In the phrase "exception that proves the rule" the sense of the word "prove" is its older, otherwise obsolescent meaning: to test something. This use of the word also persists in the phrase "proving grounds" which means "test track [for race cars or similar]". When an exception proves a rule, this means that the posited rule is shown to be invalid or at least not universal. Learn the meaning of expressions before using them. Otherwise you just look stupid.

The word he wants is "lying". If I were laying in bed my girlfriend would be involved and no books would be read.

They don't create food or machinery or build houses. They don't transport materials to people who make things. They don't transport finished products to consumers. They don't get oily gunk out of the ground and turn it into fuel, plastic and lubricants. They don't maintain equipment or search for minerals or invent new ways to make things or new things to make. Even astrophysicists produce understanding of the world.

Wall street doesn't don't produce anything. They just fiddle with numbers. If they all went broke today, the world would be a better place.

Oh no, who will pester the developers now? Productivity will soar.

And then you'd buy them anyway, because failing to do so would severely disadvantage you. After a while you'd stop thinking about it.

What right a government has to spend a boatload of taxpayers' money so a bunch of people can run around in circles? I don't care how well they execute their chosen useless skill, except to the extent that I am pleased they enjoy it and I am in favour of them having freedom to do it, at their own expense on their own time.

Mind you, longevity would go well with a space culture. Rabid breeding is a function of culture. Escaping to space and preventing those cultures from leaving the planet would be a good way to do it. Imagine what the United States would be like if they hadn't filled it up with everyone else's riffraff and it continued to be peopled and run by wealthy scientists and engineers, as it was in the beginning.

Speak for yourself, basement-boy. Most of my days and a lot of my creative time involves computers and that leaves me tanned and tired. I'm currently building industrial controllers for the irrigation system on my acreage. This particular project involves trenching, laying pipes, steel fabrication, high pressure plumbing on pipes at least an inch and a half in diameter, retaining walls, earthmoving, turfing, seeding and hauling big rocks by hand on slopes where heavy equipment is impractical. It's very outdoorsy and keeps me in pretty good shape for my age.

Personally I don't care much about the rest of humanity, but I'd like to get into space. There's no escape from people here on Earth, and as the population rises, the resources available to individuals decline. Worse, freedom declines as encroaching populations use their collective power to tell me what I can and can't do and even what I may not think or say. And then they demand I pay for their intrusion.

If could get into space and be the first to gain control of significant orbiting ice (for oxygen and reaction mass) it would be a short path to independence. It would be easy to pen all the nations at the bottom of their gravity well: even if they launch lots of missiles, they'll all have to climb along predictable paths with very limited manoeuvering options and plenty of time for anyone with lots of reaction mass to fling rocks at them. Regardless of nation of origin, the first group in space to achieve material sustainability will declare independence about ten minutes after deciding they don't need anything else from the ground.

Robert Heinlein figured out the social aspect of space secession half a century ago ("The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") and Niven and Pournelle figured out many of the details in the eighties (Footfall) though they didn't apply them to the same question. NASA keeps asking the wrong questions, but nevertheless finds many useful answers.

Space is a good idea. I don't think it unltimately matters for me; the status quo will last long enough for me to live out my life in what is, historically, luxury and excess. But if the chance came, I would take it.

Water-borne life as we know it requires gravity to clarify the water by essentially centrifuging it. Which tells you how to solve the problem and makes your other point even more important. Space will go to the Chinese, because they have a huge booming economy and are prepared to get people killed trying. The first superpower to get hold of an iceteroid will rule the solar system because while everyone else is doing carefully planned orbits and millisecond burns to conserve their limited reaction mass, people with an iceteroid can make all the oxygen they want (fresh air in a space station!) and can make huge prolonged extravagant burns that let them zoom all over the place like in the movies. This will give them a naval superiority unparalleled in human history.

You assume that any change from the status quo is necessarily a bad thing. A rise of five degrees will give Russia a wheat belt bigger than the one the USA will lose. Tough luck for Americans but pretty good for Russians. I don't know if five degrees is enough but with a big enough rise Australia will trade a big useless desert for a warm shallow inland sea, brilliant for fishing, easy to protect from poachers, handy for internal heavy transport.

As stated in the very first line, it happened in 1889, BEFORE all the emissions of the 20th century.

I would object to a method name like that not because it's offensive but because it's badly named. Unless you're rendering porn it is a dismal choice of name, completely unhelpful. As a magic number in a constant it would be infantile but harmless.

Why do you need a party at all? Hierarchies of representation were necessary pre-internet, and are no longer necessary. Also, why do you need a government? Sure you need an administration, to manage shared resources like roads and water and emergency services. But to govern is to limit freedom. That is exactly what the word means. Why would you think it necessary to have someone else make your decisions? Are you really so lazy or so stupid? Or perhaps fearful of responsibility?

Corruption evolves wherever there is a concentration of resource (money, power, food, energy, whatever). It's not economic to be corrupt unless there's a concentration of resource. Rules don't work, they either get bought or ignored. The only effective way to eliminate corruption is to make it honesty more profitable, and you do that by avoiding concentrations of resource. It's no different from managing a cockroach problem by sweeping your floors and cleaning your kitchen before retiring.

Being left in peace to do whatever floats their boats in the privacy of their own homes, with whoever wants to be involved, that's a reasonable expectation. "Recognition" - whatever the hell that is - is not.

Historically, banks sold three things:

• -- Secure storage - a fortress for gold
• -- Record keeping
• -- Authentication
• -- Authorisation

We don't use gold anymore. As for the other three services, I can get a machine to do that. Very cheaply. So, they don't actually provide secure storage (see TFA) and the other things can be done more reliably without them.