Shocked? Really? If you want to speculate that it's possible or even plausible that life MAY be there that's one thing. To say that you would be shocked that there isn't is actually baffling.

1. Convenient. 2. Economic RULES may work similarly elsewhere. That does NOT however mean that RULERS (a.k.a. governments) work the same in the U.S. as elsewhere. 3. Again... convenient. If our government has a strong track record of success upon intervening, it shouldn't be that hard to rattle off a few items. Thus far, your list stands at zero.

Except that 1. You didn't provide any examples or cite any sources and 2. The U.S. isn't the rest of the world. The list of programs that Washington has regulated that have actually worked well is a pretty short one. If there's a way to screw something up, I trust our politicians to find it.

No. Triton is at least three times as big as Neptune. Neptune only appears larger due to matter.

So that's how science works now, huh? If you study something and hold an opinion on the topic your opinion becomes law? Sure, I can buy that. It sounds legit to me. The only thing I'm really left wondering is what happens when you have two astrophysicists studying the same topic and disagree? What then? It sounds like we might have a paradox on our hands.

The way you script things there isn't exactly science either.

Science isn't supposed to have an agenda and then set out to prove the agenda, nor is it supposed to sit around and wait for others to sit around and prove it either. The scientific method calls for the formation of a hypothesis and then doing a series of tests that will attempt to disprove that hypothesis. True science requires standing up to the scrutiny of scientists attempting to disprove their own thoughts and ideas not holding back facts or data to prevent others from beating you to your discovery.

What you described seems more like a group of "scientists" who set out to prove themselves correct and have been too busy patting themselves on the back and arrogantly thinking they had all the answers to be bothered with attempting to properly test their own hypotheses... worse yet, your group seems to be lazy and accept failure when real scrutiny came and decided to pass the buck (testing) to the next guys... possibly the same guys they didn't want to collaborate with before.

I'm not saying that this isn't science, but I am saying that what you described isn't science.

Way better than that stupid 720p (1280x720) stuff... and laughing in the face of 1080p (1920x1080) as well by giving us 1280x1280 1:1 square displays.

*rolls eyes at self* Pretty good chance I am going to have to award all of /. with PUNitive damages for that one.