Don't worry - the tendency to see both sides of an issue is a genuine medical affliction brought on by an over-active brain. Soon they'll have an implant to help such people reduce every issue affecting the world to a simplistic false dichotomy, taking away the uncomfortable urge to try and deal with complexity.

Meanwhile, you just need to rely on willpower to suppress your skepticism when reading stories like this.

Spoiler: Gordon survives to become police commissioner, young Bruce Wayne survives and grows up to be Batman, Selena Kyle survives and becomes Catwoman; Cobblepot survives and takes to wearing a tux and top hat; several "good" characters with familiar names and hints of a "dark side" survive and turn into villains; while any character that doesn't appear in the comics probably won't survive a cliffhanger.

Well, that's true of virtually all UK shows (and they're generally better for it). I think "cancelled" is still appropriate when the creators looked set to continue but the channel pulls the plug for commercial reasons (which seems to be the case for Utopia) c.f. ones that are intentionally concluded like "Life on Mars".

Of course, with some shows its hard to tell a cliffhanger from a conclusion.

It really, really annoys me when shows end the season without resolving anything - have the makers never heard of shows getting cancelled? At least both series of Utopia resolve the main plot in the final episodes before throwing a curve-ball cliffhanger.

NB: Apparently there's talk of a US remake of Utopia. Hmm.

No, freedom of speech is freedom of speech.

What you say may be completely true of the US 1st Amendment, and somewhat true about Article 10 or the European Declaration of Human Rights, but neither of those is the be-all and end-all of the ideal of "freedom of speech".

OK, Utopia is neither based upon a comic or, technically, current (since its been cancelled*) but it does feature a fictitious comic book as a plot device and the cinematography is heavily influenced by comic book art (if you like over-saturated colour, you're in for a treat).

Not for the faint hearted or easily offended, though.

(* but it does come to a reasonably satisfying conclusion so don't let that deter).

Of the official list: only really seen two: SHIELD is OK (but it ain't Firefly, although 'the bus' looks hauntingly familiar from some angles) and Gotham is rather good (and certainly isn't like any Batman story you've seen - I just hope they keep their nerve and don't break out the tights, top-hats and make-up until the last ever episode).

Let me fix that for you using the junior dictionary:

...or a memory chip the size of a baby's fingernail. I mean, it is reassuring to have a few physical copies sitting in libraries around the world for sentimental purposes and backup in the event of the great EMP, but there's no other rational need for a paper dictionary. In modern society, if the power has been out for a week, the inability to have a properly refereed game of Scrabble is going to be the least of your worries.

...which ceased to be an issue a quarter of a century ago with the arrival of the CD-ROM. Not sure exactly when it became feasible to have the entire OED on your phone, but it certainly wasn't yesterday.

Consequently, you now need exactly 2 versions of a dictionary: the unabridged version and one abridged just enough to make it unsuitable for professional linguists (so you can make a profit from the pros). Size is not an issue for any of those and there's no reason whatsoever to take out words 'to make room for new ones'. If a word has fallen out of use, make a note to that effect: the fact that it was used is valuable information.

Hell, personally, I'd have settled with just a plaque, but if a few grams of ash has more emotional value with some people, why not? I certainly don't agree when people risk their lives to recover dead bodies, or waste valuable real estate on graveyards, but this is harmless. Plus, the inscription was purely factual.

There is something after death: the lives of everybody who didn't die that day, and their descendants. The possibility that what you did in your life might have a positive impact on your survivors, that they might even remember you or your work, is the real life after death.

Show me evidence that some valuable scientific experiment was bumped from the mission to accommodate this weight, or that a significant sum of much-needed money was diverted from elsewhere, and I'll agree with you.

Meanwhile, I Am Not A Rocket Scientist, but it seems like a no-brainer that you don't design a half-tonne space probe without holding a few grammes of capacity in reserve for contingencies. Something like the ashes could have been bumped at the very last minute with out consequence if the probe weighed in 0.01% over weight.

No, just that they had emotions and honoured their dead. In fact, you're feeding a Sky Fairy cult strawman (or rather straw Vulcan - see points #4 and #5).

You can't if you get punishment confused with consequences - but calling "punishment" "consequences" is a circular argument.

To use the cliche'd "Shouting 'fire!' in a crowded room" example: the 'consequence' is the risk of causing a dangerous stampede. Acceptable 'punishment' is what comes after you've convinced a court that the stampede actually happened, or presented compelling evidence that it was a serious risk. Unacceptable censorship is banning the discussion of combustion in a public place based on a hypothetical worst-case "stampede" scenario.

