Plus, the Steam Sale aspect adds some urgency. If I knew that game X was always $2.99, I might never buy it. But If I think I might like to play it, and I know that after this weekend it will be $20 (the price where I would really think about if I wanted the game) but it's on sale for $4.50 this weekend, I'll buy it now *just in case* I might want to play it later.

This is really good for the seller I imagine - they just need a hook on the store that makes me think I might ever want to play the game. So it's also the sale aspect (as I think JC Penny found out with their attempt at "Always low prices").

That's hard to guess, but I've read free fan fiction that rivaled the best published novels. I've read paid novels that were as bad as some slashdot posts (I imagine they must have been self-published). And I've read plenty of mediocre works on both the hobby and professional sides.

I doubt doing something part time means that is is by definition worse, I'd more likely guess it's slower. So we might get less books each year.

Is that a problem though?

Genocide isn't something that people tend to ignore.

Some people find santa claus inspirational. That doesn't mean we should spend bales of money looking for santa claus.

Then it could hardly be considered "settlement". We might more accurately call it "annexation", "genocide" (in the south), "real estate fraud", "failure to comply with treaties", amongst other things. And none of those things is at all like constructing a habitat for humans in space. For one thing, there were humans there already, and air, and gravity, and soil, and game, and reasonable levels of radiation. The Europeans who travelled to America did so on the understanding that there was lot's of free stuff, a big land where they could build a house and/or make money. They didn't go there expecting to live in a tiny box, surrounded by vacuum and blasted by radiation. They would think of those environs as a prison - as would any sensible person who had to endure it for more than a few months.

?? That doesn't even make sense.

So let's summarise: You admit that your sidearm will not help you protect your liberties. You claimed you could say whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. You boasted about killing cops and having your mates pervert the course of justice for you. When pressed about this, you suddenly changed your mind and claimed to be straight up and law abiding. "No need to worry about ME saying the wrong thing - no sir! Clean your boots for you sir?"

For some reason you thought that implying that i like distended anuses would make me feel insulted.

You are the reason that America is under tyranny. You guys who fantasise about being cold-blooded killers and vigilantes, but when challenged, you roll over and urinate on yourselves like beaten curs. Do you even have a gun? Have you ever, even once, stood up for what is right?

Best estimates put this at 15000 years ago. Again, what evidence is there that this triggered a cultural evolution?

As I already pointed out, even at the moment of impact, the Earth will be more habitable than Mars is. And Mars is more hospitable than, say Mercury, or Neptune, or the moons around Jupiter. In other words - at the exact moment that the asteroid hits, the earth will still be a nicer place than anywhere else in the Solar System.

If you want to go into space, that's fine, you and your mates are welcome to fund it, just don't interfere with the funds we need to explore (using robots). And don't imagine it is like Star Trek, it is not like Star Trek.

One of the better features of The Hobbit (or There and Back Again) is that Bilbo is knocked unconcious at the beginning of the battle of the 5 armies. And since the story is written from his perspective (or he wrote it) there is virtually no dewcription of the battle itself. SO I was hopeful that we would not be subjected to yet another boilerplate over the top battle scene where actually fearsome creatures (trolls, wargs) repeatedly fail to kill their enemy and participants appear to be able to defy the laws of physics. I mean, for Manwes sake: if i wanted to see acrobats I'd go to the circus. Actual character exposition appears ot be confined to clumsy dialogue. Apparently there is no screen time for visual exposition on the change in Bilbo from comfortable, insular shire hobbit to a slightly amoral but very plucky thief. Instead he (bilbo) needs to convey this through long, confessional speeches with the dwarves, whilst 2 dimensional elves do stupid things.

Well, you always try www.rsvp.com.au they might have the cure for what ails ya.

Yes. A plan which involves billions of people dying unnecessarily seems, well, not like a good plan. Good thing that nobody would ever agree to such an insane plan.

I'd like a real reason, but I'm not holding my breath.

That's not a reason. That's like saying: "We should build a popsicle skyscraper - because we can!" It's nonsense.

The last real attempt at settlement was Greenland and prior to that 10000 years or more ago. On what are you basing your assertion that this was an a time of social expansion (more than say, the Enlightment, or Pax Romana)?

No, we're not.

There has only been one significant imapct event in the Earth's history, which is the one that created the moon. The rest have ben relatively minor - a danger for life at the time, but not dangerous to us, with our ability to adapt, tunnel and otherwise mitigate the dangers associated with abrupt climate change. At no point since the moon calved off has the earth been less habitable than mars.

And as time passes the danger of imapct diminishes, since Jupiter is doing a great job sweeping the inner solar system clean of likely debris - thanks big guy! The sun is now middle aged - chances are we will never be hit by anything likely to make us extinct.

Well, we don't have lift capacity to lift 9 billion or so humans, plus all the other life forms to Mars - plus the obvious disadvantage that if we move there, we can never come back, and even on the worst day the Earth is more habitable than Mars will ever be. So the other option is looking like the viable one.

Well, you certainly wouldn't try a nuclear bomb, that would hardly have any delta V at all. And if a robotic mission is not going to work, sending a human certainly won't. What are they going to do - push it with their arms?

- from the people who wanted to invest in robotic missions, because if we had done that, then the big rock could have easily been diverted using an advanced robotic mission.

Well, for now at least. But I guess that the idea of shooting a police officer gives you an erection - does it not? And the mention of the wife's ex-husband, do you feel a surge of pleasure in your genitals at the thought of pointing a gun at him? Does the idea of evening the odds make you want to masturbate?

And do you act out these fantasies? Do you seek out those special places on the web for people with your dark pleasures?

Do ever you post similar diatribes on facebook, blaming women for your loneliness and absent sex life? Ever talk about shooting up your school?

Fixed.

Yes, you are a real law abiding thug aren't you. You didn't choose the whiteboy thuglife, the whiteboy thuglife chose you. You can say what you want, when you want - provided the what and when are on the list of permissable places and times set by the government. You're a real icon of liberty!

Yes, I'm very turned on by your display of suburban badassery. You're the king of the thugs in my mind. Or perhaps you just look and sound like an idiot. Should I call you keazy? Are you gunna get your cinna on at the cinnabon?.

If you self description is accurate your peers are going to be low order drug mules, prostitutes, drug addicts and/or thug wannabees with hoodies and chains on their wallets. Somehow I don't see them turning up to court (unless in the dock). Likely too moronic to find their way down the street.

This from the guy who admitted freely that his firearm is useless for defending his liberty and in fact his main purpose for keeping it was to threaten others and fantasise about shooting cops. You'll excuse me if I'm not inclined to take civic lessons from you.

Sounds like someone sold you a rock that keeps bears away, and consequently you are sure that there can be no bears regardless of people pointing out bears on the street, in your garden, rifling through your trash.

You can't say what you like, to anyone at anytime. You probably never had that right, you certainly don't now. You just choose a subset of topics to discuss, to a subset of people, in a subset of times and places. Your own personal 'Free Speech Zone'. You are deluding yourself. Wake Up!

And lastly can I just point out how useless your firearm is for defending your rights: If you point your firearm at an official or member of law enforcement, you will be arrested and thrown into prison. Most likely, you will go to prison for longer that *I* would, were I to do the same thing in Australia, because despite other insanities, our sentencing laws are sane and our judicial system relatively free from corruption, whereas yours is utterly insane and utterly corrupt, and if you go to prison in the US you will stay there, stuck in the system for the rest of your life. So - what's the use of your firearm? Who are you going to point it at - tyrannical rabbits?