Priorities exactly. When there are so many starving people in the world living with disease and poverty, why give money to an organisation that is looking for something that may or may not exist? Even if aliens are out there they'll be too far away to meet. What about the people on our own doorstep?

A good book to read on the background to the Challenger Launch Decision. The deaths were avoidable if the management culture at the time would have listened.

Umm. Is it just me, but even ignorant terrorists must be able to work out that creating and releasing a highly transmissible lethal flu virus is a bit stupid. Judging by most recent flu pandemics, they travel everywhere, not just the country/people/religion you hate. Not very targeted. How about a nuke instead?

Why bother making a "virtual" store that is only accessible at one physical location?? The whole point of the internet is that you can access it anywhere. Surely it makes more business sense to make barcode scanning app so that someone can walk into any store, scan the item that they are interested in and either be given a list of online stores to buy it from at a cheaper price or a list of recommended alternatives based upon their tastes?

When I started secondary school in the early 90's we had BBC Basics in our ICT suite. By the time I left we had PCs. They upgraded the computers but forgot to upgrade the teachers. Our ICT lessons consisted of training the teacher how to make text italic, how to enter data into a spreadsheet or (more frequently) how to mute the sound if he had a hangover. As a consequence none of us bothered to take ICT GCSE.

..... but then it won't spread so fast cos it's busy being eaten, and so unmutated strain will outcompete it leaving you back at square one.... Anything that is so undiscriminating about what it eats will probably eat everything else, posing another problem.

Well actually yes this strategy is very sensible. I think you're not quite understanding the research. The vaccine doesn't stop you being bitten by mosquitoes, but would be designed to stop the virus infecting the mosquitoes. This breaks the cycle of infection and prevents many other people being infected. Yes that's little consolation for you, but in the long run, less people being infected does have a direct benefit for you.

Well actually malaria is a cause of poverty as well as a symptom. In Africa, the average child will have 1-6 bouts of malaria a year, not only putting them at risk of dying, but also preventing them from going to school. Coupled to the loss of manpower in the workforce, malaria does impact community productivity significantly.

As someone who researches Malaria for a living I must wholeheartedly support the funding that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is bringing to the field of Malaria research. Malaria might only be a "poor" person disease but it affects tens of millions of people a year. Even on a selfish note, with global warming creeping up on us in the next few decades, perhaps this pre-emptive strike by the West will save us all getting sick in the long run.

1. Attach an object-tracking device and a harpoon to it.

2. Reel in the prey.

3. Put prey in a big sealed container.

4. Time/Standby mode.

5. Lots of biogas.

6. Dung heap.

7. GOTO 1.

Nothing to it.

Last year I was in Korea where the streets are lined with vendors frying up silkworm pupae on the street as an, *ahem*, delicacy. The smell wafting down the road can only be described as a cross between death and pus. I would eat my fellow astronauts over silkworms.