The key thing is that the government paid for his ticket. Mrs Thatcher chose to drop all UK involvement in (non-military) space. That policy got changed a few years ago and now the government wants to be involved again. We’re now spending £370m a year on civil space.

The trust thing doesn’t make a lot of sense. For the trust to have control, the coins would need to be moved to a new address with a private key that only the trustee knew. Such a move would be visible in the block-chain. It isn’t.

I never understood what that opening monologue was referring to. If it was referring to how Borden does The Teleported Man trick, well OK. I was expecting something deeper or more meta.

He also gets to pick the girl, and he gives contradictory requests which she nevertheless matches.

Bitcoin is decentralised. It is not so much “someone, somewhere” as “anyone, anywhere”. Anyone can issue an update for the ledger; they don’t need qualifications as such, they just need to prepare a valid update in the right format and submit it to the network. You don’t need to ask anyone’s permission.

Bitcoin is based around a public ledger that lists who owns what. You would refund the coins the same way you’d do any other Bitcoin transfer: by making a new entry in the ledger recording the change of ownership.

OK... but do you understand that in spoken English, he might have paused after the word “so” as well as before it? The “so” links two clauses, and having a comma after it leaves the second clause intact, so it doesn’t break the flow.

You think instead of a comma after “so” he should have used a period or a semicolon? Surely not. An ellipsis would be possible, but not required, especially as so many people prefer them exclusively for omitted material.

Because it reads better? I can imagine him pausing after that word. The comma reflects a perfectly reasonable cadence.

It reminds me of when Amy couldn’t have a pony, because her parents said she had too many ponies already. Maybe they should knock down one of the other 13 observatories and build the new one in its place. Yes, science is nice, but how many observatories do you need, really?

People vary in their sensitivity to caffeine. A few years ago I went on a 5:2 diet, which meant no coffee on two days a week. I got headaches from caffeine withdrawal. This was from drinking 3 cups a day, which is not a huge amount. Giving up coffee altogether stopped the headaches. I figure I am more sensitive than…

You said, “less popular”. Replace “likeable” with “popular” in my post if the difference matters to you, but they are very close in meaning. You didn’t use the word “humanise”.

I don’t understand what Clara did wrong. We know Ashilda can withdraw the Chronolock if she chooses. She was willing to withdraw it from Rigsby. The Chronolock wasn’t something given to her by someone else just for this trap, to be used in one specific way. It’s been her tool of control in this refuge for centuries.…

You think Carol’s moment of weakness made her less likeable? It showed she still retained some humanity. I don’t recall Rick’s portrayal in the RV being less flattering. He dispatched a bunch of armed wolves single-handedly, and stuck to his mission.

Hedgehogs don’t actually like slugs much. Only about 5% of their diet is slugs. http://thehedgehog.co.uk/feeding-hedgeh…

“and anybody who raises practical objections is fired, Donald Trump-style” - that guy got fired, not because he objected, but because he should have figured out the solution to the problem he raised 6 months ago. Vis, a lighter material. He was incompetent.

You don’t think Jesse is on the way to being Carol Mk2? She killed a wolf previously, and in this episode she took it upon herself to kill her walker neighbor. And then she made cookies.

We don’t know he was right about the Termites, because we don’t know what would have happened had his group returned at that time. I’ll give you the church. He was definitely wrong about the hospital. His plan depended on taking out the two guards silently, and failed at the first hurdle because there were actually…

If they’re going for cheapness, they wouldn’t use any more power than they need. They might use a point-to-point network of tightly-focused beams, with all the energy going where its needed. Even if they do broadcast a non-directed signal to their entire solar system, it would be wasteful to make it powerful enough to…

No, it doesn’t. It is a statement about what happened. The truth matters. It explains why other customers in the store at the time may not have realised what was happening. Knowing it may help a witness come forward. Kelly explicitly says that whether she was willing or not does not matter, making it clear he is not…