Rocks may have a greater chance of falling towards the Sun.

But don't discount the Solar Wind. I believe I've read similar discussions that suggest the overall probability is greater for life pushing outward from the Sun due to Solar Wind. We have found microbes very high up in our biosphere. And there tends to be a larger dust trail around Earth.

So dust particles carrying life may get a free ride outwards.

Oh it's a lot more convoluted than that.

For all intents and purposes when you think of the AT&T monopoly of yore, actually Verizon is more of that than the current incarnation of AT&T that is entertaining us today with this legal battle.

First, AT&T was divested. The monopoly part became mini-monopolies - the Baby Bells. They were still almost exclusively the only show in town for what they did (local telephony). AT&T actually had to compete at that point, on several fronts. Long Distance became a highly competitive arena over time. And the part that made telephony infrastructure equipment could no longer simply dictate to the local phone companies what they were gonna buy.

The first wave of Wireless in the US was a mandated duopoly. Each area got two licenses for wireless service providers. The "B" band went to the established phone company while the "A" band was up for grabs. The "B" side was often termed the "wireline" side because they were established companies already. Gradually, a large chunk of the upstart "A" side companies coalesced into McCaw. Before the "B" side companies started merging, McCaw was actually bigger than most.

Eventually AT&T bought McCaw and became or created AT&T Wireless.

The game changed with lots more licenses and more players.

SBC bought up Ameritech, then AT&T and then changed it's name to AT&T.

In all of that, if you restrict your view to the Wireless stuff Verizon is much more directly a descendant of the Baby Bells.

Depends on what gets perturbed, I guess.

Try not to think just in two dimensions. Imagine the orbit as a very large ring. Instead of thinking of it shrinking, imagine the ring pivoting out of the usual orbital plane. Imagine this ring slowly rotating. Eventually, it'll settle back to the plane yet the planet will be orbiting backwards relative the the original and the star's rotation.

I know the Drake Equation more or less deals with the chance there is an intelligent species somewhere else simultaneously in the galaxy that might be able to communicate with us. But has anyone attempted to theorize the chance a species as a society develops a valid infrastructure to support inter-stellar travel?

It seems to me the remark that we're not in a true Space Race anymore raises an interesting point. In a general sense, space travel is incredibly expensive. So much so, there is all but no economic value to it at all if one is thinking of the usual things: mining; resource gathering; colonization; etc. But the FEAR from a war (albeit cold-war) can drive a space race to great ends. Granted this fear was likely very well grounded. Who controlled space could conceivably rain down death at will.

If we toss into this mix the idea that one reason for Europe's technological ascendancy of the last millennium was more or less constant warfare, it makes one wonder if technology is often more driven by survival and belligerence. In such a state, with advanced weaponry, those societies that are driven to true space travel may be much more inclined to wipe themselves out.

Your points are well taken, but I think you're very likely misunderstanding your audience (racists) or the impact of your statement.

You see to be assuming evolution has a direction (more or most evolved) or at the very least to be equating genetic diversity within a population as a metric of how evolved it might be. As if all are evolved, but some are more evolved than others.

You're stating the evidence shows Africans as the most evolved. What a racist is likely hearing is that the evidence shows Africans are the most primitive. Indeed, I imagine a racist isn't the least bit interested in diversity, genetic or otherwise.

This reasoning would be silly, of course, since the Aborigines of Australia would be on par with Western Europeans in this classification of the three groups.

Sigh...

If only this were just funny.

I actually had this conversation with a friend a year ago or so. Of course, they didn't express a desire to relish in raw pork. And it was related to the Bird Flu. But pretty much dead on the same.

Their reasoning was that Bird Flu wasn't going to be an issue because it couldn't "evolve" the ability of human-to-human transmission because... evolution was a bunch of nonsense. And the media had lost interest by that time so my friend thought it had all just been overblown.

But H5N1 (Bird Flu) hasn't gone away at all. This H1N1 (Swine Flu) may be bad; it may not. But even if it has low mortality rate, if it spreads quickly far and wide, it may increase the chance H5N1 picks up human-to-human. That would be very bad indeed.

Unfortunately, it's not really as simple as leaders who "need" things dumbed down.

