Edge of Darkness - that is the original British tv series, not the US film - is a true masterpiece, that easily holds its own against any of the great shows of today.

Phoenix was another masterpiece, but even harder to get hold of today than Edge of Darkness.

You know Morgan's next book, Thin Air, is set in the same timeline as Thirt33n?

The first four minutes of Rio Bravo.

The problem may be a lot more complex than it looks. @tigrennaten@ has posted a link on a very similar topic here.

That was a great read.

> I think it’s a combination of subconscious emotional cues, subconscious statistical trickery, perfectly conscious fraud which for all we know happens much more often than detected, and things we haven’t discovered yet which are at least as weird as subconscious emotional cues.

So it's a bit of everything, then.

Well it's going to be cracked eventually. I'd be more confident putting my money on a cashed up American company to crack it than I would on a European agency.

Don't get me started on the F-35. Our alleged government recently committed another $12.5 billion to that corpse of a project while simultaneously pushing massive cuts to public health under the auspices of a "budget emergency".

I was going to add a link to Gary Brecher's excellent take-down, then I remembered who I was talking to.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The suffragettes also come to mind; many of them were imprisoned and reviled for their activism a century ago, but few would question (for example) Pankhurst's importance in shaping the rights of women in the 20th Century.

Also, b_b, I do apologise for being slow to reply to your recent comments. I've started a new job this year and of late my presence on hubski has been haphazard.

Don't leave!

In the (unlikely?) event that complex intelligent life is discovered under Europa's surface, I find myself musing over how utterly incomprehensible it would be for them to encounter humans.

Our sky is open to the heavens and in spite of this it's really only in the past half millenia (ignoring Aristarchus) that we've had solid observational evidence to demonstrate that the heavenly bodies are physical worlds like our own.

Consider, then, the position of the intelligent squid-beings of Europa. Their intellect is every bit as refined and analytic as ours. Their fourteen appendages give them a dexterity that far surpasses anything that can be achieved by our opposing thumb. However, they are bounded entirely by kilometres of ice. They have no reason even to conceive of the possibility that there might be another side to the limits of their world. For humans to enter their domain would be akin to creatures stepping out of thin air, bringing tales of a universe infinitely larger than their own, surrounding them on all sides. Makes you wonder if we are similarly bounded, and if so, by what.

tl;dr Europa is Flatland.

I was with you up until your last sentence.

My partner identifies as vegan and has done for more than a decade. By way of background, she has a PhD in animal ethics and has worked as an ethicist for research institutions. She and her vegan friends have no problem eating bivalves: mussels, oysters, abalone. There seems to be widespread agreement among vegans that they're about as sentient as a flower. I'm very happy to agree.

*Edit: Updated the link because the DFW article is such a good read I decided it deserved its own Hubski entry.

Still early days, but this is most excellent news. I'm keen to see details on what sort of craft NASA plans for Europa. That choice will have big ramifications on the mission duration (and capacity), after all.