"The current crop of sci-fi-writer-wannabes just ain't got the imagination to inspire"

I'm not sure there's even really a market for science fiction. What was that last Star Trek movie? I can't even remember the name of it now. It wasn't science fiction. It was an action flick with more explosions than ideas. It just happened to be set on a spaceship.

I'm willing to bet not many these days would have the patience to site through 2001: A Space Odyssey, let alone the original Solaris.

"Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present."

From http://www.aaanet.org/about/wh....

Not sure what is redundant here.

"Why would any intelligent creature want anything to do with us?"

In the same way that some people here on earth study primitive societies there would surely be some alien anthropologists out there interested in us.

"Yes, space is big, far bigger than you can imagine. "

You might even say "vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big."

Yep. That is the gist of America's new oligarchy.

"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-...

Let me help you out by quoting myself:

"...as beautiful as a really high end watch."

Now let me help you out further by pointing out that I did not call it a high end watch. I normally wear a high end watch and I still want an Apple watch.

Who says give up? Lots of people are into watches and will trade out from time to time. No pun intended.

Also, the Apple watch is cheap if you were already thinking about getting a FitBit since it has that functionality built in.

"Apple watch looks too much like a gadget"

That certainly wasn't my reaction. I thought it was as beautiful as a really high end watch. I'll be getting one.

I know this is a nitpick, but this is a site for nerds after all. It's NASA.

"Well the moment the cameras outside are gone? So are they."

Why waste your time parading to an empty street? Why shouldn't protestors play the PR game just as much corporations? It's all about getting your message out. Just ask the Koch brothers and their hired goons.

"Yet that is perfectly legal..."

Yep. There's no law against being an asshole.

I can say that I use Ruby because of the way it implements regular expressions. They are really easy to use, no need to import a library or compile your regex. Just put some stuff between a couple of slashes and you're off and running.

Since most of what I end up using a scripting language for is parsing text I use Ruby instead of Python.

"...you might as well put money in Facebook and Apple because apparently you like disastrous Titanic-caliber corporate meltdowns.."

And you were doing so well for a minute there.

"using the fabric of spacetime as your communications medium, it becomes rather quite difficult to prevent interception"

I've heard that if you use plaid for your space-time fabric that interception is much more difficult.

That's a pretty provocative few sentences. What job is it that you're quitting?