I'm not sure of the differences between UK and US (or maybe Canadian) ed systems, but even at an earlier age than starting primary school in the 60's I was on the head-mistresses "advanced reading group" and was educating myself through reading.

Your comment about babies is disengenuous and insulting to those of us that know how to read and assimilate that information - albeit that the books we were reading were slightly more basic than "Janet & John Discover the Nature of Black Holes and form a coherent theory of Everything".

I'd never have guessed that children could educate themselves, I was always under the impression that whichever book I read as a school-kid would only entertain me not educate me; how I missed out on so much. ;(

It does strike me that so much education is now based on parents or teachers beliefs and requirements rather than trying to give our kids an un-biased, stable view of history and science (as well as a damn good grounding in English spelling and grammar). All too often I see the politicians in the UK messing with the curriculum and tweaking things to get the best results, when all, in effect, they are doing is creating university entrants with biased positions on history and science, kids not knowing exactly what is is they excel in and a generation (after generation et. cetera) that is dominated by belief rather than proof.

I have no problem with any of the education I had in the 60's and early 70's as that was a full, unbiased and rounded education with no crap from religious groups or politico's trying to score points from voters; because of that I know I had a decent education, even though a lot has been re-written with new discoveries in archaeology and the disparate sciences.

Sorry.

And even with good clues we don't actually measure distance well.

Yep, just look at the quarterback for the Carolina Panthers.

this will probably be modded down, but I do find it unbelievable that in the U.S. there are org's (Sea Org's ?) that are so powerful that both domestic and foreign policy (ACTA, ITO etc) are held-up as examples of "good practise" to the extent that what they want becomes law.

Where's Alan Shore when you need him?

Now let's see the TSA mess with my pr0n (sorry, business data) at the airport!

And I can quite happily keep it warm under my balls. "Sorry, officer, it's man juice, really".

And this is a problem? But on the other hand, maybe not. And did you make little quotation marks in the air when you thought about the word 'professional'?

...it's Stephen Bloody Fry

Don't you mean "fetch me the formaggio marcio"?

no organization in the world has spent more on cheese than the U.S. government

That would be "Freedom Cheese" & transfat-full canned cheese I suppose, not decent French, Swiss, German or English cheeses?

I'm a vegetarian, you insensitive clods.

Such as the weapon used by Malkovich in "In The Line Of Fire"

Thnx for the ISBN. Just ordered a copy from Amazon UK.

I finally found a reference:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 - The Defense Department said today that at least 12 people were killed when a United States Navy plane bombed a civilian hospital in the early hours of the invasion of Grenada last week. The officials, acknowledging earlier press reports of civilian casualties at a hospital, said the building was not marked as a hospital and was in a milimarked as a hospital and was in a military complex from which gunfire was being directed at American troops. They said they were unable to confirm reports that the hospital was for mental patients. Until today, American military officials had been saying they knew of no civilian casualties anywhere in Grenada. American troops were said to be using ''surgical care'' and ''limited force'' in taking strong points. Destruction to buildings was reported to be minimal.

Didn't that lead to a hospital being targeted and destroyed?

Has anyone told the Pope/Vatican? My mind is currently racing trying to work out the structure of a graphene Mass.