I think you're confusing laws like the 1st Amendment to the USA Constitution, or article 10 or the European convention on human rights with the wider, concept of freedom of speech as an ideal. Even the 1st Amendment goes further than you suggest, but I think you've hit on the original motivation behind it.

As a non-USAian it took me a while to work out that the spirit of the US Bill of Rights is to protect local government, corporations and organised religions against (specifically) the federal government, and that any benefit for individuals implicit in the letter of the law is a nice bonus.

The European convention of human rights, by contrast, seems to be mainly about enumerating all the exceptions to freedom of speech, so that the government can micro-manage your freedoms for you. Sounds cynical, but freedom is a paradox, and if you want to enshrine all human rights in law, that's the tarpit you end up in.

I think it is true, though, that both of these examples only prohibit suppression of free speech by government - they don't specifically oblige that government to prevent others from restricting your free speech (but then that really is a can of worms, and a lot of the people who pushed for Amendment 1 or Article 10 to protect their right to express their views really don't want to eat their own dogfood).

However, you should never rely on the law of the land as the last word on right and wrong, and general freedom of speech (insofar as it can be protected without descending into paradox) is a good thing.

The first step is to accept that it is a paradox, that no solution is going to be perfect and you're not going to fix everything. Politely ignore anybody who speaks in absolute terms or comes up with trite little not-even-wrong aphorisms like "you have the freedom to do anything you want except the freedom to take away freedom from others".

Then, before imposing any laws, you have to remember that the acid test is not how they will be interpreted by judges and juries, but how it will be interpreted by publishers, employers, landlords, public institutions, police, security guards etc. who will tend to interpret them in the broadest, most restrictive possible way to cover their own backs.

Everything is a risk/benefit tradeoff - and the risk can never be zero.

In the case of freedom of speech, though, it's possible to be almost absolutist if you insist that any activity you do want to control (harassment, incitement to violence, etc.) must involve actions or behaviours that go beyond the words that are said or published. So, if you want to prosecute someone you should not simply have to prove that they uttered the word "fire" in a public theatre, but show evidence that they intentionally set out to cause disruption*. You can prohibit "inciting violence" if you like, but it needs to be absolutely literal, or supported by other activities. Harassment should need to include a pattern of behaviour that shows victimisation. Once you start banning speech that might induce panic, could be interpreted as inciting violence or that made the victim feel harassed the slippery slope beckons.

Unfortunately, both religious extremists and politicians do like to pretend that they have the solution to everything, while lawyers lurk to apply 20:20 hindsight to anybody who takes a risk and loses, and lawmakers who seem to think that if a legal decision misinterpreting their law is put right on the third appeal then everything is rosy.

(* Of course, although this is a popular example, they're quite rightly going to that special hell reserved for people who talk at the theatre *anyway* so free speech isn't really relevant)

No, as a dozen people have posted before you, they decided to pull a book because of a technical typesetting error (Unicode minus signs in place of hyphens) that would screw up page formatting (hyphens are significant to text-wrapping and auto-hyphenation algorithms) and text-to-speech (or should I say 'textminustominusspeech'?)

That's exactly what a decent copy editor would look at (as well as knowing when to use an m-dash, a minus sign or a hyphen) and would be a valuable service to self-publishing authors. Bring it on.

...and words in sentences communicate ideas more effectively when they are properly spelled, punctuated and typeset. That doesn't affect the message.

Not sure how you can "assess demand" for something like this with a limited trial. The "demand" would be for a substantial network of swap stations that allowed people to treat EVs like gas cars and not have to plan long trips around meal breaks at superchargers. They might expand the market to customers who have currently rejected EVs because of the charging problem: if you already have a Tesla you probably looked into the charging situation and decided that it fits your motoring needs, so you're not going to be falling over yourself to pay for a battery swap instead.

Then, the battery replacement needs to be integrated with some sort of lease scheme whereby you don't actually own the battery which (some EVs use this approach anyway) which would make sense in many ways, but if you've already bought your car, complete with battery, are you going to want to swap it out?

The other issue is the long-term scalability of the "free supercharge" model - its fine with the current level of Tesla ownership, but if EVs go mainstream provision will have to ramp up dramatically (think: whole parking lots wired up for charging) or it will be common to turn up at a station and find all the bays occupied by fully-charged cars waiting for their owners to drift back from their leisurely lunches and shopping trips. A battery-swap system might be the only way to turn round enough customers. "Free charging" certainly isn't going to be long-term sustainable - but while its there, its going to be hard to persuade people to pay for battery-swaps.

What's more, people could choose not to use Apple's iTunes music store and still listen to music on their iPod. Reports of this case always seem to airbrush over the fact that the "lock out" only ever affected competing DRM formats: there was no problem with playing unprotected MP3 or AAC files from any source.