Scientists would become far more famous and make more money if they disproved it though. The bias is the other way. Just imagine the millions the energy companies would pay out for definitive proof that they don't needs scrubbers anymore. Ohhhhh that would be quite a bit of coin.

I was thinking more along the lines of comparing a tiny compass needle to the stars to get an idea of the shift of the Earth's rotational axis compared to magnetic North and extrapolating a movement of a few centimeters 2500 miles away. All this is while taking into account that Polaris wiggles a little bit, the seas are choppy, the chronometer is overwound, the captain is slightly drunk and suffering from scurvy, and the crew is singing about a tunafish that may or may not resemble a mermaid.

Are you sure you're not thinking about stars shifting? I have a hard time thinking about a compass from 300 years ago being accurate enough to measure this. I guess if it had a LOT of datapoints, maybe?

Can certainly be true. It certainly ended my dream of programming video games for a career.... Not everything I had to read was miserable, though. Cold Mountain and All Quiet on the Western Front were a couple forced titles I actually enjoyed.

The Kerbals would've launched anyway. It would've been *glorious*.

At the risk of sounding too mushy, taking just a couple minutes every day to email someone important to you might be the most worthwhile thing to do. Just that little bit each day is something a lot of us antisocial nerds don't do.

I bought a plant on ebay. The seller shipped it to me as "media mail" to save money, something that's supposed to be used only for textbooks. I guess it could become a textbook one day so that's alright?

Later, also on ebay, I tried to sell a used game. When I typed in the upc, it told me the shipping information used by other sellers of that item, on average. The average listed weight was 6 oz. The actual weight when I measured it on my scale read 9 oz, not even close. It made a dollar difference in shipping.

Little things like this add up.

Sounds like the poof of smoke the physicist-magicians are using to distract you from seeing the trick.

I was born without my choosing. I was forced to spend nearly 18 years in an institution, giving me tests of both my physical and mental abilities. Due to my flawed genetics, I sometimes had to go see a physician, where I'd be poked and prodded, then given drugs that'd usually make me feel worse before better.

I was a typical child.

Reading through all these ethics concerns, I really don't see much difference. The kid could go to school like any other, he'd just be watched with more interest. He might look different. So what? There are only like 3 kids in a school who look like people on tv anyway. He might get sick sometimes, but a lot of people get sick. Heck, he'd probably have a better upbringing than 95% of the rest of us, with all the financial support he'd need to do whatever he wants.

If you want to prevent this from happening, you should go out and sterilize all the dregs of our society who reproduce *all the time* already. But then you're into preferred selection, and you go into another realm people balk at.

Here's a more trustworthy link, at least for me: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130115.html

The last time I saw a Mars article on here, it was faked. I'm still feeling the troll-burn from that. And this article is on a website I've never heard of also.

This.

Come on, we put "y'all" in the dictionary for you gun guys, it's time to return the favor. :P

They answered that petition, though.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/top-15-causes-of-death

Total homicide is way down at #15. Meanwhile, lung disease caused primarily by cigarettes, is #4. And there are a few other interesting things to note as well if you poke around there, like diabetes and heart disease don't line up at all.

I have no idea how this would work at the international level. I've never heard a news anchor ever say anything like it. What if the idea is to borrow as much as they possibly can without ever intending to pay any of it back? Just borrow money from a country, wait for that country to have a revolution or collapse or something, then just throw our hands in the air and say, "Oh darn! We lost the records of all the money we owed. I guess things are even now."

Or even more directly, what if the US just declared war on its debtors? Just make up some BS reason to do it and sell it to the rest of the world?