Drink diet soda, you won't get fat.

Yeah - no. If you're the type of person who has to drink some crappy-tasting version of a a beverage so that you can have something sweet 24/7 instead of practicing *gasp* moderation, then I don't care how few calories are in that can. Eventually you're going to eat your way to a lard-ass in other ways.

Best to give up soda completely or have the real stuff much much less. Me, I'll have a 12 ounce real soda once a week (if that) and it tastes like a rare, tasty treat rather than some foul, knock-off necessity.

Haven't watched Idiocracy, have you?

Don't forget to add Murray Gell-Mann to your list.

Still, Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge for a long time, so he is highly intelligent. I don't think of him as that great of a communicator, honestly.

I could rattle off 50 physicists from the last century that were more influential.

How many of those 50 are still living?

That and the age of consent in Germany is 14.

Scenario five: you hit it off, you don't rush things, you don't kill the pre-makeout mood, you check while putting on the condom... and it's positive, you two are second cousins twice removed or something

Not to ruin the joke or anything, but if the second cousins are twice removed then they're typically off by a couple generations. The age discrepancy would be awkward enough.

As an American, I'd have to say I agree with your assessment. This sums the situation up quite nicely.

Kinda like the person who taught me about the reel-change indicators on film at the movie theatres - I see it, and my whole body tenses up waiting for the change. I wish I had never known about it.

You're welcome.

No problem.

Yeah but Gatorade has electrolytes. It's what plants crave.

Seriously though, seltzer water does the trick for me.

Suicide helps nobody but yourself. I suppose it's your right, but it's totally selfish.

You say this as if selfishness is a bad thing. Sometimes in this life you just have to look out for yourself. This would count as one of those times.

Sounds familiar. It probably would have went down like this.

No, we can't change the time we start work, no we're NOT going to see business's move to an 8-4 model.

Why, because that would make sense?

Twelve AM was set up to be defined as the middle of the night; 12 PM the middle of the day. (Or 00:00/12:00 if you prefer the 24 hour clock). Don't like how dark that makes the usual active hours during the Winter? Fine - switch the hours that businesses are active. But please stop arbitrarily changing time-keeping.

The war in Iraq was about one thing; Iran. Stabilizing the Middle East by reducing the amount of megalomaniacs by one. By calling Saddam's bluff (which was aimed more at Iran than the U.S.) the coalition slowed down a Middle-East arms race that was just getting started, but was going to speed up quickly once Iraq rebuilt its military capacity.

Assuming that were the case, it would have been nice if the the administration used that reasoning to justify the war instead of the lies they did.