Yeah, yeah. Buyer's remorse and a particularly lame excuse. That's why many tattoo artists are reluctant to do any tattoo that can't be easily covered by clothing.

Facial tats aren't my thing, but, really, that design doesn't look bad on her. At least it's a relatively tasteful and inoffensive design. I'd really suggest she try a concealer makeup before resorting to laser removal.

I'm not sure how this proves his point. In fact, it kinda seems to do the opposite. Exposure to trace amounts of gasoline and such have not and will not turn him into the Incredible Melting Man. You can pick up life-threatening infections from almost any body of water, if you try hard enough. And seeing as wildlife have notoriously sloppy bathroom habits, the most serious ones can entirely unrelated to human activity. So deliberately expose yourself to "toxic sludge" as a hobby, and you get sick exactly the same way as an unwary hiker sipping water from a crystal-clear brook just downstream from a pile of bear poo. That's really not all that compelling.

I can see why people would find this offensive. Really, though, but for the distances involved (somewhat less in the UK) it doesn't seem that radical to me. I'd certainly prefer this to wasting away from benign neglect or being quietly euthanized in a nursing home.

I got Squirrel Underpants! At long last, our neighborhood's arboreal rodentia will be fit for decent company.

Cristophe, digital camera sensors can actually see into parts of the IR and UV range. When you're doing everyday visible-light photography this extra, non-visible light can result in unwanted lens artifacts and unpredictable color shifts, so most modern digital cameras have internal filters over the sensor to block most of it out. For astrophotography this extended sensitivity is actually rather handy, so there are places that will disassemble your camera and remove those internal filters.

What makes it all possible, of course, are nearly inexhaustable energy and resources. With those two pressures removed I suspect nearly any political system could do fairly well. Heck, with those advantages even the Klingon approach (generally violent, misogynistic, and tribal) manages to support a vibrant spacefaring civilization.

One thing that I've always liked is Star Trek's approach to interspecies/inter-racial relations. Listen to Spock and McCoy go at it, or Worf and Riker. Those sorts of racial jokes and sparring are all very un-PC by modern standards, but I think it's generally a healthy and realistic approach.