Walsingham

*chews pipe stem* Yay! 'splosions!

Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans, What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones? My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease, Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas. To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given, The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven. The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see, To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me; One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath: You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death. - The Last Hero; G.K. Chesterton

Or the Red Meat Construction Site.

A more important angle is that given our unique experience of the Unicverse, when we die the Universe will cease to exist anyway.

There is a (predictably) tedious sci-fi story examining this. But for myself, if the human race survives until the heat death of the Universe then I for one would regard that as a 'good innings'.

Thanks. I generally try to buy quality. I think in the long run it works out. Plus quality tools inspire quality effort.

Negative. Mine was an office desktop build.

Ow. I ran into town to commission a new firm of solicitors. I don't think they apreciated a sweaty oaf in tehir reception area. Ran around a bit, ran back. Now I've worm off the skin on my inside thigh and one knee. Ow.

There's not a lot of information about Goners that I recall other than it being a supernatural thriller he was working on. Universal has the option on it and AFAIK has yet to see a draft they liked enough to green-light it (Joss has been - movie wise - in draft hell with this and the now dead attempt to do Wonder Woman). Tim's not had a lot of success with non-Joss shows, it seems, having had several cancelled (Wonder Falls, The Inside, Drive) without filling out their run. I quite liked Wondferfalls. But i like oddball comedy.

Well, sure. But in the event that all human life on Earth is wiped out by some catastrophe, do I really care if there are a couple dozen humans on Mars to carry on the species? You may not, mate. But I do. Because we share so much with other humans, in many ways a large part of who you and who I am would live on with them.

I think we only archive a limited amount of past material. It's a shame in my opinion, but I assumed only I was bothered. I was obviously happy to see Summer Glau again, but as you say, the biggest problem is in how human the bloody machines are. I 've said it before, and I'll say it again. Schwarznegger is the only really good terminator I've seen.

What was Goners? And isn't there some sort of Tim Minear curse?

The basic 'problem' with energy weapons, as with biological and chemical weapons, is that bang-for-buck you get so much more with explosives/kinetics.

I agree.

The long term future of humanity isn't/shouldn't be limited to Earth. Too many eggs in one basket so to speak (which Is why I prefer the above option that features some redundancy) Space exploration to help us understand the nature of the universe = good. Space exploration as a first step toward human colonization = silly. Really, what would have to happen to Earth in order to make the moon or Mars a better habitat for humans? Even the most disastrous nuclear war/comet impact/robot uprising scenarios would still leave Earth far more habitable to humans than any other hunk of rock that we can currently throw rockets to. Hard point to argue with. But you must accept that duplication of locations improves total survivability?

If I understand your point you are incorrect. There are a wide variety of directed energy weapons available. As has been reported in the popular press.

What is Joss Whedon up to? I only ask because I can hear scuttling from behind my sofa.

Well, I didn't want to be rude.

I can attest to Dell reliability. In five years only _four_ lockups and no parts failure; on heavy usage. However, the Del is a bitch to upgrade. They didn't even leave me with RAM slots on the motherboard not actually used in teh original build. I consider this just damned cheek, and won't buy from them again.

Someone found another similar old machine, and cannibalised its power source. nom nom nom

I'm interested in which brands of hand tools and power tools shoudl be considered 'quality', since I shall shortly be upgrading my house.

Yeah Trueneutral. I've heard some bizarre, and frankly racist/insane views aof what America is and does. But to latch back onto topic, the poinrt is that as a major power it is only natural that we are interested in US politics. And I think that in many ways some of it comes down to laziness. US domestic coverage is so easy to repeat over here. By which I mean that tracking Russia also occurs but is far more effort.

People who say the Soviets won the war for us are making a basic error. The Soviets won the war for themselves, and if the Yanks hadn't been around then they'd have kept going across Eirope, and I'd speak Russian now. Actually I do speak Russian, but that's not the point.

No time to read all the excellent input. I''m going to therefore drop out, rather than comment in ignorance.

I agree up to a point, Gorth. Multiple systems would add redundancy. However, multiple systems also means some subsystem duplication, like energy, controls and so on. Weight wise it may be better to have just one. As an aside, you may remember that prior to volunteering for the Army I volunteered for the European space habitation trials (basically being squeezed intoa tube of toothpaste for a year). I really rate space exploration as the single most indeed possibly the only truly worthwhile human endeavour.