I can't claim to be a shipping expert, but one of the reasons might be that our island is surrounded in many places by sandbanks and shallows of various sorts. This means the relatively few places that are deep enough for a sub to approach also tend to be well-policed shipping lanes ending in harbours and ports (or maybe estuaries which tend to have inconveniently large towns built on them).

Not to mention that we had this thing a while back where German U-Boats kept trying to sneak up on us, meaning there was good reason to make sure the authorities were well aware of all the places where this could happen.

I'll have to beg to differ on that one. I drive a 1.4L Ford Fusion (considered a fairly inexpensive family car over here). Granted it's far from being a sports car, but I've never had any problems accelerating when I've needed to. If you need a burst of speed pulling away from a junction you just stay in the lower gears for a few seconds longer.

If I'm reading these specs right this model is listed as 79HP (which I've neither known nor cared about until now!)

As a European I can't help but wonder if this problem is at least partly down to American's obsession with automatic transmissions?

With a manual, if I need a quick burst of acceleration to, as you say "get me out of trouble", I downshift, goose the engine and shift back up.

Get the trajectory just right and maybe you could 'catch' the object in the end of the catapult and slow it down using the electromagnets in a manner similar to the regenerative braking used in electric cars?

Better yet, stream it directly to the internet!

I can see scope for a website displaying live streams from camera phones etc. and allowing visitors to tag the "good" bits. That way by the time you're asked to turn off your phone, it's already too late for them to cover up whatever dodgy thing they were doing!

That's because they know full well that if they ever hint that the Bible (and other religious texts) are not the "literal word of God" but were in fact written by an assortment of priests and clerics of varying knowledge and ability, some almost certainly with self-serving agendas to boot ... then the whole house of cards collapses around them.

Strictly speaking, I wouldn't think that it was abstinence as such that worked, except maybe to an extent in Catholic communities, so much as with increased education people started learning about the Rhythm method. The Rhythm method isn't a particularly reliable form of birth control by today's standards, but it's still much better than none at all.

Ultimately it's the 'slightly more expensive' part that's the problem here. There's a reason why no-one wants to front the capital outlay and that's because they can't expect to see a return on their investment if the company can't compete with others using cheap labour.

Automated manufacturing (ironically mostly pioneered in the East) has the potential to even the scales here - it doesn't matter how expensive workers are in the West if you only need a handful of them. It just needs someone to figure out how it can be done cheaper than outsourcing.

If you're ripped enough to hold a football field sized tub of heavy water, then I don't think anyone is going to argue with you about how you're holding it ;-)

I wouldn't know, I've never tried to butter one side of a cat.

Take for example the question of where an electron orbits the nucleus. QM says we can't say where, only give a probability.

More accurately QM says there *is* no precise location, only the probabilities. This isn't a matter of the electron being at a particular point, where we lack the ability to determine where it is exactly. In essence the electron *is* a field of probabilities and left to its own devices (e.g. in a remote part of space) is theoretically at every position simultaneously. Only in the presence of other quantum fields does that change - so when an electron interacts with a proton in a hydrogen atom for example, the two sets of probabilities interact with the result that the probabilities associated with the electron are constrained to positions more or less associated with the classical notion of an orbit.

When we attempt to observe an electron's position we necessarily interact with it in a way that constrains its position probability to something close to a single point - this is the only sense in which an electron becomes a "particle". So in the 2-slit experiment, if we don't observe it, the probabilities remain (relatively) unconstrained and there remain possible paths through both slits, whereas if we do observe the electron we narrow the field of probabilities enough to make it almost certain it will only pass through one slit.

(it is therefore meaningless to say "only observe after the particle has passed thru the slit" since there is no "particle" until the observation is made)

The UK has a coalition government precisely because it has more than two parties! However it is also the first coalition we have had in decades, and it (arguably) only happened this time due to very particular circumstances that are unlikely to happen again any time soon.

This is most likely the reason why the LibDems were so keen on switching away from FPTP - it represented the only way they were likely to get another bite at the cherry in 2015. Sadly it was not to be, which is a shame as having more than two parties with a fighting chance of being elected would not only have been good for the LibDems, it would have been great for the UK.

Unionized industries are typically those either in the public sector or where the industry is dominated by one or a small number of large companies.

Industries where there are plenty of companies competing in the marketplace tend to have less need for unions, because employees can easily move to the companies offering the best pay and/or conditions and companies can compete on offering that in order to attract the best employees.

Looking it at that way, unions are a symptom of a larger problem - the way capitalism seems to have a tendency towards markets being dominated by large players as industries mature, which is bad for employees and bad for consumers.

... engage in a complex procedure of transferring passengers, then needing to circle back round (potentially taking ages to get back to their 'route')

Except it eliminates this part...

The train can't even continue before the carriage meets back up because people who just got into it may have to move into other carriages in the same train.

Maybe trains are different in the US, but on the ones I'm familiar with one can easily change carriages while the train is in motion?