The last serious Republican president was George H. W. Bush. WW2 Air Force pilot, ran the CIA, ambassador... he was a serious dude.

Just like publishing Obama's birth certificate put an end to the birthers. Except it didn't. The worst birthers just moved the goalposts, demanded other documents, or pretended there was some flaw in the birth certificate.

If a simple legally-acceptable document like a birth certificate is insufficient to satisfy people skeptical of Obama's birth in Hawaii, there's no way that climate change skeptics are going to be satisfied by any release of data, software, or other information.

Ether? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

Forgive me if I don't take your opinions about climate seriously, you're practically into astrology.

No, the sort of morons who think Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich would make viable US presidents.

That's what they want you to think.

"What I saw was people very firmly convinced not simply that they were RIGHT, but that what they were doing was righteous and anyone who dared question it was either evil or a complete fool...which isn't precisely the mindset one would expect of a scientist for whom the data (alone) drives their decisions - or should."

I suspect you'd get a bit short-tempered as well, if your work were being questioned, every day, by ideological fanatics without a clue about your field.

If I were a paleontologist, and every day young-earth creationists were filing FOIA requests for my data and records, thinking they were going to "prove" that my work is a fraud, and lobbying the government to audit me, and generally *wasting my time* with harassment of this sort, I wouldn't have much time for them in email with colleagues, and certainly wouldn't speak kindly of them.

"Yeah, they've had a REAL hard time selling their products. That must be why PCs are such a niche market."

Not a niche market, but it is a low-profit one. PCs are commodities, so it can be difficult to differentiate your product from the competition. Competing on price is one approach, which leads to the low profit margins.

So it's Apple's fault that Wheaton didn't back up his music? WTF?

It's probably not B&N setting that price, it's probably some person who is 'publishing' the public domain text, and slapped a $1 price on it. A nook version of Homer's Odyssey, translated by Samuel Butler, entirely public domain, is listed for $1, and is published by "Buki Editions". The Amazon kindle store is full of low-quality spam public domain works, 'published' by people this way.

Some public domain books *published* as e-books by B&N, *are* priced at $0. Other B&N-published PD ebooks, like Sun-Tzu, are a few bucks, but those apparently have new, non-public domain material such as translation or commentary, so a non-zero price is fair.

"BTW I'm 10 solo hours away from obtaining my private pilot license."

Well, no wonder you're such an expert on landing at Amundsen in October.

Why, I bet when you were learning to drive you were schooling the engineers at Ferrari.

If it was as easy as you suggest, I'm sure someone would have done it by now.

So it's probably not as easy as you suggest.

Don't forget a way to keep the hangar above the snow pack.

In the case of the ISS, If the person isn't there alone, he or she would probably be bundled into one of the escape pods and sent down to earth where treatment would be available. Which wouldn't take very long.

That's a huge difference between Amundsen and the ISS - they can' get back from the ISS, but you can't get back from Amundsen in winter.

My understanding is that even during summer, it's not unusual for a planned flight to be scrubbed due to weather changes, even when everything's loaded and ready to go. Sometimes multiple times.

The stroke happened at the end of August. The acute phase when immediate treatment would be really helpful is *long* past. The time between now and when it becomes safe to fly is a minor matter compared to the importance of being treated in the hours after the stroke.

You go to Antarctica, you take your chances.