I've always wondered what would happen if we were to take sulfur based life and crash it into io or some similar creature and crash it into some other planet it would do well on. mountain top lichen might do well on mars after all.

find a pocket of oxygen in the midst of all the other gases and away you go--seriously, if even a small amount of oxygen were found on any of the gas giants, there would probably be enough for as long as we needed it (64k should be enough for anyone too after all).

I am not quite sure where you are getting this "popular 'little angel flying'..." bit. Are you referring to resurrections other than Christ's? Christians hold that there will be a general resurrection at some point in the future (certain groups feel confident about the order of events related to that while others are more agnostic on this topic). All would agree that the Christian (and non-Christian) is to be resurrected at some God-chosen point in the future--and this is one thing that actually hasn't changed in 2000 years. What happens immediately after death to the soul has been more controversial, but in general, the view has been held that the believing soul is with God (this from even the earliest church as seen in Luke 23:42-43) and the unbelieving soul is not (Luke 16:20ff--also notes the picture of rest for the believing soul). Some have suggested soul sleep (unconscious rest until resurrection) or suspension of being (Moltmann's picture of God holding the believing soul in his mind until resurrection--similar conceptually at least to the computronium star in Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space holding the humans it recreates in its systems). Neither of these last two have been a significant part of Christian thought.

re-birth for Greek / Egyptian / Roman mythologies was typically seen differently than we do now--the "Afterlife," particularly in Egyptian myths was seen as distinct from the current one... a different world. Many of the various ideas of the Greco-Roman systems followed a similar path (though not all). This was, in fact, one of the things the followers of the 'dude in Jerusalem' were criticized for--believing in a physical resurrection to experiences in the current world (or its restoration/re-creation)... not a permanently separate world ("heaven" is the closest you'll get to this and it isn't the end all for Christians... they tend to look towards a more holistic restoration involving all of existence).

Couldn't snorting it lead to some kind of disastrous / fatal allergic reaction?

Pain releases endorphins too--there's a physical need for them to react appropriately to a situation causing you pain. Makes me wonder about those who cut themselves for the pain / release involved as compared to the above poster who likes peppers for a similar reason.

They are going to free museums. The coasts are also where the majority of the population lives--of course, the people living in the MidWest, South (no, like most people, I don't include Florida here), most of the Southwest, and Northwest kind of suffer ... hmmm.

A local high school (albeit a private boarding type of one) used connections they had with college students in a paper folding club to make use of the club's access to MIT buildings (in this case, a really long hallway). This has nothing to do with the college's academic programs but rather with its social programs.

All too literally. No one could buy a plane or train ticket out of France... no one could do banking there (safely). Sounds like a perfect opportunity for businesses outside of France to start making more money from former businesses there... if the law actually ends up sticking.

I dearly hope that if he quoted Justin Bieber, most, if not all Slashdot readers would think he was being original (though likely somewhat... odd). I certainly wouldn't know the difference.

It was worth about 50% of my salary to cut through the red tape and just get work done--I've also had time for studying other work in a way never possible before--I wish it had only been ten, but then my field is teaching, not IT. Has losing ~50% of my salary been painful? decidedly, but we have kept to our budget well and it has worked out--just no extra trips this year and paying off the mortgage early is not something we are working towards at the moment (we were and likely will be again in the future, God willing).

Yep - though I do have fairly strong thoughts on the subject of trans-gender-ism (?) and though I was focused on a respectful, contributory response (rather than flame), this bled through.

Probably, but given the usual requirements for milk production, the emotional cost would be WAY too high... plus, you'd have to figure in quality control issues that are already solved for the cow milk industry if you were to chemically trigger milk production in humans.

BP apparently feels accepted on some level in the slashdot community or completely at ease with himself apart from slashdot or he would not post intimate details of his sexuality on the forum here. If it is the first, then he does find some level of importance in the feedback he gets from others on the site. If it is the second, he might, but does not necessarily find it important. He at the very least seems to have accepted his parents' rejection of him as an acceptable situation for his choice to pursue a transexual lifestyle (I am not speaking of morals or whether or not perception is a choice or genetic or whatever, as that would simply turn into a flame war, but merely of pursuit of fulfillment of his perception). I am not always as close to my parents as I'd like, but I have to say, I don't think, if I were to make a similar situation that I would want to go so far as to burn a bridge permanently. For this, I am sorry for BP's parents and for BP... and given that we all often make choices that burn bridges, sorry for us all.

There is no one, simple solution.

Having spent a great deal of time in Spain (and other European countries too), socialized medicine trends towards the same problems people with HMOs in the US face--one main doctor--if he's bad, too bad for you. Need surgery? ... Is it important and life threatening? We can work you in in 6-12 months, perhaps longer if it is something less significant like heart surgery. I will grant you that if you have a history of a specific, dangerous medical problem, the gears seem to work faster (a friend's father recently had an emergency same-day surgery--shocked everyone--a real miracle).

The American model, even apart from HMOs tends towards greed (humans get that way, yes?). There are exceptions to the rule in both cases. I have noted one above in the European system, and in the American system, my father-in-law received excellent end of life care from the WVU hospital just recently (they were very creative in trying to solve multiple organ failures--nothing against them that they weren't able to correct malpractice from another hospital, but they didn't give up until the very end and were willing to try fairly radical treatment options including getting the the insurance to pay for a trip to Ohio State's vet school for extra work--an odd choice but one that would have been helpful... day staff changed and OSU decided against the idea).

Is the US a Christian nation? No, but there are a larger percentage of people who call themselves Christians than in other nations. This is a sad thing for me because the reputation of the Christian should be that of Christ (as you rightly point out) and is (again, sadly) not.