The more protection the better!

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhnjdplhmcnkiecampfdgfjilccfpfoe?hl=en

John Siracusa wrote a full page on the literal "out of box" experience with the G4 Cube, it seems it's still relevant today:

Who cares what the packing materials are like? What does this have to do with the quality of the product? Is nice styrofoam supposed to make up for the huge price tag? But step back a minute and consider Apple's motivation here. Like other "boutique" brands (e.g. Bose or Bang & Olufsen), it's important for Apple to provide a uniformly high quality experience with its products. And yes, that certainly includes packaging. In fact, psychologically, packaging may be one of the most important first impressions. The customer needs to be reassured from the very start that their money was well spent. It's not so much that they'll be impressed by the packaging, it's just important to prevent the feeling of "cheapness" that might result if "standard" packaging materials and techniques are used. Welcome to the wonderful world of marketing.

Love or hate Apple, but they think everything through.

He wasn't ripping along in a Hummer or anything, he was on a freakin' motorcycle. Sure, he'd crunch up the outside of a vehicle pretty well, but unless he ran smack into a stopped car and managed to catapult through the window, he was only endangering himself. One of the basic rules of riding, the cagers aren't gonna look for you because even if you DO hit them you aren't gonna hurt them.

Mind you, I don't endorse nor practice asshattery like that, but at the same time I realize that despite what some people shriek, it isn't particularly dangerous to anybody other than yourself.

Your freedom of opinion does not INCLUDE the freedom to think I or anybody else is less than you. It ends before you can intrude on my right. Nobody has the right not to be offended, but you damn sure have the right not be a victim of racist behavior INCLUDING slurs.

How the hell is what I THINK or even for that matter SAY in any conceivable way an intrusion on your rights? I wholeheartedly agree that racist ACTIONS, real and tangible infractions on your human rights, should be restricted by law...but as you yourself say, freedom from offense isn't a right, and I entirely fail to see how thoughts and speech can almost ever rise to anything more than mere offense*.

* - cf. Brandenburg v. Ohio; "[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

You said it yourself, 40% of children failed to reach adulthood. Most numbers that are thrown around are the average at birth; the high infant mortality rates of the past lead to artificially low numbers (e.g. you have 6 babies, 4 of them die within a year but the remaining two live to be 65, your average expectancy is...well, a lot lower than 65, the math is more involved than I want to get atm). In Rome, the average expectancy was 24, but if you made it to 5 years old your new average was 48, more than enough time to bear and raise children even if you married in your mid-20s.

I suspect the early marriage of yore was so you could start producing children as soon as possible, to insure you could bear enough that at least one or two would make it through childhood and get to the point where they could reasonably expect to see 50.

The basic structural frame of Zvezda, known as "DOS-8", was initially built in the mid-1980s to be the core of the Mir-2 space station. This means that Zvezda is similar in layout to the core module (DOS-7) of the Mir space station. It was in fact labeled as "Mir-2" for quite some time in the factory. Its design lineage thus extends back to the original Salyut stations. The space frame was completed in February 1985 and major internal equipment was installed by October 1986.

 
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zvezda_(ISS)

http://xkcd.com/397/

Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, also known as A(H1N1), is a subtype of influenzavirus A and the most common cause of influenza in humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1N1

H5N1 (avian) is the scary shit:

While estimates of case-fatality (CF) rates for past influenza pandemics have ranged from about 0.1% (1957 and 1968 pandemics) to 2.5% (1918 pandemic); the official World Health Organization estimate for the current outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza to date is around 60%. While the real H5N1 CF rate (what it would be if we had perfect knowledge) could be lower (one study suggests that the real H5N1 CF rate is closer to 14-33%); it is unlikely that, if it becomes a pandemic, it will go to the 0.1-0.4% level currently embraced by many pandemic plans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1

The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

It wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity - distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.

--Ibid.

"Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness. It is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really good basket. See also KISS Principle, elegant.

I think NASA knows how to build a damn good basket. Not that they always DO, but they CAN.

Anyway, it doesn't seem like they're rolling all the life support units into one, just moving them all into the same module. If anything I'd guess that would make maintenance and service a heck of a lot easier.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/A/airplane-rule.html

The turbulence and uncertainty can be leveraged to your advantage; the last three months we've turned about 6% growth every month. Mostly day-to-day covered calls - that's all I know and I'm not going to pretend to even begin to understand anything more.