England in 1940 are positively ludicrous, and their attempts to suppress British air power caused them losses they never really had a chance to recoup.

Germany then attacked the Soviet Union, and failed in 1941, before the US had any significant impact on the war. The US didn't have an army on the European mainland before September 1943, and the US air forces didn't have a serious impact before mid-1943. Eventually, the US had a major role, but it came much later than any time Germany could possibly have won, and primarily accelerated the end of the war and kept the Soviets out of most of Western Europe.

The US was engaged in the Pacific, and the majority of the resources available in 1942 went there, but the US was really not ready for a war by the end of 1942. The US was frantically building up a large army, but it didn't start to show up until sometime in 1943 and wasn't anywhere near full strength before 1944.

My health care providers will use generics first, that being clinic policy. I have no doubt that I'd be covered for expensive drugs if I actually needed them, but the need would have to be demonstrated. (I have been given free samples of expensive drugs that the doctor happened to have.)