For most of biology, we haven't yet been able to create numerical models. There are a huge number of variables, interactions, and feedback loops, and frankly we don't even fully understand how many biological processes work, so creating mathematical models is very difficult. But this is sure to be a productive area of research so any young computer geeks with an appetite for the squishy science should take note!

This. This this this this this. This!

It's not a "mandate", but it's a way of identifying the first and most likely places to look, for two reasons:

1) Water is necessary for "life as we know it", and we have a good idea of some indicators of life-as-we-know-it that we could observe at a great distance. We have no clue how to recognise life-as-we-DON'T-know-it from a great distance, we just don't know what to look for.

2) There is actually good reason to think that there is a high probability that alien life might be based on the same chemistry as life on Earth. Life on Earth is mostly made of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, which are also three of the four most common elements in the whole universe -- the fourth being helium, which doesn't react with anything so doesn't make any interesting chemistry. And out of all of the elements on the periodic table, carbon forms more compounds than all of the other elements combined. So our biology is based on the most common and most readily-combining elements in the universe, which suggests that we are unlikely to be unique.

There is no such thing as "accent-free". We all speak with an accent, the accent of the place where we learned our language. You may think your way of speaking is "normal" and everyone else's as "different", but you are not the center of the linguistic universe; it is all relative. People from other places can hear your accent and can probably tell where you grew up by listening to you.

I suspect that discrimination on the basis of accent would probably violate the civil rights of U.S. citizens to travel freely and work in any state in the USA. You can't discriminate against someone just because they sound like they are from Boston, Brooklyn, or Charleston.

Neil deGrasse Tyson makes some interesting points in relation to this: (1) The five most common elements in the solar system are hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. (2) Of all the elements, the one that makes the most compounds is carbon -- there are more compounds containing carbon than all other compounds of all of the other elements combined. (3) Life on Earth is made mostly of H, O, C, N, plus some trace elements, and is based on C. ("Organic chemistry" means the chemistry of carbon compounds.)

In other words, we are made out of the most common available materials (discounting helium which doesn't react with anything so doesn't produce interesting chemistry), including the element that produces the most complex and varied chemistry. So if you are looking for complex chemistry (i.e. life) elsewhere in the galaxy, it actually does seem to be a reasonable starting point to expect that it is fairly likely to also be based on the most common elements available, and on the element that produces the most complex and diverse chemistry.

Why not? In human history, people have set out on one-way trips countless times. European colonists coming to the Americas never expected to return. Colonists heading west across the Great Plains of the USA never expected to return. People are absolutely willing to uproot themselves and head out on daring expeditions with uncertain results and no expectation of return.

But you have to build that first spaceship anyway, because if you don't, then you never develop the technology to build the second, faster one. The Wright brothers' first airplane only flew 852 feet, which is pretty lame compared with what we have now, but they had to build that one so that they could figure out how to build Flyer II and then III, and so on until we have Airbuses. But you cannot jump directly to building an Airbus without first building the Wright Flyer.

Safer to rely on Google and Wikipedia for all of your answers than to rely on Slashdot for any of them!

Not quite the first thing you put in your constitution, actually; I think you are probably referring to the first amendment to your constitution, i.e. the first thing you changed in it.

They were a non-joke for a brief period this year during the campaign, from the first television debate until election day. Now that they have gotten into bed with the Tories and abandoned all of their pledges and principles for a taste of power, they are once again a joke.

Everything takes longer and costs more than you think, even when you take into account the fact that it will take longer and cost more than you think.

640k and 32 bits *were* wayyyy overboard. But exponential growth will make fools of us all.

Sorry, I have to disagree. It is NOT good to see that it's not only cops in the US that are douches.

Yeah, but you can usually extend it if you shake the cartridge.

Only a small proportion of market participants (about 2%) are "high-frequency traders" but they account for 60 to 70% of the transactions, according to a very interesting NPR podcast that I just listened to: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/06/08/127563433/the-tuesday-podcast-the-million-dollar-microsecond. Also according to that podcast, real-life long-term institutional investors actually hate the high-frequency traders. The investors say the high-frequency traders don't bring any value to the marketplace, and in fact make life more expensive for investors because when large investors make a series of transactions (they make big trades in several parts, not all at once), the traders see this and make trades between the investors' trades, driving prices further in the unfavourable direction (up or down, depending on the transaction).

Unfortunately, at some point in the distant past, some customer got helped, received the wrong form, and suffered some delay or inconvenience because of that. Because that customer was a litigious, spiteful, vindictive asshole who likes blaming others, he found a hungry lawyer willing to take the case on contingency, sued the person who gave him the form, and won on the grounds that the form-hander-outer was not qualified to provide legal advice. And for that reason, form-hander-outers cannot comment on the appropriateness of the forms they hand out. Presumably the same thinking is behind the law in the UK that threatens to make criminals out of people who suggest to their friends that putting money into an ISA (like a 401(k) in the USA) is a good idea.

Sane drivers know this, reduce their speed, and then -- making wild hand-waving guesses, here -- wind up with about the same overall level of "dangerousness" as when driving on uncluttered roadways.

No, what these people are arguing is that sane drivers know this, reduce their speed, and then, according to actual statistics* instead of hand-waving gestures, wind up with about half the level overall level of dangerousness.

* "actual statistics" = number of dead Dutch drivers