Even with all the retconning it still makes no sense, because what nobody ever points out is that the parsec isn't just any old measure of distance: it's a distance defined by the orbit of the Earth, which of course makes no sense in a galaxy far, far away.

It's pretty clear to me. "Best Buy's pulling the plug" is an abbreviation of "Best Buy is pulling the plug", just like "it's clear" is an abbreviation of "it is clear". Throw an adverb in the middle for nuance, and you get something that's a rather casual transcription of a spoken comment (just as you might say…

There's a variant of this concept that fits in a truck that's being tested by Special Forces for long range patrols. Another advantage it brings is that the leftover char gives an enemy no clue about the size of a force, unlike dumping regular garbage.

It would be cleverer if Herman Cain actually knew what any of Obama's policies were — for example, on Libya. Given Cain's recent spectacular fail, you missed an extremely rare opportunity to correctly use the word "ironic". My suggested replacement: "Like Cain attempting to answer a question on foreign policy, this…

No, still wrong I'm afraid. Photons are massless, and they travel at precisely c (in a vacuum), regardless of how much energy they have. You can't accelerate them beyond c.

p.s. Again, if it's no big deal, why is every physicist on the planet talking about it?

The ratio of signal to noise on Starz/Encore is just way too low for me to care, I'm afraid. I can get Disney/Pixar in other places, especially since if my son likes a movie, he wants to watch it dozens of times, so I'll buy the DVD. This may be bad news for Netflix, but it's don't-care news for me.

OK, this time I do want to sound rude. Rubbish. Complete, total rubbish. Where do you get this nonsense? The effect of gravity absolutely is not instantaneous, and I have no idea why you imagine that! Earth does indeed wait 8 minutes to feel the sun's gravity. If the sun vanished right now, we would see its light and…

I don't want to sound rude, but, uh, no. Massless particles (photons, gravitons) travel at exactly the speed of light in a vacuum. Nothing can be accelerated beyond that speed. There are theories that suggest that c might vary, but absolutely nothing convincing.

I've got all the Starz channels on a one year free trial from Dish, and I won't miss it an iota when it's gone. As far as I can tell, Starz is where bad movies go after they die in theaters.

Can we please stop pretending that stereoscopy is "3D"? It's just Viewmaster at 24 fps. Your brain uses a lot more cues than mere stereo separation to perceive 3D, and unless all the cues match up, you get a headache at best, seasick at worst.

Wow, somebody has some anger issues. Also, somebody has some opinions that are several years out of date. Did somebody overpay for a Toyota or Honda and is now regretting it?

For that kind of money, I'd expect them to come over to my house and read my email to me.

Plus, he didn't just walk into it. It sounds like he put a lot of hours and effort into understanding the law, and then finding a good property that fit the requirements. If people want to hate somebody for getting rich for no effort, go hate on a lottery winner, or somebody who inherited their wealth from mommy and…

No, it's widely used; has been for centuries; is not merely acceptable but extremely convenient. The only people with objections are long-dead dictionarians who desperately wanted english to be more like latin (and to outdo each other in their pedantry), and people who know a little about language but not quite enough.

@maythetechbewithyou: This just in: other people are not you.

What we're talking about here is adaptations, not absolute advantages. Europeans appear to have gained genes relevant to immunity to prevalent diseases from the neanderthals who had been in the region much longer and had more time to accumulate those adaptations. Not really surprising: any homo sapiens brave or lucky…

He is, of course, completely wrong,

I hate to spoil the party, but there is no "longest word" in the English language, any more than there is a "largest number" in arithmetic. The rules of English allow you to generate arbitrarily long words. Start with an average word like "fatal". The following are all legitimate (albeit increasingly rarely used)…

@The Curse of Millhaven: Can you tell from some of the pixels, and from having seen a lot of pygmy mammoths drawn from descriptions?