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You're right, the summary could have been better, however I can say in its defence that the summary as you read it now is an awful lot better than the one I submitted.

It's quite a reasonable assumption that combustion is involved when coming across a discussion about a methane explosion, however in this situation there was no actual combustion. Despite this, the event was still quite accurately described as a methane exploding. Is there a common method of differentiating the two other than affixing a disclaimer about a "pressure explosion" versus a "combustion pressure explosion"?

An easy excuse to make a great documentary with reconstructions played by Peter Sellers? :)

Some might argue that the effectiveness of one person boycotting a company is reasonably comparable to the effectiveness of one person casting their vote.

Regarding the PCMCIA, that old laptop probably predates cardbus. So, look for one that doesn't have the gold color near the connector.

3com, Xircom and US Robotics are your best bet for ones that will have drivers available.

The first option would be a PCMCIA ethernet card. Since you have 3.11, if you install a PCMCIA nic that has windows 3.11 drivers, you can simply use windows file sharing to copy everything. There's plenty of old nics on ebay.

Second option is to use pkzip to zip up everything you want. Buy a null modem cable and transfer the zip files using x/y/zmodem. Windows 3.11 had a terminal program and the windows XP laptop will have hyper-terminal.

The second option is much slower, but null modems are easier to find than pcmcia network cards with windows 3.11 drivers.

Oops. Looks like I just levelled-up in Joke Whooshology again, my apologies.

Reading this I find myself wondering how well-researched are your other arguments, because it looks to me like you've conflated Freeman Dyson with a the British inventor of a vacuum-cleaner. :)

Not trying to be rude but this is something of a glaring error, unless I'm missing something myself?

Pure comedy gold, thanks for the laugh!

Yeah, exactly, dogs are scavengers. They may have hit the evolutionary jackpot by befriending Humans but they're not going to be disastrously affected by a diet more in common with how their ancestors got by.

Cats I know less about but I suspect they'd be OK as well. They do seem to hunt small prey pretty effectively even when well-fed.

BTW good on you for giving that stray a home.

In your defence I wasn't playing by the rules when I read TFA. =)

Not according to TFA:

Based on the distance to Betelgeuse, we can work out that the apparent magnitude of the peak of the explosion would be -10

...where a full moon is about -13, and:

The brightness of Betelgeuse’s supernova is about the same as the quarter moon.

Apparently it'll be pretty bright for a few days then fade out slowly over several weeks, not months.

I usually just point to the widespread European opposition to genetically engineered crops for that one. At least our creationists aren't opposing lifesaving technology and actively destroying scientific research. As a plant scientist, I have to say I view Europe as a fairly hostile place for science. Europeans have absolutely no room to act as if Americans are the only ones with the problem of opposition to science when that sort of attitude is so prevalent in their own backyard.

This is UK, they don't really count as European (true Scotsmen usually do, but this MP isn't)

Fedex is a for-profit corporation. It can refuse any customer it wants. That's the libertarian way, right? Private individuals and companies should only conduct business with mutual consent? Well, good. The libertarian behind "Defense Distributed" is getting what he asked for.