But, this is an accurate assessment. it became obvious within days of the attacks that these two measures were about the only thing that would have made a difference. Every thing else is pure theater.

Based on?

In small type, inside the bottom stripe of the flag, it says "Made in China".

You mean we currently have drones flying around, many of them outside of active warzones and over US cities, that *don't* currently have the availability to detect and avoid other aircraft??

I will never understand why they coerce these false confessions. There can't be more than a handful of people, especially in China where trust in their government is even lower than over here, who believes he changed his mind on his own.

I'm someone with close friends, good family, and active social life, a couple of different fulfilling hobbies, and a steady career that I'm 15 years into and 20 years from retirement from.

And I signed up.

I began my application by listing a myriad different ways the mission could fail, from exploding on launch, to losing air on the way there, to crashing into the planet, to starving to death on the surface, to the most likely: the project running out of money before ever leaving the ground. These are not 200,000 delusional people. These are not 200,000 people who think they're signing up for a quick trip on the Millennium Falcon Many, if not most, of these people know what they're getting into, as much as it can be known at this point. And we've signed up, to go to Mars.

The project will probably fail. Simply because most ambitious projects fail.But some succeed. The probability of failure is not a reason not to be ambitious.

But why go? I can't speak for everyone who signed up. But for myself, the answer is simple. We have to go. We have to expand beyond our planet. Here's somebody trying to do something about it. And I can't pass up the opportunity to be part of it. 47 years ago today the words "To boldly go where no man has gone before" were first uttered in public. And no, you don't need to point out that the show was fiction. But the words meant something.

There are always people willing to go new places. And people willing to go with them.

Columbus wasn't alone on his ship to America. Shackleton had to turn down almost 5000 volunteers for his South Pole expedition. Going to Mars is an even bigger deal. I'm not surprised they got 200,000 applicants. And it's OK that you can't imagine wanting to go. I can't imagine *not* wanting to go.

And yeah, the project will likely fail. But even if it does, something will be learned. Something new will be gained. And eventually, someone will use those lessons and succeed. And I'd be glad to be part of one step of that process. That's why I sent in my application.

I haven't actually looked at the data yet, but I suspect that the last 135 years of recorded temperature data were gathered by more than one guy in one location.

I love how people keep claiming they have a life and therefore don't use social networks... on Slashdot.

You realize this is almost the exact amount (only a few tens of billions of dollars off) that the ultra-rich in the United States alone gave themselves from our tax money just over five years ago?

The only thing lacking in building such a space station is vision, not resources.

Not to mention that if the couple both have the same mother-in-law then someone's broken a law somewhere...

You've never driven inside a city, have you?

One of the problems with claiming what "the" paleo diet consisted of is that it varied hugely from time to time and place to place.

Unsurprisingly, the world before "the" invention of agriculture was not a giant homogeneous culture with the same diet everywhere.

For the most part, diets in the winter vs summer were remarkably different, even for the same people. There are many exceptions, though, where the diet didn't vary much year round.

Even the diets from places as close together as, say, western Oregon and Utah from 13,000 years ago were hugely different. The Pleistocene Oregon diet consisted of large amounts of seafood, rabbits, tubers, and, yes, lots of wild grains. In Utah there was significantly more larger game, more meat, including more fat, different berries, more grains and less tubers.

And, yes, even without lots of grains, throughout the archaeological record, people frequently had bad teeth. Worn flat by sand and bits of dirt in their food the was rule, not the exception, and cavities and abscesses were more common than not throughout the Americas. I imagine it would be similar to Europe and Africa.