They are probably the most intelligent comments I've ever come across concerning climate change. Thank you. Thank you very much.

But with regards to geoengineering I would have thought we'd like to keep the albedo (light reflected off the ground) bright and glary in the Arctic regions to keep on reflecting heat back into space. That window is closing very fast.

The two questions are:

One: if those tiny shelled organisms that eat algae are unable to form proper shells due to the CO2 turning seawater into carbonic acid and this process is irremediably progressed then why isn't the clock at 12:00 just before it tolls? I've even read that the algae will turn the oceans into a hypoxic wasteland once these creatures that eat them are removed from the foodchain.

Two: if the heat problem is recognised by everyone then why are we waiting like crabs in a pot and arguing over why it's getting hot rather than seeding the upper atmosphere with ultrafine particles that will cool things down for decades? Surely there is money to made from that?

I'm just curious and not grandstanding any particular point. I think we're already doomed no matter what we do so if anyone can give reason to change that opinion I'd be grateful.

Would that be Dieter von Mitblumenkohl by any chance? (that is dieter fun with cauliflower for those who don't care)

Some of Dean Kamen's inventions, and they are far too many to list, are serious and lifesaving or serious and useful. Some are astonishing like the whhelchair that lifts the person in it to standing height when they need to. Other inventions of his are kind of fun but rather silly. My personal favourite is an analog clock with oval gears that slows down during work hours and speeds up during lunch break.

Well, with all due respect, the English throne is Dutch and the person on it is Upland Dutch. I've been to Dutchistan including the provinces of Limbourg and Holland and the people there are irremediably polite, spectacularly good company (emphasis on spectacular, not your average place), and irrevocably private.
You my friend are as the Danish could be except with freckles and taller.

Those words are nearly all Dutch. Cunt is French/Latin.

Every word carries meaning or meanings, pronunciation or pronunciations, and emotional weights for each variety of those permutations. I believe the study of this is called advertising.

Swear words carry high emotional weight. If they didn't they wouldn't be swear words. Normal words such as crucified, the normal Roman way of killing recalcitrant slaves, can also carry enormous weight and yet the word crucified is not a swear word in any context. The normal way the English killed robbers, hanged, also carries a lot of weight but less because there is no morality attached to murder by hanging while there is morality attached to murder by crucification. Good morality from Roman perspective and bad morality from Christian perspective.

Then, once you have an emotional weight for each word (and the emotional weight of phrases and phrasing takes this into very permuted territory) the emotional use requires understanding to apply. That understanding is required and is why Watson failed.

Solutions to this knot in the rope, the requirement for machines to have emotions, do exist in theory but none is in any way close to application.

Look at photos of modern American soldiers and compare them to, say, photos of WW2 American soldiers. I choose soldiers because they are a trained group of people employed by the Federal Government. It could of course be any contiguous group of American people.

Next work out how much it costs to get one kg of mass into orbit.

All that prime American beef is going to stay right here on Earth and it'll be jockeys that colonise the solar system and turn into space puddings in the process.

Now that's the grain of truth at the heart of every comment about 3D. If it's not a hologram it's not good enough. Since the 1950s there has been 3D after 3D after 3D but all anyone wants is the hologram of Princess Leia from the movie.

And it seems likely that alcohol is more closely connected with selecting sexual partners.

But jokes aside alcohol does have calories, the absorbtion of alcohol interferes with the conversion of other food types to energy rather than fat, and it inhibits the absorbtion of nutrients so you have to eat more to get the same level of nutrition. Drinking alcohol regularly has to have an effect on body weight.

You mean like the robotic weapon that killed nine people and wounded 14 in October 2007? That was only news because it killed the wrong people. Bad Robot! Bad Robot! Unlike the Obama administration that targets rescuers at sites of drone missile strikes and mourners at the funerals of its victims. US military parlance for this double tapping. Bad President! Bad Policy! But not news because it's killing the right people, the innocent that live with the guilty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oerlikon_35_mm_twin_cannon

My mother was an ambualance nurse and we lived in a place where most parts of the animal were eaten. When a friend asked why she never served brains my mother replied "not since the old lady went under the bus".

If you're interested in programming neural networks then a lot of extra resources and communities are available in French and to a lesser degree Italian. In Italian there are also publications and websites that deal with AL and AI (artificial life and artificial intelligence). I discovered them when I was looking at stupidology, that's the study of why intelligent people do stupid things that average people don't. The field has since been subsumed and renamed by psychology which is doing its best to bury it quietly. For general programming neither French nor Italian is any particular use, they're only useful for neural networks, AL and AI as far as I'm aware.

Amen to that! I'm ten hours into the tutorial for 2.5 and it still feels like gibberish - and I used to use Shade so it should be easy enough but it just ain't.

Quite, vector monitors made a lot of sense on CRT in the 1970s until raster won the battle and the choice became between a red or green text monitor. I remember the wows when the first amber monitor appeared and in a matter or months the choice was green or amber - and I poor fool that I was wanted a monitor with red text.

I saw a vector monitor on a game machine in 1983 and was forcibly reminded of just how beautiful they looked. On CRT nothing looks better than a vector monitor.