They did a lot of good research, but you don't do heavy metal in Dobly.

The difference being that Age of Sail colonists could live in pretty much the same condition as the one they left. On Mars the "colonists" will be living underground and will never again feel fresh air in their lungs or sun on their skin. They will be dependent on the next supply mission or they will die.

My god, I can't believe you actually posted this on slashdot. I'd guess that 99% of those reading this will be ideally suited for life on Mars after having spent the last few years in mom's basement.

Nascar Race? You mean because they "raise" the flag and sing the National Anthem before the race and usually launch fireworks after it? Nearly every sporting event in the US starts with raising the flag and singing the National Anthem.

Yeah... that's the thing. Singing the anthem at each and every tiny sporting event looks really odd and jingoistic to most of the rest of the world. We don't do anything like that at our sporting events in England unless they're particularly noteworthy (FA cup final, etc), and even then it's sometimes booed, or mostly ignored.

Crime is going down in just about _all_ western countries. The leaded gasoline correlation does not apply in recent years.

Empathy is important.

This is similar to the "I don't want to see what I eat slaughtered" argument.

That it happens often is not a reason to not watch it.

Not wanting to watch something does not mean that it is not happening.

And yes, I'm a hypocrite. I really hate killing animals, and wish that I didn't have to.

Note : that last statement was about our roosters we had to kill. I've not got a compulsion to kill animals.

It's canon, not cannon.

Until fairly recently in human history, marriage was largely a religious and private issue.

Until fairly recently in human history, religion was not a private issue. The secular state did not exist (with a few notable exceptions, like the Mongol empire).

Those laws promoting family units have not worked. At all.

Let? This seems to be a big misunderstanding amongst humans - the idea that rights are given to us by some higher authority. Nuh-uh, existence grants our rights. The best our entitled humans may do is refrain from removing them by threat of force. Have a nice day =D

The right to marry has lots of legal implications which are controlled by the state, and marriage is controlled by the state, and has been for millennia. If you think it's not, you're deluded. Common law marriage does not really exist, legally.

Now, should it be controlled by the state and have lots of legal implications? That's a different question. I personally don't think it should, but trying to remove marriage from the legislature would be quite difficult.

The point is that for quite a while now homosexuals have had the right to live as couples, but they've not been allowed to be recognised under the law that gives tax breaks and other things to married couples. I'd personally do away with these tax breaks and make marriage a purely personal thing, not something legal (but as I said before, this will be difficult).

Until that time, I'm perfectly happy with homosexuals marrying on the same basis heterosexuals do.

Having something delivered to where you are is often the least useful place for it to be. If you cycle to work, you don't want your car exhaust to be delivered there. Ideally, you'd probably want it to be delivered to the garage you're going to get it fitted at.

Some people also don't like some stuff being delivered at work.

But transporting it is expensive, so much so that it can be cheaper to produce new glass from sand.

Producing glass from sand isn't much more difficult than producing glass from glass. That's the main reason glass recycling isn't that useful.

Aluminium is much easier to produce from aluminium than from bauxite.

Well.... perhaps some men can just admire what she's achieved rather than think about having sex with her.

I'm not going to degrade this reply with what I just thought about.

I wonder when it'll become acceptable for male captains to wear skirts.

The Borg's adaptability always sucked. The entire notion that once you understand something you can counteract and adapt to it is bogus.

We've had big lumps of metal fired by explosives for over 500 years, and even now, after half a millennium of amazing technological advancement, if you're in the way of a big lump of metal fired by an explosive the only thing that is going to save you is a bigger lump of metal between you and it.

Getting better big lumps of metal to fire first and stopping the enemy from firing big lumps of metal at you in the first place is the only real countermeasure.

All that being said, I agree with you about the Borg queen and the Borg ideal.