Another comment on the "affecting policies" question:

It is indeed interesting to watch that the pirates did already have quite a notable effect on german politic after they won seats in Berlin last year. The position of the leading party (CDU) on things like ACTA didnt change 100%, but you could see many of the politicians changing their arguments pretty quickly after that first election.

And this is not the first time this has happened. The green party which sometimes got up to 25% in nationwide polls and was in the government for some years, did have that same effect on the two big parties. Without the green party it would not be so "mainstream" today for all parties to be very close to each other on ecology politics.

-Bernd

Another reader from Germany, I wanted to point out that germany does have a history of big problems arising out of a badly designed purely proportional representation with no 5% hurdle. This was in the so called Weimarer Republic before Nazi ruling and is claimed to be one of the (smaller) contributing factors to NSDAP gaining ground. The parliament was at that time split between so many very small parties that coalitions we changing by the day and the government was very unstable.

So the current "post nazi" system was designed with this problem in mind and is now a hybrid. The democracy in germany still has some problems though. Most notably the fact that there are too many elections because of the extreme federal nature, constantly interrupting politicians and looking too much on their popularity instead of concentrating on their work.

-Bernd

If land mass is your metric why not compare with average russians?

Depends on what is the purpose of what? If intelligent life is the rare and special thing and all that space is just the necessary byproduct you could also see it as making our lifes just the more special.
Not necessarily a depressing thought.

As much as I love the idea of living in a universe with many civilisations and crawling with life, it could ironically actually devalue the way people think of OUR world and our place in the universe.

In the end I think both outcomes can be mindboggling :)

Isn`t it equally fascinating if we were in fact alone and not necessarily make a god or fate responsible?
If intelligent life was so common I always wonder why we didnt see any self replicating drones visiting us yet?
Think about how much time they had to and only one civilisation had to build them.

Fascinating either way...

Nah omniscient is an exaggeration.

OK let me rephrase: It is quite unique inside our solar system. Unless we find one other planet / moon pair with similar proportions, the only known such pair is pretty unique in my book.

Some factors can be tested and calculated in a simulation. Example: We have a very large planet far out in our solar system that catches objects that could otherwise collide with earth, therefore changing the timespan between extinction level events upwards far enough for intelligent life / civilizations to develop. Check. How likely do solar systems have things of the size of Jupiter that far out?

But for the majority of factors it is pointless to argue from the cause towards the effect unless you understand how exactly intelligent life develops. We know how much time it roughly took and we know that only one species has made that leap yet.

On many other contributing factors you can only argue backwards from observing our existing world: Earth has an exceptionally large moon (relative to earths size) and it therefore makes sense to look at this factor as a possible contribution to our existence.

Making a simulation of a process that we dont understand is not science IMO.

I think you misunderstood. The uniqueness is not in the fact that it has a moon but in its extraordinary size (in relation to the planet size). That IS quite unique and it may be essential to life development. Or it may not... IMO its a strange approach to try to solve this question with a simulation. The outcome seems to depend on lots of factors whose influence on the development of intelligent life are just not known yet. Without knowing how intelligent life develops a simulation seems like just guesswork.

I agree that it is a tough requirement for a plant to withstand an 8.8 earthquake, but it is ignorant to not expect such a quake in that region. If such a quake "only" hits every 200 years then it still means to 1:4 chance within the typical lifespan of one reactor. A tsunami in combination with a strong quake also is hardly surprising in a location like that. Also it is normal for such reactors to be in use for 40 or more years. If you call for new reactors they can only be financed if again they too will be used for at least 40 years. In summary: I now judge CURRENT nuclear reactors as less safe than I "hoped for" a few days ago.

If I want artistic freedom, I can watch video games or movies (where lots of hubble images end up anyway). So the more scientifically correct you can get, the better. Using non natural colors is OK, but even then it would be good if every movie / image would identify which colors are original and what is artistic freedom. I suspect a large number of people believe that many artistically colored images show normal spectrum images. -Bernd

News from the twilight zone... the ghosts are inside the bed sheets ;-) I have to correct myself here. After some more experiments I did indeed found a way to wake up the GHOSTS... And that is indeed by just shaking the blanket and then quickly making lots of images with a flashlight. Surprisingly it sometimes leads to exactly the same pattern. Thanks for the hint!

I would agree if it would only be the white ball, but it seems to have a circular very fine structure in its center. Also, a dust particle would have to be very close to the lens (less than a cm I would say) to be this big. How could an object that close be in focus enough to show such a clear shape and be lit by the flashlight (which is embedded in the case of the camera and about 2 cm away from the lens: http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/189780-sonytx7_slide.jpg Dont get me wrong. I sure don`t want to insist on a paranormal explanation here, but also don`t think the scientific explanation can be that simple. The image sensor is a backlit CMOS btw. http://www.alphamountworld.com/photography-news/sonys-back-illuminated-cmos-sensor I wonder if something rarely goes wrong at the surface level of the sensor (high energy particle impact?) could it create such large (many hundred pixel) effect? -Bernd