Haha! Funny country is that of yours. In mine, the gnomes come from gardens and other magical places.

Panspermia doesn't really answear the question of how life started. If panspermia is found to be true, then the question just changes from "how life started on earth" to "how life started".

This fact is evident! It is the first thing I thought when reading that they will give a bonus for finding water and the Apollo landing site, two things that clearly do not exist.

You should put in the addiction factor. Some companies want you addicted to the game. And you become, in one level or another.

So they plan to release books with a storyline that is subsumed by the activities of the players in the game? That sounds very nice. It is a like a glorified log file of some sort.

That is not entirely related to the problem of climate change, but it is a fact that the hole in ozone layer has almost reached southern parts of Brazil. Ozone depletion comes with increase in UV radiation incidense. I couldn't find any hitorical data on UV radiation in our region, but the general opinion is that the sun light seems to be stronger now than it was 10 years ago.

Then try drinking "chimarrão" for one hour followed by a cup of expresso.

Well said. My fear is that this sort of virus engineering could create deadly viruses that could get out of control. Basically because we don't know enough about viruses to be able to engineer a on-demand vaccine to any possible kind of virus. In my computer scientist kind of mind, I believe that we should only play with this kind of stuff if we can undo any kind of problem that can arise from playing with it. I know that science doesn't work like that, and neither I am saying this kind of research should be stopped. However, I confess sometimes I fear the biological disaster I see in movies.

Am I wrong to be a bit scared about this kind of research?

Done already: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otFQcmE3G5s

I find the comparison a bit exaggerated, but I agree with the conclusions. We need legislation to cover the relation between social agents and information keepers. For example, any company should allow for any customer to migrate all her data to another service, without the information loosing its original structure. The custumers should be also safeguarded against information companies going bust with their data. Etc.

These? http://www.freakingnews.com/Iranian-Missiles-Pictures---2029.asp

For free?! I give back to Pandora a lot of "packet received" packets.

How exactly blocking Gmail et al. would make China become backward?

I mean, it is a fair question.