designed? pah. The piano is badly evolved you mean!

To be fair, the pope has probably never had sex without using a Trojan

"Jesus never existed[citation required]"

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

Of course, whether what the bible says he did is true or not is a separate issue, but scientifically it is believed that he did exist.

Spotted a typo:
Israel knows that attacking Hamas with airstrikes will result in a reaction. They take this action with the full knowledge that it will lead to not only innocent Palestinian civilians dying but their own people as well. But, somehow, it's Hamas's fault. Always.

Now IANAL but I think you shot yourself in the foot there.

Your quote from the OSCE document clearly states that participating states [ie the US] invites observers to observe the election "to the extent permitted by law". If the law says they're allowed to observe, but from no closer than 100 feet, then how is that in disagreement with international agreements?

Admittedly you could argue about how much observation can be done from a distance, but it doesn't appear to be in disagreement to me.

Having said that it increasingly seems to me that right/wrong and legal/illegal are orthogonal axes

Erm, callous jokes are unfortunately a case of free speech. As Voltaire (didn't) say: I don't find your joke funny but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Things don't stop being free speech just because you disagree with them.

"we can watch electrons move" - I thought quantum dynamics, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in particular, prohibits things like that? After all, watching something move essentially means you are able to measure both it's position and velocity?

The problem is only partly the leaves, and partly the change to braking technology - after all, leaves on the line never used to be an issue.

Some years ago the trains switched from using brakes which applies to the outside of the wheel, which had the handy side effect of cleaning leaf gunk off the wheels, to brakes applied to the internal disc, which don't do anything for leaf gunk.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_rail

Amazon was selling ebooks below cost? You do know that the marginal cost of creating an ebook is virtually zero, so it's frankly pretty difficult to sell them below cost.

Your linked article seems to complain that Amazon with their Kindle proved to be too successful. I have to say that authors/publishers brought this on themselves by insisting on DRM. With DRM, consumers get locked into a single format, to avoid having to repurchase their entire library for use with a different eReader. As such, whoever sells them their first eReader will subsequently get all future eBook sales. The music industry has (sort of) learned this lesson, and I had hoped that book publishing would learn from their mistakes but it seems not. If you want to remove Amazon's stranglehold, sell eBooks elsewhere with no DRM. Other stores will then be able to compete with Amazon's eBooks and consumers will still be able to use their exising Kindle eReader. Amazon's competitve advantage of being able to read on the Kindle is gone overnight, with the advantage that publishers can then start to sell their own eReaders, which will be able to import consumers entire library.

Well, on average there's one boob* per person - surely that's enough?

(I'm excluding moobs here)

Since a while ago - in the UK at least.

I'm on t-mobile, and pay £20 for six months of "unlimited" data and pay something like £5 a month in calls and texts. Overall I'm less than £10 a month which works out as much cheaper than paying a subsidised price for the phone and a hefty monthly bill.

See internet boosters here
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/price-plans/pay-as-you-go/boosters/

Um, $200 + $35 per month is a cell phone plan ....

And the point is $200 + $35 per month for two years is a lot more than shelling out $400 for the phone and paying $10 a month on pay as you go. Same deal as with the $99 xbox - and anything where you can pay in monthly installments rather than all up front.

I'm OK then - when I'm not passing people I drive in the right lane.

Having said that I do live in the UK ...

The BBC has an article up which shows the breakdown of nominations by genre:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17074585

Sci-Fi does seem to be one of the smaller genres by nominations.

However, does it really matter? I know I stopped reading critics reviews of movies decades ago, because largely they all review from a particular viewpoint. A more action/sci-fi/fantasy film may not be up for winning an oscar, but if it does it's job (ie entertains) then its genre shouldn't be held against it. As such I'll only read reviews of films which are penned by people interested in that genre and the film's objective.

256k? That should be enough for anyone!