But perhaps the set of circumstances that would create an environment that lasted long enough for life to be created and evolve to this point are wildly, vanishingly improbable. Perhaps the only reason we think it should have happened lots of other places is that we are the ones doing the looking, and we don't realize just how rare we actually are.

Note that if the odds were one trillion to one against, then we could reasonably expect 30 BILLION civilzations in the observable Universe.

Of course, those odds only give about one chance in four of there being a technological civilization in any particular large galaxy like this one....

You're assuming that the author is being truthful about its availability and not merely lying or minimizing in order to protect his sales.

Quite a few years back, Tom Clancy wrote a book called "Sum of All Fears" about a bunch of terrorists building an H-bomb using Pu they recovered from an Israeli bomb lost during the '73 war.
Clancy's Afterward included this:

BLOCKQUOTE>It is generally known that nuclear secrets are not as secret as we would like - in fact, the situation is even worse than well-informed people appreciate. what required billions of dollars in the 1940s is much less expensive today. A modern personal computer has far more power and reliability than the first Eniac, and the "hydrocodes" which enable a computer to test and validate a weapon's design are easily duplicated. The exquisite machine tools used to fabricate parts can be had for the asking. When I asked explicitly for the specifications for the very machines used at Oak Ridge and elsewhere, they arrived Federal Express the next day. Some highly specialized items designed specifically for bomb manufacture may now be found in stereo speakers. The fact of the matter is that a sufficiently wealthy individual could, over a period of from five to ten years, produce a multistage nuclear device.

Based on what I learned about the subject as a young man, I see no particular reason to doubt him...

Convert that 5.56mm or 7.62 mm to inches and you will find two very common caliber rounds.

Yep. It's not all that hard to label a round with SI AND Imperial units both.

Do note that 5.56mm is NOT equal to .223, nor is 7.62mm equal to .308. It's all about supply chains - you're less likely to get a million rounds that don't fit your guns if you give each of the many (for instance) .30 caliber rounds a different label (.30-06, .30-40, .308, to give a few examples).

It should also be noted that the 5.56/7.62 labels were the original labels, not the .223/.308.

And try to ignore that bullet diameters are measured differently in Europe than in the USA (between the lands and between the grooves, respectively, as I recall), so 7.62mm (measured the way they do in Europe) is larger than 7,62mm (measured the way they do in the USA). Luckily, 7.62mm NATO isn't actually 7.62mm the way either of them is measured....

What's interesting is, today we'd like to give these jobs to really expensive machines instead of people -- right at the moment when jobs for people are disappearing.

Hmm, once upon a time, the word "computer" referred to a person. Now we give the same job to a (comparatively) expensive machine.

And of course, all those blacksmiths were put out of work by various pieces of heavy (and expensive) machine in various factories...

And what about the farm-hands replaced by tractors and combines? Or switchboard operators replaced by automatic units?

In other words, can you say "Luddite"? Sure you can....

Basically the rule says to not use equipment to arbitrarily slow speeds down for competitive reasons.

The rule says they can't charge more for faster access, among other things. Which is intended to prevent making "fast lanes".

It would have the interesting side-effect of making a sizable chunk of existing consumer plans unlawful, since most, if not all, ISP's offer several tiers of access - pay $50, get 50mb/s (or whatever), pay $100, get 75mb/s, pay gobs more, get 1Tb/s, that sort of thing.

As an example, AT&T offers five different rates for internet access, ranging from 3mb/s to 75 mb/s. So, four of those rate plans just became unlawful under the rule. Which I imagine would force AT&T to drop the four higher speed plans, since they can't provide all the speeds at every location....

While I doubt seriously the FCC has a problem with that, the fact that it's in the rules that they picked to enforce means it's available as lawsuit material just whenever someone decides to pull out lawyers against an ISP....

The biggest and most powerful military force in the world says imperial units are just fine.

Which, presumably, is why we use 5.56mm rounds in our rifles, 9mm rounds in our pistols, 7.62mm in our machineguns, 60mm, 81mm & 107mm mortar rounds, 105mm, 155mm & 203mm artillery, 120mm tank guns, 25mm IFV guns, and an assortment of artillery rockets in various SI calibers, right?

That said, if a mile was good enough for Big Julie, it's good enough for me. And multiplying by 1.6 isn't really all that stressful to those of us bright enough to handle decimal points....

The problem being that nuclear power is also Non-Carbon-Emitting.

And the people who favour solar, wind, and hydro often have a pathological fear of nuclear....

I confess to not reading TFA, though I did read TFS. I fail to see how the cabbie can get LESS information than specified in TFS - he needs to know your name in order to identify his passenger, cellphone number is displayed whenever someone calls me (and I'm not even a cabdriver), and home address is (more likely than not) where you're being picked up OR where you're being dropped off....

A POS car that could only go 75 if you turned off the AC.

Your first car had an A/C? Wow....

Even wikipedia says that Russell gave her credit after he had arrived at the same answer using a different method. So how is this news?

The US imposing military will is hardly the same as countries FORCED BY INTERNATIONAL TREATY TO NOT REARM expecting defense from its allies..

Remember that little thing with all the jewish people going to camp? well germany's not been allowed to have a military build up.

Umm, Germany has the eighth largest military in the world. Or were you unaware of that?

Japan has the ninth, in case you were interested.

Aside from the Big Three (US, Russia, China), Germany is behind India, UK, France, and South Korea. Which puts them about where they were in 1939 (what, you didn't know that the Wehrmacht in 1939 was smaller than the French Army, much less the combined Anglo-French forces they faced in 1940?).

So, everyone expects to be perfectly anonymous at a Customs Checkpoint, eh?

Really? Going to a place where the guards on both sides of the border check your identity routinely, and people expect anonymity as a matter of course?

Could we perhaps find something more important to be outraged about? Like LSU's baseball team embarrassing themselves last night? Or the morning coffee being cold? Or the birds waking my wife up early (therefore grumpy)?

The average working-poor person I mentioned in my other comment spends 16 hours a day at work, commute-time included. Most of them have two jobs. In welfare-to-work states they often can't get foodstamps if they have less than two jobs. And the work is in the rich neighbourhoods where they can't afford to live so 4 hour commutes are not unusual.

I'm curious...just where is this "average working-poor person" living that this is true? I've never lived anywhere where a four hour commute is normal for anyone...

I'm thinking back in the days when I first got a car so I can go cruising and also for going on dates. With drivers obsolete how would it impact this kind of social behavior?

More time to make out in the backseat while the car drives itself?

I have a stack of long florescent bulbs in an unused corner of my garage, old bulbs from the fixture over my worktable, collecting there since I moved to this house in the early '90s. I never did figure out where to take them or how to safely dispose of them. I guess it'll be my descendants' problem.

You are doing the same disposal strategy I am.

Ditto. I've got that same stack of long fluorescents in my garage. And there they'll stay, I expect....