What is 'general intelligence'? (Anything like Colonel Panic?)

Yes, if you can't read, can't figure out a bus schedule you are in a world of hurt in this society. It does not follow that being able to understand calculus gives you peace, happiness and longevity. There is going to be some broad mean that societal requirements dictate that you need. Other than than, you are at the mercy of lots of other vagaries of life.

Synthetic vaccines? They're all synthetic. We haven't used 'natural' vaccines since Jenner's day.

And speaking of crackpots....

I'm not. .Net 1.0, .Net 1.2, .Net 1.4, .Net this, .Net that. Only one .Net version on the machine else nasty things happens.

Microsoft is doing us a big favor leaving .Net to Windows.

At least we didn't sink it off the coast of Japan.

That would have been way foolish.

Standard procedure. Every time. If something MIGHT be involved in a crime, the first thing law enforcement is going to do is put that thing someplace where they can prove provenance. It can be annoying and law enforcement over reaches at time, but I have a hard time getting mad at the FBI for this one. Especially the field guys - they aren't doing the detailed forensics or anything, they are just their to make sure that the scene is safe and secure.

"The FBI doesn't have a sense of humor that we are aware of, mam."

Now, this is a theory, a thesis. It seems plausible, but you haven't advanced any data to see if it is indeed true.

This is precisely what these folks are trying to do.

Tunnels are expensive and cranky of maintenance. It's why municipalities don't build Roman-Era quality roads with 10 feet of grading and hand packed rocks that last 1000 years.

It's called a budget. An extraordinarily annoying concept.

It was there a minute ago! It's a conspiracy I tell you!

The proposed sixth extinction event happened some 250 million years ago. I don't think the Unix epoch covers that range of time.

For those of the geological persuasion, 50 000 years is certainly 'right now'.

Go take a couple of graduate level courses in paleotaxonomy. Then perhaps an introductory course in logic.

Then get back to us.

Amazing. A nice little post about an interesting NASA probe and we get conspiracy theories.

I hope you're proud of yourself.

Facebook?

God, I hope not.

What does Phil have to do with all this?