N-body problem

Next time you need some entertainment, check out this Planet simulation game. Although "solving" the three-body problem is not possible, simulations are trivial. For a couple goals, try to get a "Mercury" type planet - closer to the Sun than the Earth, highly elliptical orbit. When you get it, it will precess naturally due to Earth's gravitation (rather than due to general relativity as Einstein proved). And a harder goal is getting a Moon to orbit the Earth (I haven't managed yet).

Selection Effect

You are sitting on a chair with a notebook. You're kinda tired, so you keep dozing off. A noise wakes you, and you look up to see a woman rummaging through her purse. You make a note in your notebook. A while later she leaves. You doze off again. You hear women's voices outside in the hallway, and open your eyes as two walk in. Two more notes in your notebook. A woman jangling her keys is noted a few minutes later, another woman tossing something in the trash, and so on.

At the end of the day you have seen 212 women, and you yourself are the only man. Do you conclude that...

A) Women make more noise so when the men entered you didn't hear them and didn't mark them down? (A selection effect or bias.) -OR-
b) The room you were in has some reason for there to be more women - you're in the common room at a woman's dorm, you're in a woman's bathroom, you're in the lobby to an operahouse, you're in a nail salon, etc.? (There's a real effect.)

At what point do we decide that an observation is due to a detection bias, and at what point do we realize that despite the detection bias we're observing a real effect?

New Mexico lawmakers declare Pluto a planet

I don't care how many resolutions they pass, saying it doesn't make it true. As a resolution, it doesn't even carry any weight - they're not outlawing textbooks that call Pluto a dwarf planet, they're not changing the state K-12 science standards. Besides, laws don't change basic science. Might as well pass a law that π=3 while they're at it.

Your Opinion: Do you think it is futile, dangerous, exciting, or something else (non-exclusie OR) for lawmakers to be making laws about science?