Time to get a jump start on terraforming Mars.

We may want to send Bruce Willis out there to steer this one INTO the planet.

This is where things get interesting.

The ability to direct kinetic weapons accurately from above is very likely to be of huge military importance in the future. I imagine that it's far easier to nudge an asteroid slightly so that 40 years hence it won't hit Earth than it would be to redirect it to target any particular spot on entry. Indeed, I imagine for any particular asteroid, there would only be so many places it could be forced to hit.

However, I cannot help but imagine that in multiple governments may start by working together with various satellite systems to push asteroids around. But decades into the future this may be a weird sort of arms race to see who can push the asteroid the most to get it to smack the enemy.

This doesn't appear to be a case where the measurement is changing over time. That is, it seems many here are misinterpreting the summary to suggest that things are different NOW relative to THEN.

Instead, things are different if we measure THIS WAY vs. THAT WAY. But we can still go back and measure both ways. If we use the old method(s), we get the old result.

That's what's creating the angst. Theorists cannot see why the two methods would differ. And they've checked and rechecked their work. Experimentalists have also checked and rechecked their work.

This is one of those "that's funny" things that becomes rather interesting.

You seem like a reasonable chap, given to reasoned thinking.

However, you have a gross error in your reasoning. You're treating "on average" as if it meant some sort of uniformity. Climate Change in no way shape or form is going to occur in a fashion where changes are uniform.

For a rather good synopsis of the varieties of ways this plays out, please read the recent World Bank report. Even things one might expect to be uniform (such as sea-level rise) won't be for a variety of rather interesting reasons.

As you've stated, plants don't do well with high heat and low humidity. Unfortunately, this is exactly what's predicted for much of the mid-latitudes over land (think much of US, China, Mediterranean). These areas are likely to see (on average... chuckle) roughly twice as much temperature increase as ocean or tropical areas. Plus the bulk of this extra precipitation/humidity is going to occur over the oceans, not over land.

Furthermore not only is the earth not going to become "like a rain forest", a good chunk of the rain forest itself will be replaced with grassland. Indeed, the conversion of the Amazon basin (predicted for massive drying) via forest fire, dieback, etc., is in and of itself a massive positive feedback effect (massive immediate carbon release; long-term huge net loss in carbon sink with grass replacing forest) that awaits us if things continue unabated.

Why would anyone want the Kinect to control DVD playback?

I have the Kinect. I like it for some things. But I believe game developers need to spend much more time creating things for which the Kinect works well rather than trying to shoehorn it into existing games (including future versions, etc.).

But why don't you just get a modern Universal Remote? X-Box ought to be a standard option. Works fine for me.

Is this a case where corporate personhood is a good thing?

Does this mean what you should do is fire up a trust and have the trust purchase all the media? Then the trust lives on (and is ownership transfers or was likely already shared with your intended recipient(s)).

Or is that going to get you in trouble with your trust "sharing" its media with you?

Is this a troll? Do you actually believe it's reasonable to attempt to refute current scientific studies with 3rd-grade textbooks?

No matter what folk personally believe (or want to believe), does it not seem inappropriate simply to assume scientists specifically or in bulk are simply stupid? Is it not more productive to maintain an inquisitive approach and ask yourself what you might be lacking in your own understanding?

Now, to the actual point, your trite reference to elementary school understanding of the water cycle completely ignores all the relevant volumes. How much water is evaporating? How much water is raining/snowing? How much water is being pumped out of aquifers? How much water is draining down to replenish aquifers? How much water is being taken out of rivers for irrigation? How much water is sinking into the ground vs. escaping via run-off?

It's trivial to explain the water cycle in a simplistic sense. But it is incredibly foolhardy just to assume certain things are or will always be in balance (especially related to FRESH water). Your claim that increased rain is filling up aquifers can be straightforwardly disproved. They call this "fossil water" for a reason. Worldwide, we're exhausting groundwater (much) faster than it's being replenished. And increased precipitation due to increased evaporation isn't going to help if much of that extra rain is simply falling over the oceans - which is what the vast majority of modelling suggests will occur with increased warming. Some areas will get wetter. Many areas will endure droughts. And remember, heavy rain on parched ground just runs off.

There are many unsolved issues with regards to a Space Elevator, but lifting 36,000 km of cable isn't necessarily one of the most significant problems. Most projections or descriptions I've come across describe things such that we would manufacture and lower the cable from orbit. Now granted, this itself presents many problems since you would have to create all that infrastructure "up there" and then find/capture source material. But you also need to do that for the counterweight. You're certainly not going to lift THAT into space.

