I think the premise is still quite doable, especially if there were some condition on Earth which prevented agricultural production from reaching its current capacity.

Anything that would leave spaceflight-capable civilization standing would also leave Earth better suited for food production than the Moon. It's an absurd premise, and any attempt to justify it with actual logistics will simply draw attention to it. Just imply the situation is due to "corruption" and leave the details to the imagination of the audience.

What's wrong with incest?

Power. Family relations already have a high chance of turning into a living hell due to the combination of huge power differences and mandatory participation; supercharging everything with sexuality is a bad idea.

Sorry, you don't get to redefine science as "Something a scientist told me."

There is no shortage of people willing to make statements in the authoritative tone, and the stupid and undisciplined accept that as a way to avoid that uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty. I'm not among them, are you?

If it's not transparent and reproducible, it's not a proposal based on science, but authority. It holds as much weight as a statement by the Flying Spagetti Monster.

If you want a faith based approach to law making, just be forthright about it. It's not like you're alone. But, please don't denigrate the scientific process by claiming that's not what's happening. People are thick enough already...

And full circle: http://games.slashdot.org/stor...

All too often we assume that dealing with trolls is like pissing in the wind but a few crushing responses now and then (being made "famous" and getting fired) is a start.

Yes, exactly: you feel better for a while but risk getting made an example of for some minor (to you) crime someone happens to be crusading against.

It's not that dealing with trolls is futile, it's just that the unintended side effects of any effective response tend to be far too negative.

If you've not seen that one before, FWIW it was quite influential:

http://www.metafilter.com/3766...
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
http://venturebeat.com/2009/07...

Actions have consequences. [...] He's not responsible for what people do with the information. [...] If you can't handle the consequences or potential consequences of your actions, THEN DON'T FUCKING DO THEM.

So which one is it? Are people responsible for the (predictable) consequences of their actions, or are they not?

and I've sat here for 20 minutes wondering if this was my daughter, what would I do.

If it was your daughter being trash-talked to online, or your if it was your daughter doing the Online Tough Guy act?

Nothing has changed.

http://phocks.tumblr.com/post/...

We don't know that the speed of light was always as it is now.

For speed of light to vary, either photons must have mass (so they don't need to move at c anymore), or the constant of nature c would need to vary over spaceitme. Either of these would have massive effects on pretty much everything: photons mediate electromagnetic force, which not only underlays all of chemistry, but combines with strong interaction to define stable elements and how much energy nuclear reactions release, while c defines the very structure of causality itself.

So frankly, in this case "it's an alien movie" is a more likely explanation.

Latency and bandwidth are distinct measurements.

But they aren't independent. A device that has high bandwidth and high latency must be massively parallel (since for a sequential device bandwidth is simply inverse of latency) and have massive internal buffers to hold all the data being processed. That seems pretty unlikely for implementing such a simple algorithm, unless of course the implementation is purposefully broken.