You would think with that volume of gas you would be up there with a nuclear sized detonation

you could only detonate that gas if you managed to breach all of the holds, then bring in a very large tanker full of LOX, then vaporise both the liquefied gases (spilling them onto the sea wouldn't work too well - they'd crust it with ice and then run across the ice while the gas clouds disperse - you'll need to pump heat into the mix for a while), and then finally put the spark to the mix.

That's not impossible - but it's pretty hard to do.

If you're saying "detonate" when you mean "deflagrate", well that's a very different thing. The limitation of getting fuel and oxygen together becomes the limiting factor on the intensity of the fire that can happen. Didn't you cover this in your first week in employment, when you were doing your fire-fighting training? The old smoke-filled room? 4-man hose teams? Playing "find the valve" (hint : it's always behind the 30ft tall jet of flame)?

Actually, you may be shocked to learn, but people who design gas processing plants do go to considerable efforts to design out that sort of possibility. And, shockingly, the plants operators (who live and sleep on board) tend to be fairly cautious about, you know, blowing themselves up. Incidents do still happen (I had friends die on the Piper Alpha.)

Just as a start, there will be thousands (literally, not figuratively) of gas detectors all around the plant. And they'll be hooked into a detection system that, if gas is detected near tank 'P', for example, will re-route production into tank 'Q' ; start pumping the LPG from tank 'P' into another available tank (while flooding the head space in 'P' with exhaust fumes, to prevent entry of air), and alert maintenance techs (most of the 200 POB, Personnel On Board) to fault find and repair. Conceptually, the systems are not complex, but with hundreds of tanks (probably) and thousands of pipes and valves, the actual problem is quite complex.

If you'd RTFA, you may have noticed there is a "flare" built into the turret. The purpose of that is to be able to dump the process plant's contents into, in the event of a major system failure. It takes little time to shut wells in (a couple of minutes, depending on water depth), but the gas already in the lines need somewhere to go to. We call it "dumping the flammable inventory", and the safest way to do that is to burn the fucking stuff. There's a bloody good reason for that flare stack to be several hundred metres tall : when it is in use, it'll peel skin and paint at any shorter range.

Victory is Fleeting

Today the Western Digital hard drives are first in line to be our choice for 6 TB drives. Of course, we just ordered 45 HGST 8 TB Helium hard drives for testing. Their unit price is still a [bit?] too high for cost effective deployment, but [...] it could be just a matter of time. In fact, Seagate is now beginning to ship their 8 TB shingled magnetic recording (SMR) hard drives for a reported $260 a drive. Availability is spotty at the moment, but is certain to improve over the coming months.

Or, to the man on the Clapham omnibus, they're much of a much-ness.

Assuming an Earth of radius R= 6371km, that means a range to horizon (as seen from the blimp) of :

range^2 = (R+Alt)^2 -R^2 = 2*R*Alt +Alt^2 = 38846 km.sq

So the range is a smidgin under 200 km.

Anyone within 200km of this blimp can take a pot-shot at it. I don't know how much of a gun you would need to hit it, but enough people firing intermittently from ranges of a few miles should be able to perforate it faster than they can patch it. Load a few drones with thermite and crash them into the top surface. It shouldn't last long.

Seeing anything within "340 miles" (~550km) though implies considerable over the horizon capability. [Reads TFA. Heresy, I know.] OK, they're talking about radar surveillance, so 340 miles implies a "ping" emitted around every 4 milliseconds (one constraint) or particular amplifiers/ transmitters paired to give that range. BUT - outside that (approx.) 200km range, they're not going to be seeing anything taller than a person. At 210km, they'll probably only just see a truck on the horizon. Beyond 230km, most (steel-framed) buildings will be "under the radar" ... and further out the radar sees higher above the ground. further, a tower at (say) 200km range will cast a "shadow" hundreds of km long behind it into the sky. Unless the US Army have discovered some marvellous new physics that allows them to bend radar waves in free air. (There is a minor refraction with changes in air pressure/ temperature/ moisture, and some ground interaction effects, that allow for "OTH" capabilities. And those physics results are probably pretty highly classified, to keep foreigners unsure about the capabilities of USian radar. But generally, the geometry wins.)

I'm not saying this is a good thing. But it is a more limited thing than the PR puff implies.

Ah, yes, that wise old leader [Nixon]. I think his best quote was

we will bomb the living bejeezus out of North Vietnam and then if anybody interferes we will threaten the nuclear weapons.

What was he going to threaten to do to the nuclear weapons? Cut their ears off and send them to the nuclear weapon's mummy (Teller?) along with a ransom note? Demand "World Piece, or I cut the blue wire and you never see your bomb again!"

That aside, my favourite Nixon quote is "I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in."

(Although on examination, I find that's a misquote. Bugger it! When asked about Vietnam, he said "Having drawn the sword, don't take it out â" stick it in hard." and that has got mangled through the script of the "Frost-Nixon" film and/ or book(s). It would have been a good line, if it were true. Almost worth the lying murderous bastard having existed to have had the line. But it doesn't exist, so his legacy is is just as a remark-worthy example of a bad person.)