Nothing likely wrong about positing multiple types of dark matter...

But what I think is really bothering folk about the supposed contradiction here is why would one galaxy or galaxy cluster have one type and another galaxy or galaxy cluster have another? This in and of itself would seem to be a rather flagrant violation of the Mediocrity Principle.

It would seem more likely that both galaxies would have a blend, if you will.

Is there a time component here? Would dark matter be different in one epoch vs. another? Does it evolve or change over time? The Bullet Cluster is 150 million years back. This new set is a couple billion years back. On the face of it, that'd be just another violation of the Mediocrity Principle, just in time rather than space. But who knows...

Actually, oddly enough it seems to me that much of science fiction is actually limited to a one-dimensional view of the solar system, much less a 2D view. The reference to Pluto is a good case and point.

Everyone seems to think of the planets in such a fashion that they're strung together along a (long) straight road such that to travel "out" of the solar system from Earth you would have to pass along each planet in turn. Who's to say for any given year which planet (if any) you'll pass heading outward (opposite the sun) from Earth even while staying within the ecliptic plane.

One may retort that this usage is just shorthand for each planet's orbit. But the problem is deeper than that. For one example, consider Tony Daniel's Superluminal. The entire series is about an inter-planetary war. The "geography" of the solar system is intrinsic to the plot - which planet can attack which, etc. And it's all wrong for the year of 3017. The book describes a group heading towards Triton for an attack with half the group "continuing on" to Pluto. Trouble is, from the starting planet during that year Pluto and Neptune are in very different directions (almost opposite).

With regards to the warp drive, the ecliptic plane seems hugely relevant. For any inter-stellar travel, just plan things for one (or more) midpoint stop(s) such that your final leg has you heading relatively perpendicular to the ecliptic plane of the destination star system. Then pop out of warp slightly beyond the ecliptic plane (presumably near your destination planet) to dump the energy.

As light and vapid as a first post...

But would it really?

That is to say, is your scenario that downtime of the cloud would result in the loss of a multi-million dollar contract in any way shape or form realistic?

I am no fan of "the cloud" in this context. But is there some aspect of Office 365 (or is this now Office 347?) that would prevent people from making offline copies of their work? Wasn't the idea of the ability of making offline copies via Office 365 one of Micrsoft's earlier advantages over Google.

The cloud may make collaboration easier. The cloud may make presentations easier. But if I were your Customer and you were dumb enough not to have ANY offline backups to send me in lieu of an ongoing Microsoft outage, you'd lose my business for that demonstrated stupidity right there.

Bravo!

Well played, sir.

That CHARACTER patiently awaits us all...

There needs to be a "ON TOPIC" mod...

No.
That's not the circular part.
That part is relatively trivial. Do forgive trying to express this in ASCII...
Sum[from 1 to infinity]{3/(10^n)} is 0.3333...
This is just the basic definition of what that means.
3 * 0.3333...
= 3 * Sum[from 1 to infinity]{3/(10^n)}
= Sum[from 1 to infinity]{3*3/(10^n)}
= Sum[from 1 to infinity]{9/(10^n)}
= 0.9999...

Again this is pretty basic arithmetic, distributive property of multiplication if you want to be pedantic.

No, the circular part of the logic is starting with 1/3 = 0.333... to show you 1 = 0.999... Why in the world do you believe 1/3 = 0.333...? But this is why folk earlier suggested that if you had no issue with 1/3 = 0.333..., then you shouldn't have any issue with 1 = 0.999...

At any particular n, the sum is less than the fraction it represents. This the same issue for 1/3 as it is for 3/3 or 1.

Now, now...

Galactic suburbia isn't quite so bad. Nice and stable. Helps to keep those planetary orbits from changing too much or too quickly. I mean a good wallop a long time ago to create the moon is all well and good. But after a while you just want to settle down. We really don't to get pelted with comets and planetoids all that often.

Things are a lot tougher closer to the core. It's simply much to busy. Nearby stars bustling together. Everybody taking these whiplash commutes around the central black hole. Pesky neighboring stars who keep perturbing your Oort cloud sending debris down on you regularly. Many young stars just cannot handle it. Oh they seem successful; the get nice and big. But they just explode. And let me tell you, you just don't want to live where you could get shot up every few million years or so.