the entire 15 or more billion years old universe

13.75 +- 0.11 billion, according to the latest WMAP figures.

In the US, Christians are about 80% of the population, but over 90% of convicted criminals.

If I were ever to be convicted of some dreadful crime and sentenced to a long time in prison, you'd better believe I'd find Jesus. It plays well with the parole boards. I doubt I'd be the only one; that must skew the statistics pretty severely.

then gently shove products towards Earth orbit with the gravity of the Sun to power it.

It's not quite that easy. You can't just point stuff at Earth, give it a shove and wait as it rolls downhill, because space being nearly frictionless, it will roll right back uphill on the other side and end up back in the asteroid belt again.

Your cargo is currently in a circular orbit between Jupiter and Mars. You have to brake it with one rocket burn to convert it to an elliptical orbit with its aphelion where you are now and its perihelion on the opposite side of the Sun at Earth's orbit - timed so that Earth is there when you arrive! Then when you get there, you're going far too fast - your course is going to loop you around straight back to the asteroid belt. So you've got to brake again to join Earth's circular orbit, which means yet more fuel to burn.

There is a very obvious way of stopping at Earth without carrying the fuel for a second rocket burn, but it isn't going to make you popular with the resident civilisation and might damage the cargo too. Also, you don't necessarily have to fly the basic Hohmann ellipse I described: you can go more slowly with a constant-low-thrust ion drive and play clever tricks with gravitational slingshots, which can get you there with far less reaction mass but will take FECKIN' YEARS. Might not be a problem for dumb cargos of ore. Or you can go there more quickly with a mighty superengine like an Orion or a nuclear salt rocket. Of course those are going to be only marginally more popular with the public than the 'look Ma, no brakes' plan of delivery.

Why don't we read up on what actual Islam is, versus the supremacist Arab culture that permeates and corrupts it. Karen Armstrong did a wonderful job of pointing out what Islam actually is, and how Arab culture with it's tradition of jahilliyeh has since permeated and corrupted it

Yes, that's a great idea. Let's all read about what some people claim actual Islam ought to be, as opposed to what a billion-plus people actually believe and practice in their daily lives. You know what? If 'actual Islam' has been 'permeated and corrupted' by something else, then 'actual Islam' is what we technically call 'extinct' and 'irrelevant'. What we're dealing with here is 'Islam' warts and all, not your idealised Islam you find in books by this Karen Armstrong of yours.

Name one Mario or Zelda game (other than Majora's Mask) that was not awesome at the time it was released.

Sunshine wasn't great, and honestly I was a bit disappointed in Spirit Tracks. But what's this about Majora's Mask? That game was wonderful.

It should come with a couple of IR LEDs to be attached to the forehead

Er... can I have some of what you're smoking?

If this is actually necessary, try an infrared LED on the unit itself, and a detector that's watching for the reflection from the user's eyes. The whole point of the 3DS is that it's a 3D game that doesn't require the user to wear stupid glasses; you think that a Borg cosplay accessory is even remotely acceptable here?

That has been available on other devices such as the Nokia N900 for a while.

... Well, for a few weeks anyway, since the last software update that activated Skype video calling. Unless I've overlooked something?

I don't honestly have much use for video calling either. Once you get over the whole OMG I'M LIVING IN TEH FUTURE thing, video phone is just kind of awkward. Give me a Thunderbirds-style SOUND ONLY SELECTED card to put up and I'll be happy.

Eee PC 901 20GB, an early Atom netbook, bought at launch in August 2008 and subjected to I have no idea how many charges over some pretty heavy use ever since. Suffice to say I haven't spared it much.

$ acpi -i
Battery 0: Discharging, 43%, 01:49:04 remaining
Battery 0: design capacity 6580 mAh, last full capacity 6040 mAh = 91%

Ubuntu generally estimates a bit over four hours on a full charge, but I find it's normally good for five.

If anybody at Asus is reading this, you can chalk this one up as a satisfied customer. I suspect this computer might prove to be almost as durable as my 2003-era MP3 player which I am now convinced is some kind of electronic zombie which cannot be killed by natural means.

... that this American custom of the spelling bee is something that would matter more to an immigrant than to the established population. English spelling is fiendishly difficult, internally inconsistent and often downright bizarre, and in addition to the strange rules of English itself there are also words which operate according to Greek or Latin or Germanic principles instead.

So to an immigrant family, having a child who can truly master this horrible mess is a sign that they've arrived, established themselves and put down roots. A point of great pride, a tremendous achievement. To the established population, the ability to spell is taken for granted and the ability to spell well is just a nice-to-have.

Alas, we don't have this custom in England. A pity, really. I was good at spellings at primary school, so it would have been fun. I remember I once got into a huge argument with the teacher over the spelling of a certain word for more than one very small person, because it meant I only got nine out of ten that week. She cited the dictionary; I cited The Hobbit. The mark stood :-(

2) Whisper = Popular UK chocolate bar, now withdrawn

That's Wispa, and they brought it back last year. You even see Wispa Gold from time to time.

Certificates aren't strictly required. Pretty much everyone I phone, I meet physically from time to time. Next time we meet, we can exchange public keys in person and be quite sure of their authenticity.

It's only if I want to make an encrypted call to somebody I've never met that a certificate is needed; and if encryption is an application with any significant market demand, how about a protocol where your phone comes preinstalled with the phone company's public key, you generate a key pair, send the public key to the phone company (securely, using their public key) and they sign it as part of the service? Then the phone company get a certificate for their public key, and anybody who wants to check my public key's authenticity can find a clear endorsement of it.

I've often heard the lack of forced military or civil service (a draft or something similar) as having been a detriment on society and empathy. After going through a war trying to save other people, or having to defend the guy next to you even if you think he's a jerk. How many people do you think would go around pointing guns at people and playing thug if they had spent some time shooting and defending people, understanding just how powerful a tool the thing is.

Yes, but what if you don't have a war going on? That would put a stop to this social engineering scheme. You'd have to start a war. Kill them over there, so we don't end up killing each other over here...

USS Kamehameha SSBN 642

Cool name for a ship with that kind of firepower. I have a mental image of the captain powering up for five episodes or so before he turns the 'nuke half the planet' key.

Wenlock and Mandeville, more like Angry and Creepy. They look like something you'd see pestering Scooby Doo.

They're tonties.

Hardware has outrun consumer applications at last, I think. Other than gaming and HD video there's nothing I've been unable to do with the Eee 901 I picked up at launch a couple of years ago. That's equivalent to, what... a Pentium III at about 1GHz? Did we hit 'good enough' in 2001?