You can never have enough pie.

You, sir, are surely safe from arraignment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

On the other hand, how the fuck did Hugh Laurie get to be running a US Congressional committee? Has he emigrated or something?

[Ichijo]before California's massive flood control and aqueduct system was built, the annual snow melt turned much of the [central] valley into an inland sea.

[JaneQ] Isn't that kind of the point, though? Sure, they corralled the water, and put it to farming use. Great. But they've been using up that water... AND much more.

I don't think that these two assertions are simultaneously possible. If "they" corralled the snow melt - all of it - then where did they put it? And if they did corral all of the snow melt and then used it through the growing season (perhaps uncovering more ground as they drained their snow melt reservoirs, then using that ground for agriculture (rice?), so you'd need deeper reservoirs for the end of the year) ... why would they be going to the expense of drilling water wells? Water wells do cost money to drill, maintain and pump - even if driven by a windmill, you need to maintain the windmill.

What I suspect you're talking of is that they corralled and discharged the winter snow melt through improved drainage, then extracted (approximately) the same volume of water from aquifers. Critically, they didn't allow sufficient inundation to allow the aquifers to recharge.

That (more precise, I hope) formulation of the problem implies several ways forward : build large reservoirs over re-charge points for aquifers (possibly drilling re-charge wells to pump water down to storage), and re-charge the aquifers sufficiently each year. OK - small problem in that some farms will be drowned. Or become fish farms. I leave such trivia to the politicians, in the sure and certain knowledge that they won't address the problem. And they'll shoot any hydrogeologist who tells them to drown their electorate.

(IANA-hydrogeologist ; but I could play one on TV, after a little coaching from my college cubical-mate, who is a hydrogeologist.)

There are other issues - polluted ground (e.g. abandoned petrol stations with rotten fuel tanks) that needs remediation before being used for storing agricultural/ drinking water ; natural minerals in the soil such as arsenic from the erosion of mineral veins millennia before humans arrived on the continent) for an example. But the fundamental problem seems to be that politicians aren't willing to grasp the nettle on solving problems that their predecessors (innocently, -ish) created for them in the 1940s and -50s. (and -60s? Not my continent ; not history I'm more than slightly familiar with.)

What if you simply erased any record that the site was there in the first place?

i.e., the problem (near impossibility, even) is of erasing " any " record of the site. If you had a global government and a worldwide uniform legislature, then that might be possible. Meanwhile, in the real world - no.

Imagine getting a Hellfire missile up your ass just as you're finishing the vinegar strokes. An experience to die for?

The internet was invented at US universities with public DARPA research dollars for the department of defense [...]

The Internet was invented in the majority in the USA, for DARPA, but a substantial chunk (1 part in 4 to 1 part in 5, depending on various meanings of "value" or "size") was developed at places like UMIST (Manchester, UK), GPO (UK again), a number of French and German universities. And I'm pretty sure I've seen the occasional Italian university address turning up in the early RFCs too.

go read some history.

Saying things like that is just begging to Murphy yourself.

If I felt I absolutely *must* see that movie, I'd feel compelled to donate 3 times the admission cost the the EFF.

Didn't your Mummy tell you "two wrongs don't make a right"? Sure, it's a mitigation, but that's like paying for your own ambulance and emergency room to mitigate being stabbed during a mugging.

For the level of "must" you're talking about, I guess your best (least worst) option would be to locate a fifth country (outside America, Japan (Sony's home country), DPRKorea (the allegedattacker) and your home country) where it is legitimate for companies to buy product and reproduce it without paying licensing fees to the originator. Then buy from there. Good luck with that. (Alternatively, just buy a "legitimate" copy from pretty much any African, Asian or south-of-the-Rio-Grande country and hope it gets delivered to you, and that Sony get stiffed.)

I note that "must" means a sort of uncontrollable sexual frenzy. From the reviews I've seen for "The Interview", I find it hard to square those two definitions. But if that's what it takes to float your boat ... can I get your address for a friend of mine?

After watching the Japanese "Fafner" TV animation, I was quite intrigued by the whole "assimilation" idea. Tried to watch the Star Trek version of it - and was largely disappointed.

The "Q" are one hell of a plothole - but still pretty much the only "true" aliens in the Start Trek.

That's just another way of saying "more of the same".

I can understand why the entertainment industry is so obsessed with the canons: to not dilute value of the original.

But I still can't grasp the why the fans are so obsessed with the "more of the same"?

P.S. I like how Japanese animes often parody and make fun of themselves. I like how they sometimes shuffle the roles and characters. Occasionally the shenanigans are way too transparent and shallow - but sometimes very brilliant and deeps ideas come out of it.

"it's so weird-looking; it's up in the air in terms of what it is. It is unbelievably fragile, and... it looks like it has wet tissue paper floating behind it. And it has a weird snout — it looks like a cartoon dog snout."

Sounds an awful lot like someone I saw walking out of the women's restroom at WalMart once.