So, if this is a myth, where is the insurance company that's willing to keep their premiums low so they can scoop up all the business? Why isn't that happening? Surely--if as you allege all these insurance companies are faking this risk--where are the contrarians willing to sell cheap insurance? You haven't thought this through. If this were a myth then there would have to be at least one company willing to be the contrarian--and there are not any. The insurance companies have actuaries that have looked in detail at this issue and they don't buy the Conservative line. They know--this is real.

So you're cool with the tropical diseases? You're fine with the world's forests all being unsuited for their environments because the growning zones have moved? You think climate change is something manageable? You're more of an idiot than I imagined.

The difference between calling it a "risk" and a "problem" is just semantics. The insurance industry is all about assessing risk. If they say there is no risk and they're wrong, they're out of business. If they charge for an assessed risk and their competitors don't, they're out of business. The insurance industry cannot afford to be wrong on either account. Either they pay for big losses or lose the premium income that is their life blood. Given all those factors, these companies--all of them--have decided the risk of Global Climate Change is the biggest risk. If this were a myth, or an exaggeration, surely some big companies would take that risk and scoop up all the world's insurance business--but they won't take that gamble.

Quibbles about the opinions of the world's climate scientists are essentially not important. The people with money and skin in the game--the insurance companies--are convinced. If they were not--surely one big insurance company would run those risks and scoop up all the world's property and casualty business. Notice that's not happening. Doesn't that imply anything?

What about the free market?

If there is no risk, then surely some canny insurance company can make a killing by not raising their rates and getting all that business.

I defy you to find me a big insurance company taking that gamble. They're not because they know climate change is a real danger.

Well, isn't that a comfort.

Why do the insurance companies think you're full of shit and that Climate Change is a real danger to their bottom line? [If you're uninformed about how the insurance companies view climate change, I invite you to view my comment on this article where I link to stories from Forbes, NBC News, the Washington Post and the NYTimes about this very fact on how the insurance companies view climate change--as a real and significant threat. You think the insurance companies are in the pockets of liberals?

No, I think you're a Conservative Moron who lives in fantasy land where you can ignore a threat because it doesn't fit your politics.

You're an idiot.

How do you explain why all the insurance companies are convinced this is a problem? [See my comment right before yours for links to the NYTimes, Forbes, NBC News, Washington Post and the LA Times with links to articles on how damned serious the insurance companies are taking the real threat of Climate Change.]

The Western side of Antarctica has gained some mass but not enough to counteract the much more massive amount the Eastern side has lost. So, a much larger net negative.

What I find most amazing is this: 97% of the best climate scientists we have on earth have concluded that we have a problem. The insurance companies ["How The Insurance Industry Sees Climate Change", "For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change", "Rift Widening Between Energy and Insurance on Climate Change", "Insurer's Message: Prepare for Climate Change or Get Sued", "On Climate Change: Get Ready or Get Sued" have concluded we have a problem. But, in the interest of sticking with their political druthers, a significant fraction of the American population has decided that 97% of the climate scientists and the insurance companies must be wrong. These people--Conservatives, essentially--are willing to take a risk that 3% of climate scientists are correct and that the insurance companies and 97% of climate scientists are wrong--merely because it serves their political persuasion.

Do you think that Liberals would be successful at convincing 97% of climate scientists to take our point of view and the insurance companies too if this were bullshit? Yet, all these wiseass Conservatives are willing to take a risk with our frickin' planet just so they can jam a finger in the eye of their political rivals--ignoring the reality that has the potential to end life on the damned planet. In short, WTF is going on in the mind of Conservatives? How do you look at all these insurance companies and think: "It's a Liberal plot!" Can you be so stupid?

Danged interesting. Thank you for this.
My primary beef with Go is the same one I had with .NET and now with Facebook's Hack language. When the language name is a common word, it makes it hard to search on. If you go to stackoverflow and search on "Hack", you get everything but what you want. Try "Facebook Hack" and you get articles on ways to make things work on Facebook. It isn't until you go for "Facebook Hack Language" that you get what you wanted. So, how do you search for "Go"?

On Stackoverflow.com, when you search for "Go", you get:

1,488,459 hits and none dealing with the language.

Searching on "Google Go" gets you:

52,546 hits.
It takes a search on "Google Go Language" to yield fruit.

But I guess you already indicated the hack for getting those results, ala "dot-net": GoLang

I have done production work using Ruby on Rails (but the back end was still all Java). You are free to use any language you want. Learning Java has turned out to be the best career decision I have ever made. I have never heard any employer say: "The API on that language is too big!" You are free to use whatever language you want.

Java was originally the free alternative to the Evil Empire--Microsoft. Because everything Microsoft sold was serious green--and because everything in the Java world could be found for free [Eclipse vs Visual Studio], [MySQL vs SQL Server], [Tomcat, JBoss, etc vs IIS] it was a no brainer.

Now, the single reason that Java is allegedly uncool is because it's the incumbent. It has been kicking ass, dominating the Enterprise Tech stack for so long that it's obviously not going to be hip and cool.

.NET is dead or dying while Java is the bearded king, hanging on and going strong.

Sure you have Python or Perl or Ruby or Go or Hack or Node.js or whatever but they just never seem to catch on in a big way. Sure, you'll find somebody who swears by Python or who thinks that Facebook's Hack abortion is the shit but they just don't catch on and they become curiosities.

Java remains the shit because it was the Anti Microsoft. Write Once, Run Anywhere [which of course was never totally true] but at least it's not Microsoft. Now that Microsoft is dead you have all these companies that tried to dethrone it but they have not been able. Google's "Go"? Even Google chose to base Android on Java. Java is not cool but it still owns the marketplace. For the foreseeable future.

I did two regular VHS tapes for about $30. Good quality. They were tapes I made in Russia when I lived there, hence: priceless.

Get a COSTCO membership and they digitize videos. I had it done with some precious ones and they did a great job.

I have a site that is free and has three semesters of Java lectures called: http://sites.google.com/site/f...

I have a Java site: http://sites.google.com/site/f... They're pretty self explanatory. Three semesters worth.