Ah, I've always thought the spam arms race would be what really leads to artificial intelligence...

They were certainly very vigilant! Perhaps a little... too vigilant? Hmm, suspicious...

Oh, that's a beaut — and officially the first laptop ever, apparently. :P I love the aesthetics of old computers...

I was lucky enough for Saturn to be one of the first sights I caught a glimpse of through my beginner's telescope. "Hmm, that bright star seems interesting, let me point the telescope at it, and... Wait, why does it have such a weird shape?.. Wait... WAIT..." it was an absolutely amazing moment for me. :P The idea…

Yes! Exactly what I was thinking! I actually have an old TRS-80 stashed away somewhere. I'd totally still use it, except three of the keys no longer work. (I think that's excusable, given its age. Heck, if I weren't so lazy, I could probably track down replacement parts and a computer enthusiast to fix it... :P) I'd…

I agree that thinking space exploration will be easy is pure fantasy. But I still like to think that as our technology gets better and we learn more and more about the universe, we will eventually be able to settle other worlds and explore the stars. Mind you, I agree that we're pretty much screwed if we mess up our…

Nobody thought that. Most scholars knew the world was round at the time Columbus sailed. Rather, Columbus was a bit of a dummy who horribly miscalculated the size of the globe (fairly accurate numbers were already available, but he ignored them) and generally screwed up his mission. He "discovered" a continent that…

Strong agreement! I was always fascinated with the basic idea behind Biosphere 2, and I really wish they'd give it another, better-organized, try. I want my giant space stations, darnit!

I've visited it and found that, for some reason, stale air and unpalatable food were an issue there, as well, despite there being no obvious attempts to make it a closed system.

Well, the Earth is considered a closed biosphere, despite the fact that it constantly gets energy from an external source — the sun. In practical terms, I think that, say, on a future biosphere-style space station, energy will be provided either with solar panels, or with nuclear reactors or some such. It will be a…

My research comes from Wikipedia, and is therefore infallible! The Biomass (ecology) article gives the total non-bacterial biomass of the planet as 560 billion tonnes; it mentions that the total biomass of bacteria may be greater, but the sources for this claim are from a few years ago — and if there are half as many…

I would like to mention another game that has the RTS-meets-first-person concept — Allegiance, a now-almost-forgotten Microsoft game from the year 2000.

From an evolutionary perspective, I think it would be fairer to compare the number of bacteria on the planet to the number of single cells living in multicellular organisms. After all, clumping together to form bigger entities is the evolutionary path that bacteria did not take... I believe the total biomass of…

That hypothesis seems impossible to test.

Very few uncircumcised people actually get infections or other medical problems related to it, though.

On the key question – for some – there is no evidence that penile sensitivity, sexual satisfaction or sexual function varies between circumcised and uncircumcised men.

I don't know how many there would be. There's quite a few women serving in military positions now, so presumably there would be a few. Canada, my country, has women serving in all roles, same as men. Our military budget is a fraction of that of the US, yet somehow the costs of having female soldiers haven't made us…

There's still the interesting phenomenon, especially when it comes to indie and open-source software, of people sometimes contributing money to things they could have for free instead. I'm not arguing against your comment, I'm just pointing out that when it comes to people's software purchasing habits there are, in…

I find it depressing, yet interesting, that now that global warming as such is a pretty much accepted fact, global warming sceptics have simply started tacking the phrase "of course global warming is real, but..." to their comments, while then simply repeating the same points they've always been making. "Of COURSE…

I don't see where you're going with this. Are there laws against giving children up for adoption if you're in a difficult situation, now? If a mother believes she simply doesn't have the ability to raise a child at this time for whatever reason, is she stuck with the kid anyway, regardless of what it means for her and…