Catalyst Game Labs are the people who hold the license for the board game right now, and are releasing the 25th anniversary box set something or other...

Just curious -- I wonder if you could do a psychological study and see if the "good feeling" a pirate gets from paying for something legitimately is like the good feeling non-pirates get by donating to charity. Which might reveal something about the pirate's view of the media they pirate -- that it's charity or something.

I've worked at IBM, and I know several people that still do. They are constantly being forced to work overtime -- "Crunch Time" stretches into months-straight of 60 hour weeks. No overtime. No bonuses (unless you're in India or China). Just a slight less chance of being laid off in the next 6 months. *Everyone* I know at IBM is so desperate to leave they're taking pay cuts to do so.

I think you meant: "This work, performed by MAD scientists at the Automatic Control Laboratory..."

Just like how I would never intentionally dip my bacon, and sausage, in runny egg yolk and wrap it in a butter and syrup-soaked pancake. Not without adding peanut butter, that is.

Good idea. I'll keep them distracted.

The lace is a tie.

"ALL YOUR BASE"

Starcraft II forces online activation, but you can play the single player campaign off-line (ie, if their server goes down, you can still play the game). For me, that wasn't great, but it was still a "buy" for me. Diablo III? Not so much. FTA:

Nope. Not for me. Too many other options (Torchlight 2, Guild Wars 2 (where forcing connection makes sense)) to make D3 attractive.

SQUIRREL!

Not sure the lights in the chair were bright enough, but I thought the concept was silly, at the time....

I'm a Creationist; an old-school bible-thumper. I think this sort of thing is genuinely fascinating and I have no problem with it, or other evidence that points to an old Earth/universe, etc. I accept the scientific evidence for what it is (that is: true according to the best of our knowledge today, and may be altered tomorrow based on new evidence), and generally believe that everything is as old as geologists say it is, and that life evolves over time because of mutations like these combined with natural selection factors. In short -- I accept what the scientific community says. My daughter is big into dinosaurs, fossils, and paleontology right now and I'm encouraging that.

I also believe the universe and everything in it was created by an omnipotent being with a specific intent a relatively short time ago. I get that from the protestant christian Bible, and my best understanding of it.

I intellectually manage that by remembering three things: 1) We don't know everything about the physical universe. 2) We don't understand everything in the Bible. 3) We don't really know what happens when something is created from nothing, but wouldn't it make sense that whatever is created comes into existence at a specific age? I think it's called the "Ideal Age" theory or something like that in philosophy/theology.

I thought about that little further. If you'd seen Adam 5 minutes after he was created you'd think, "He's an adult male, probably 20-30 years old." And you'd be right. He's a 20-30 year old male that's only been around for 5 minutes. He'd bear every mark of having been born and matured like any human, because he really was an adult. If you'd look at the universe you'd say, "It's about 13-15 billion years old." And you'd be right. It's a 13-15 billion year old universe that's been around for a few thousand years, bearing every mark of a universe coming from a big bang complete with background radiation, dark matter, rate of expansion, the whole deal. Earth itself bears every mark that a 4.5 billion year old life-bearing planet would have; a fossil record, evidence of cyclic ice ages, etc, because it is a 4.5 billion year old life-bearing planet. It came into existence at that age.

Some Creationists say that God planted the fossils and other geological evidence to "test our faith" and I don't buy that. Doing so wouldn't be consistent with what we can see of God's nature -- consistency and truth (with one or two curious exceptions in the Bible). It's not an illusion or a trick; it's reality. It looks old because it is old. I don't think the age of the universe was ever meant to test anything, except maybe the egos of the people who think they have to be right about everything in the Bible.

But, to more directly answer the parent's post, wouldn't fewer mutations argue against evolution anyway? Don't we need, now, a lot more time for our species to evolve? And are we sure the rate of mutation has been constant, anyway? I still think it's an interesting discovery, anyway.

Apologies for throwing fuel on what will just end up being another flame war....

Ruby Spears Productions was only wrong about the year:

The year 1994: From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon...

Thundarr Intro

FTA: "It receives less than a third of the solar radiation Earth gets"

IANAScientist, but does that usually mean that genetic mutations, and most "big steps" in evolution, would be stunted?