Don't worry about asteroids. What you need to worry about is long-period comets

Something bumps into another thing in the oort cloud, and sends a comet towards Earth. We'll see it at about the orbit of Saturn (probably found by an amateur), and we'll have about two years -max- to kiss our asses goodbye.

You're downloading torrents on a 9Mb/s pipe. Just imagine the speed your torrents would get if everyone you're downloading from had a 50Mb/s pipe.

I'd just like to point out that Jar Jar -alone- allowed the creation of the Galactic Empire.

ARRRGH! Brain melting!

You state three requirements to get you to 'believe' in global warming. The first is the existence of anthropogenic global climate change. You are, quite simply, wrong in thinking that this must be proven to exist.

I see you do not contend that the world is cooling, or staying the same temperature. I'll also assume you think the world is heating. There is, in fact, good evidence for this - Mars and Jupiter's temperature have gone up since we started shooting probes out there in the 70s. So let's just all agree that the earth, and the entire solar system is heating. (yes, sun, I am disappoint.)

Well, alright, we agree that the earth is heating, so I guess now we've got to prove that it's a bad thing. Would you like to tell me how any 'educated' guess about the future can be 'supported'? Face it, there are 100s of climate models running on computers around the world, and they all say that, yeah, CO2 will lead to sea level rise, and Bangladesh is screwed. End of story.

I'm not disagreeing with you that we should switch to nuclear (and solar, and wind...) power, but what you are doing by questioning anthropogenic global climate change does the entire world a disservice. Climate change has the ability to fuck up our grand kid's lives, and we need to do something about it, regardless if we (humans) caused this climate change or not.

I'd just like to add that people who do not understand the Carbon cycle are idiots. Taxing cow farts? Where does the Carbon in cow farts come from. grass? Wow, nice little closed cycle there. The reason we've (presumably) been screwing ourselves over is the digging up and burning of fossil fuels, and that's about it.

The most probable cause of this new policy is meddling by one of the sales/administration drones. They can't have an iPod, why should you?

You've got two choices: Sit there and take it like a man, or start meddling with the drones. Wait a month or so before you start meddling with the drones.

Eventually, morale at your business will be zero. You will have the insight that one should mind their own business, and hopefully someone else will, too.

You're implying that the United States wants Bin Laden to be found. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to my Two Minute Hate over 9/11.

You're going to be brought down by what you hate. We Yanks are going to be brought down by what we love, and we'll merrily go along with it.

I've got two cats with RFID tags between their shoulder blades. The animal shelter put them in before they were put up for adoption. My other cat does not have an RFID tag, mostly because he was born in 1993.

>>-81 isn't anywhere near D.C. or Baltimore (it's mostly a mountain/rural interstate), and thus doesn't do anything to offload traffic from I-95. I disagree. I'm looking at I-81 right now from the front desk of a hotel. On any given night, there are guests at the hotel coming from Maine, going to N. Carolina, etc... They do this to avoid traffic on I-95. Having to deal with the constant construction on 81 is another matter entirely, though.

Huxley wrote of a dystopian future where people watched TV an astonishing TWO HOURS A DAY. Thank god that hasn't come to... crap.

Source for the US denying water on mars? You can detect water on mars with a telescope in your back yard, if you can see the northern hemisphere of mars. The entire northern ice cap (or most of it anyway) is water ice. Southern ice cap not so much, but the north has tons of water. We knew about this before Mariner. How to tell whether that white spot on the surface of mars is water ice or not is left as an exercise to the reader.

So the mistake in using imperial units this time would result in a soft landing?

Christmas on Mars, due out in 2003!