So . . . given only a yes/no option to an absolute statement that cannot possibly be honestly answered yes or no (for any contextually-meaningful definitions of "forces" or "control"), Americans fall more on one side and Germans fall more on the other.

Hard to drink more when it's illegal to bring water onto the flight, and all you're given in-flight is a little sippy-cup . . ..

Aren't private universities examples of private businesses engaged in "true basic science"?

1) Living space: The Pilgrims didn't come to America to solve England's overcrowding problem. They came to America because there was no room in England *for Pilgrims*. The conquering aliens wouldn't represent the dominant group on their world . . . they'd be outcasts or fringe elements that are tired of dealing with…

(For the exact same reason that kids who exercise end up with stronger skeletons as adults than do kids who don't exercise. The body develops, in part, as it has need, and it will take shortcuts if it can find them. If, as a kid, you tell any part of your skeleton that it isn't going to need to do a lot of work,…

As I understand it, if you took a newborn of small-jawed, agricultural people and transplanted them into a hunter-gatherer society, the newborn would grow up to have the enormous jaws of his/her adoptive hunter-gatherer parents. The jawbones themselves respond to the increased stress of a tough diet by reinforcing…

Ha ha!

There was a time when everybody was like *ooooh, dinner!!* . . . but pigeons never developed the capacity to be too bothered by that kind of thing.

Perhaps you should try Welch's® pre-fermented wine. Not only does it taste great, it's also got a vitamin or something probably.

It was tested, and found wanting: [io9.com]

As I understand it (and somebody PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong), everything that's ever fallen into a black hole is still visible from outside it (just very dark and very red).

January 2009 - [io9.com]

"It is worth pointing out, however, that the latest arXiv preprint lists 179 authors, while the original lists 174. Would you ever classify five people as "most of" 15? To make things more confusing . . . "four new people" have decided not to sign, according to Science. Now, none of the above numbers may match up . .…

I was hoping we'd at least get to Future Tech 2 or 3 by then. Alas . . ..

[starslip.com]

So when you say that we've "passed our hydroelectric potential by miles already", are you saying that the USA is essentially out of (damable? Dammable?) rivers? Or just that the hydro plants we've already built are never going to generate more than they already have?

Norway gets almost all of its electricity from hydroelectric power, and Sweden relies on it quite a bit, too, which raises (in my mind) a few questions:

It depends on where you are. Here in Alaska, "Eskimo" encompasses the Inupiat and Yupik, neither of which call themselves "Inuit" . . . so it would likely be *more* offensive to refer to a member of either group as Inuit instead of Eskimo.

Or "people lie on surveys about understanding art so they don't look or feel dumb, but their heart rate gives their true feelings away."