Honestly, I imagine there are tons of rather astute, intelligent and wise judges fully capable of JUDGING situations, mitigating circumstances, motives and all sorts of other relevant details who simply CANNOT apply any judgments at all once certain criteria are met which force the judge to hand out a certain judgment or sentence.

Who creates these laws that bind these judges? Our representative legislators... us, in essence. We fall prey to those who campaign on fear and on being "tough on crime", etc. Unfortunately, I do believe we have fallen so far that many of us are rather inept at sophisticated moral and ethical reasoning. Far too many cherish intolerance and intransigence dressing such up as "strong convictions".

I believe the easiest way for you to maintain the analogy of the rubber sheet (although nobody says that's strictly necessary), is to accept that there is no 3rd dimension in the analogy.

The analogy makes sense to us because we are 3D creatures (ignoring time) and the idea of something falling into a funnel or depression is rather easy and intuitive to understand.

But to complete the analogy, once you've got the idea of a ball rolling around, you have to take the next step and realize nothing (NOTHING) is "on top" of the sheet. The entire 2D universe IS the sheet. Things aren't "falling in". They're simply following "straight" paths through a curved medium. It just helps us to visualize the curvature to imagine a rubber sheet deformed in the same fashion as a 2D rubber sheet deformed in 3D by dense objects lying on it. But the curvature involved here isn't like that.

Would it be easier for you to imagine one positively charged metal ball rolling on (ahem... IN) a flat rubber sheet with a few negatively charged poles poking through it? Or indeed a few negatively charged balls. The issue here is that with gravity, not only would all the balls attract each other, but things with no inherent mass (eg. light) are affected as well.

Ultimately the real problem is that it's rather hard for most of us to understand Curvature unless it is in reference to (i.e. embedded within) a higher dimensional space. But Curvature can be defined without this requirement.

While some sort of verification would seem necessary, there is a rather significant problem created if anyone can "leave [with] it".

If you can walk away with proof of "what" you voted, you can prove it to anyone willing to buy your vote. Or to Guido who is threatening to beat up your little ones if you don't vote a specific way.

This is a rather serious problem all the world over. So whatever we do to verify or to authenticate, it cannot involve the voter walking out with the means to show anyone how they voted.

I imagine one thing that makes the judge qualified to judge what evidence is permissible is a better understanding of the issues (and case law and history) related to things like the 4th amendment.

It may be a "fact" that drugs were found in the defendant's car. This "fact" may be deemed inadmissible if 4th amendment rights were violated. It is possible that despite this the defendant was indeed guilty. But it is also possible corrupt cops planted the "evidence".

I imagine there are a slew of things like this. So although I would chafe under restrictions preventing me from doing basic research to better understand things related to a particular case, there's no need to disrespect a judge's role here.

If this does prove to be useful for batteries, would it eliminate issues related to battery memory?

It appears current rechargeable batteries "age" due to chemical reactions even if not used. Even more so due to repeated charge cycles.

With no chemical reactions in play, does this mean people won't be forced to upgrade their phones simply because their battery is all but dead?

Magnetic shielding?

A Faraday cage?

I imagine there are all sorts of resources where this view may hold true. But I'm not certain every resource problem can be solved this way - especially not within a desirable timeframe.

Furthermore, since we are in the realm of discussing science fiction, what about waste heat? There are authors (such as Peter Hamilton) who have envisioned that the widespread adoption of fusion and "free energy" sends global warming skyrocketing, not due to greenhouse gases but simply due to enormous amounts of waste heat.

One primary difference here is the surprise factor. Iran announced their intention to do this five years ago. Of course, many may view this goal with as much suspicion as Iran's purported peaceful reasons for pursuing nuclear power.

Iran now joins a small club (about a dozen) of nations which have demonstrated this capability.

But if we are worried about this particular country combining their nuclear ambitions and their launch capability ambitions into something rather onerous (given their proclivity towards anti-US rallies, etc.), it would seem to underscore the importance of engagement and dialogue.

Oh... and related to your sig... yes. For all practical purposes:

ls -sdh1 `find -maxdepth 1 -size +2000c `

I'll grant you we may not know the final amount of money involved if the $6 billion is just to get things started...

But what part of PER MONTH in GP's post did you not understand?