I believe I first saw this in the late Robert Heinlein's "Take Back Your Government!" (edited by Jerry Pournelle). One physical letter is worth 10 phone calls. 1 phone call means that the Congresscritter has about ten constituents who feel the same way, This means that one physical letter means as many as 100 people ready to vote against that Congresscritter if the Congresscritter votes wrong.

If you are trying to influence a particular vote, TELEPHONE. Be polite. Large numbers of phone calls to Congresscritters have changed history in the past. Read up on the impact of the L5 Societ phone tree on the proposed Moon treaty. If you are expressing general concerns, write, on paper, and put a stamp on it. The six weeks anti-anthrax delay means it will take a while, but your concerns will still be there, and you will still tell him/her that there are 99 other Folks Back Home who agree with you.

That may or may not have happened at Microsoft.

It is a repeat of a story that happened decades earlier at IBM, back when Watson was running the company. The hapless salesman had just cost the company MILLIONS of dollars, when millions of dollars was still real money. He expected to be fired. Supposedly, Watson said something like "I can't afford to fire you now, not after spending millions of dollars on your education!"

Argon is extremely narcotic, far more so than nitrogen. This makes it something you REALLY don't want to use in a breathing mix.

However, it has better thermal properties than air, which is why serious divers use it to inflate their drysuits.

On May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy committed the United States of America to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth, by the end of the decade (1970). On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins lifted off from Cape Kennedy. Four days later, Neil and Buzz landed the "Eagle" in the Sea of Tranquility. When Kennedy made that speech, the experts in the field were convinced he was out of his mind: the United States had not yet put a man in orbit. (John Glenn, Mercury-Atlas 6, 20 Feb 1962. Wikipedia has its uses sometimes.) It was at that time known that men COULD be put in orbit and recovered safely (Yuri Gagarin, 12 April 1961), but that was about it.

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the United States Navy, at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. V-J day was August 15, 1945. (There was this small matter in Europe that had to be handled first.) Take a look sometime at the number of new airplanes that were developed, flown, and fielded in quantity during those four years. Take a look at the electronics development that took place.

Eight years is longer than you realize.

"Killer asteroid" has been DONE. "Lucifer's Hammer", Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, "Footfall", Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, "Anvil", Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle [FORTHCOMING: they're writing it right now]. "Lucifer's Hammer" is a natural disaster. "Footfall" was an alien invasion, and they started the invasion by softening the planet up with a great big rock.

For that matter, see also "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", Robert A. Heinlein, for technical details about throwing big rocks at the Earth, from the Moon.

"The Gold at the Starbow's End", Frederick Pohl, 1972.

I believe the late G. Harry Stine wrote something about this, possibly under a pseudonym. I remember seeing at least one short story on the subject, by someone else.

It has been done. Fredric Brown, "Expedition". The first Mars expedition was selected by random drawing. It came out 1 man, 29 women. When the second expedition arrived, they discovered that the population had doubled: all of the women had children, and one had twins. I'm not going to tell you the punchline; you have to read the story yourself.

Maybe, maybe not. They might not have the current manufacturing capability, but I would NOT bet on them not having the technical expertise.

Iran used to send large numbers of students to the best engineering and hard science schools in the United States. UT Austin had a pretty big contingent (and they were ALWAYS in the news, protesting one thing or another).

Range, refuel/recharge time, payload, and cruising speed are the critical parameters for any transportation system.

Range, because people sometimes want/need to go farther than down to the corner drugstore, or across town to work and back home. Not too many years ago, I was routinely driving daily round trips between West Fort Worth TX and North Central Dallas, moving from one apartment to the other. It was easier for me to do several trips in an old station wagon, than pack everything and call movers. There were also periods where I was driving from DFW to Austin (about 180 miles) every Friday evening and driving back on Sunday.

Refuel/recharge time, because people sometimes want/need to go WAYYY farther than down to the corner drugstore or across town to work and back. Some years back, I had to drive from Dallas to Colorado Springs, stay three months, and drive back. A few years ago, I drove from Austin to Huntsville AL (700+ miles, according to the airline). If you can refuel quickly, that's a long one-day drive. If you refuel overnight, after 100 miles, that's a week of travel time.

Cruising speed, because people sometimes need to go quite a ways in a reasonable amount of time.

Payload, because people sometimes need to haul a fair amount of stuff along with them, when they drive quite a bit farther than down to the corner drugstore or across town to work and back. Some guys have to be able to haul girlfriends and SCUBA gear for two people. (I know, this is Slashdot, but there is a Real World out there...)

OK, you appear to be warning us that a predator that preys on species A, B, and C will die out if species A vanishes, allowing species B and C to reproduce like crazy.

I fail to understand your apparent reasoning that the predator that preys on species A, B, and C will not simply eat more B and C if A goes extinct.

Certainly the predators of the passenger pigeon and the dodo did not go extinct when they did.

There are places in the world today where eradication of mosquitoes would definitely be seen as a Good Thing.

Malaria, sleeping sickness, ...

Back when the Apple II was state of the art, the official Apple II user's manual contained, among other things, full schematics *AND* everything a third party developer needed to know to build boards that would plug into the Apple II slots.

In an interview several years later, after he'd left Apple, Steve Wozniak expressed considerable dismay over the switch to closed hardware and no hardware documentation at Apple.

Sometimes, when something like that happens, it is your subconscious mind trying to get your attention, and tell you that whatever it is that you are trying to do that requires that particular memory right then is, from his point of view, a really, really bad idea.

Claimer (opposite of disclaimer): I am a trained hypnotist, with a grounding in hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis 102: Barring severe brain injuries (temporary or permanent), EVERYTHING that you have ever seen, heard, tasted, smelled, felt, thought, read, ... is in there. ALL of it. Forever. Perfectly stored, ready for recall at a moment's notice.

The trick is recalling it. The subconscious mind manages recall, and, if, for whatever reason, he doesn't want to serve that memory up, he won't. He may believe/know that remembering this would cause you extreme pain. Or he may be ticked off at you for some reason, sulking because you've been ignoring his best efforts to help you. (That's his job, that and to protect you, he takes it seriously and he does the very best he knows how at it.)

Hypnosis can help. So can making friends with your subconscious.