You just don't want those danged Duke boys to keep going in the middle of that canyon jump, Sherrif Coltrane.

Optimally, yes. Sometimes that isn't an option, unfortunately. [The other adult may not be able or willing to drive, after all].

Ok... now I'm really curious. What coasts are you referring to, and if they're the US Atlantic and Pacific coasts (not Gulf Coast to Atlantic or something silly) -- just what train did you find that only takes 2 days?

I'm seriously asking - since every one I looked at ended up going through LA then up to Chicago and back down (to Atlanta -- maybe Chicago to NY is somehow faster). If you have a link to a 2 day train which is reasonably priced (say $1k per person tops), I'd love to consider that for our next trip.

Depends on the number of people, really.

Sample annual trip just made (CA to GA): 2438 miles.

Airline cost per-person, cattle-class [not adding in taxes, fees and per-bag costs or whatnot they stick you with now] started at $450 per person round-trip.

The 2005 Impala got between 29 to 30 US mpg on the highway, call it 29 to be generous (to your claim).

Similarly, gas ranged from $3.459 to $4.759 per US gallon, but generously use $5 assuming rising prices. That's $420.35 one way, $840.70 round trip.

Since this was 2 adults and one child (not young enough to fly free -- and even if it was possible, who would take a 4+ hour flight in cattle class with a squirming/upset infant on their lap... assuming they had any confidence in said infant not taking a tumble in turbulence), that $450 starts at $1350.

Car has to tack on hotels (depends on how aggressively you push it -- 2 days is possible with 5 hour sleep breaks or so), airline has to tack on transport to/from airport [either mass transit or rental car or long term parking], etc.

The big wins for me are having the trunk of the Impala available at no additional charge, no hassle with rental cars -- and most importantly, no getting handled as if I'd created a felony. The last point frankly would keep me driving even at a 2x cost factor, but you can't claim that "you're paying more for gas by driving" as that simply isn't true outside of lousy SUVs and driving solo.

And before someone brings it up -- the trains were *more expensive* than the car, and took a week to get there by routing through Chicago. Get Amtrack to get a reasonable continental train going somewhere between airline and car prices but taking 2-3 days tops and I suspect a lot more folks would choose it.

Posting to cancel moderation click-error.

Pretty sure you meant the YF-12A, not YF-2.

Different news article, perhaps -- but really the same as:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/01/25/019201/Universal-Memory-Aims-To-Replace-FlashDRAM from yesterday, I would think.

Mea culpa. Or -- don't do math just before sleep, it doesn't work out well. Brain switched decades to millenia in there somewhere. I'll accept the dum-dum for that one, certainly -- though an option to mod your own comments "danged stupid, don't look at this" would be nice right now.

I'd make a comment that more than that matters (does the potential damage outweigh the cost of what's needed to prevent damage, or are we better off just dealing with the damage in a longer scale transition?) -- but given the egregious stupidity above, I should shut up while I'm behind. Thank you for only mocking slightly.

First I'd heard that Earth is 8 billion years old, much less that CO2 levels were lower than before plant life started liberating the oxygen. (And the time of the dinosaurs, etc.)

No, that's covered. God created us (and the universe, etc.) He knows at any given time what all the inputs to our decisions can be. He also knows what is the outcome of every decision we can make (all possible futures). Depending on how one views alternate space-times, he may exist across all the space-times which cover the decision tree -- but that's a bit orthogonal. Even though he knows all possible decisions and repercussions which can ensue -- we still have the choice of which fork of the decision tree is taken. That's free will. In short, we choose our own universe out of all possible universes every second of every day. God knows all of them regardless of our choice -- and we're held to the standard of the ones we actually chose.

Or God is both omniscient and omnipotent (as it says on the tin) -- and being omniscient knows not only all of the past, present and future -- but all possible pasts, presents and futures (a God who is outside of time by virtue of creating time and space is probably going to be that anyway, right?).

Therefore -- God is certainly aware of all potential sins by humanity - but free will allows the choice not to sin. Simply put, God knows the worst we can be -- and simply wishes us the best possible world (and future).

I think you can see from the adult (or from placental/umbilical) stem cell research being much less controversial (I want to say unopposed.. but I'm sure there's someone, somewhere that has some problem with it -- I haven't heard of any widespread objection, though) that if you removed the source of the ethical concern that there would be less resistance. Seems rather obvious, really.

But no, I disagree that there's a distinction here. Those who have an ethical issue with stem cell research that destroys the embryos can still disagree with funding it, regardless of what benefit society supposedly receives (in the same manner that while we may ask citizens to volunteer their lives for their country -- not many would volunteer others to benefit society. And this is one of the fundamental points of disagreement that makes this an ethical issue -- is an embryo at this point an "other"? Does that matter if so? Those who answer "Yes" and "Yes" are not going to support this no matter what benefit is claimed -- in the same way that (if they're consistent) they wouldn't support harvesting organs from prison inmates to better society, etc.).

From that ethical perspective any reduction of an individual or individuals to "property" to be disposed of by society as a whole is a regression of liberty (and really a return to a slave class) which outweighs the benefits to those who profit from the activity. As such, like the war protesters -- the activity from their perspective is NOT in the public's best interest.

Riiight... which is why the Catholic Church is such a proponent of IVF.

Oh wait -- that's in Bizarro land.

As far as fertility drugs, they're apparently generally fine with them -- simply cautioning that large multiple pregnancies put both mother and infants at risk.

Sorry to burst your bubble but some of these "arrogant and self centered" folk are more consistent than you think. (And I would think on at least the "arrogant" front that there's a little speech about not worrying about the mote in your neighbor's eye....)