Why not just build the base on Earth, and beam it up, when you're finished designing your Von Neumann machines?

Nearside. The clue's in its name.

For a moment there, I thought you meant on the other side of the moon from us, rather than from the base. I was already to go "nooooo, that'll crash it into the Earth, you fool!" Then I realised. And posted anyway. Ah well.

And hard to envisage habitable plants remaining stable for sufficiently long periods of time for complex life to evolve. Though if you're looking for somewhere to put people, planets without existing life are a much better bet.

Assuming you you could survive exposing your ear, I'd say ~200 times quieter? Or should that be considered on a logarithmic scale?

Assuming I understand you correctly, I should perhaps have rephrased this:

To:
What I find more interesting, to be honest, is that Open GL on a windows/nvidia box is (slightly) outperforming Direct 3D on the same box.

There's no mention of graphic detail in their article, so I'd presume (might be a big one) that they're running both at equivalent resolution, level of detail, and shader effects

To be fair, it was their porting to to Open GL that improved the windows Open GL performance. What I find more interesting, to be honest, is that Open GL is (slightly) outperforming Direct 3D on a windows/nvidia box.

Surely that's only not menacing if I've had an appendectomy?
I'd imagine that whether or not this message is interpreted as "menacing" is dependent on the recipient?

This book was the core of the first two years of my degree. It covers a wide range of topics and generally provides good worked examples, if that's the sort of learning that you're wanting to go for. http://www.amazon.co.uk/University-Physics-Harris-Benson/dp/0471006890

I don't think this technique can reveal what's good about Dostoyevsky, nor indeed what's good about computer games. It can, however, show you whether or not something else has the same neurological effect as reading Dostoyevsky, or playing a shooter, or whatever. If they were able to recreate the identical (your word) neural stimulation, then I would - but I don't think they'd ever be able to recreate it identically, so that's perhaps not so important.

I've not read TFA, but I'm not convinced that they are making that supposition. Any reason why they wouldn't consider the build up (which they can presumably also track) to be an equally important part of the phenomenon? They may be missing the point entirely, but they're the neurologists, so I'd hope they wouldn't disregard that sort of thing.

And reading something interesting doesn't count as a specific form of neural stimulation?

Surely they'd be better off striving to have the most enjoyable experience possible? Especially if you say that they'd still be "no substitute." A sniper game that involves hiding in the one place for 2 days straight, for instance, may be realistic, but why would anyone want to play it? Give me TF2 any day.

So some of your states don't kill people? Looks like the rest are keeping nice company.

Even though it's rhetorical, I couldn't answer the first question without knowing what you mean by "justice" ... I suspect you're thinking more about vengeance, or at best, mere punishment. Regardless of the offense, the purpose of prison is supposedly threefold: to protect society, to punish the perpetrator, and to rehabilitate them. If you feel that the state cannot punish someone enough by merely locking them up, it doesn't seem like the biggest leap from that to justifying torture as an extreme form of state-sanctioned punishment.

And here's a rhetorical one back at you: Do you believe that a state killing someone can ever be just? I can think of scenarios where it might be the best option, but I don't believe it's ever just.

Indeed, that's a valid example. But because so many people were involved, I doubt arming the populace would have reduced the killing in that case. I had been thinking more of "western" nations, however.