Problem with that argument is that that's a stage that all developed countries went through in order to get where they are today. For example, Victorian britain had workhouses, conscription, probably the worst air pollution in history; I could go on.

Also, preventing China from developing through trade might cause another World War, eventually. Policies such as you advocate were part of what motivated Japan to attack Pearl Harbour.

They say "I'm a Libertarian!" and I hear "I really begrudge paying taxes!".

The children of today are almost ridiculously healthy, althletic, well fed and grow like weeds. Well, about half of them are; the other half are chubby and underdeveloped because their parents feed them processed crud and let them watch TV all day.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the new-style healthy kids live a lot longer than the junkfood kids; the figure of 100 is often quoted. I wonder if the two groups will diverge and create an effectively split society some time in the next 30 years.

Yes but don't all those arguments apply to living to 80 already? I read somewhere that once your teeth start to fall out, you're meant to be dead already.

Congratulations, you're the 23rd person to reply with exactly the same comment. No prize.

But, if they can send light down the same route and get the same result, then they can show a significant difference between the speed of it and neutrinos.

Frederick Greenwood, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, met in his club one day Lord Riddell, who died a few years ago, and in the course of conversation Riddell said to him, `You know, I own a paper.' `Oh, do you?' said Greenwood, 'what is it?' `It's called the News of the Worldâ"I'll send you a copy,' replied Riddell, and in due course did so. Next time they met Riddell said, 'Well Greenwood, what do you think of my paper?' 'I looked at it,' replied Greenwood, 'and then I put it in the waste-paper basket. And then I thought, "If I leave it there the cook may read it" â"so I burned it!' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World#History

Meh. Pyjamas is better.

Indeed, if those responsible for 9/11 really had a legitimate protest to make, they may well have done loop-de-loops, or something more like that. Blow up the Old Bailey like in V for Vendetta, why not? What they really wanted was to provoke a military response and that's what they got. In their reasoning, that's the best way to hurt the US. Same strategy sure worked pretty good on the USSR; the constant drain of their Afghan war certainly hastened the end.

Skype works perfectly for me on any linux I tried it on. We've been using it to keep in contact with relatives in China where each of us has an Acer Aspire One (the distro in question is Linpus Linux Lite, which is derived from an old FC - 6 I think). Skype installed and has worked perfectly there for years, more recently also on my Debian 6 laptop and a couple of Ubuntu machines.