I grew up on a farm. Thousands of sheep, and plenty of horses and cows. Many pets, dogs, cats, sheep, birds, goats, etc. and yet I still have dust and pollen allergies. I think exposing your immune system is good, but it does not guarantee you anything.

Why? I recently attended an end of year function with a Linguistics department. Out of the 30 or so final year students in the course, two are male. That is about 7%. This year they have had more male students than usual. Yet no one complains. There are no incentive schemes for them to produce more male graduates. There are no threats to cut their funding or staffing. So why does CS need more female graduates?

Surely passenger planes are prime candidates for remote piloting. They fly long boring routes and land at a variety of airports. If they were piloted remotely, you could have a specialist for each type of aircraft at each airport and you could have frequent shift changes on the boring bits. That way you always have the optimum pilot in control. It also changes the whole hijacking think quite a bit.

Could you blend the metals? In other words, if you wanted to transition from one material to another, could you do it in a gradual fashion by slowly changing the ratios?

Can I assume that games like Paintball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintball) and Laser Quest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Quest) are also illegal in the USA, or is this a technology thing? Is the virtual world seen as more dangerous than the physical world?

This is pretty cool, but can you imagine how dirty the water will get. The bath example is probably the most practical one.

He received the 2009 Nobel Peace prize, so clearly he will do no evil and you must just not be understanding him correctly.

What amuses me is that if you have one ancestor that is not white you can qualify for all kinds of affirmative action type benefits because you are not considered white. This "racist white killer" too probably qualifies for AA benefits.

Clearly you are not all that familiar with modern day South Africa. The current government is plenty oppressive and becoming more so by the day. Apartheid era laws are being used to "control" the populace and new laws, like the Protection of State Information bill, are being implemented to prevent the government from being held accountable for its actions. The ANC is becoming the NP it replaced.

I realise you are joking, but in my neck of the woods you can go almost forever without finding a McDonalds and ironically the traditional hunting method is the one described above. Two legs are more efficient than one, so you simply chase your prey on foot until it collapses and then you kill it. I wonder how the anti-cruelty people feel about that.

I doubt that this is intended to be a hunting rifle. I suspect that this is just a "nice" way to show what it can do for the military. Now every soldier can be a sniper with minimal training required.

If this guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw&list=SPqs5ohhass_QZtSkX06DmWOaEaadwmw_D&index=30) is correct, then I would not mind if the royal family lived in my country.

Why do people have such a big problem with suicide anyway? It is not like we have a shortage of people on Earth. If some people want to off themselves and free up more resources for the rest of us, I think that is very noble of them. Preventing suicide by removing the most convenient tool is not exactly solving the problem. In a way you are making life even harder for the suicidal.

Have a closer look at your stats. A country like the USA has one of the highest guns per capita rates 88.8 per 100 and sits uncomfortably high in the gun related deaths list. By contrast, a country like South Africa has very strict gun control laws (12.7 per 100), yet sits even higher up the list than the USA (with a 7th of the guns per capita). The USA has figures of 10.2 firearm related deaths, of which 3.2 are homicides and 6.3 are suicides. South Africa on the other hand sits at 18.5, almost twice the rate of the USA, but the breakdown of homicides and suicides is 17.0 homicides and just 2.0 suicides. In other words, only the criminals have guns. Not legal ones, mind you, but guns none the less.

First, equal treatment is a myth. Nobody wants it (not quite nobody, but very few people). Everybody wants their gender, religion, race, etc. to get preferential treatment.

Second, they should just rephrase it. New parents get 8 weeks parental leave and the birth giver gets a further 8 weeks to recover from the major medical procedure they underwent.

Life is not fair. Never has been and never will be. Trying to make everybody the same is pointless and stupid.

So the average female employee is going to get between 8 and 16 weeks more leave than her male colleague over the course of a lifetime. Life is so unfair.