Actually "egghead" was a creation of Mussolini. But it's true that the UStatians adopted it.

Why not a generation ship? We are probably on 50-60 years from being able to build a generation ship, if we can handle the sociology. Perhaps up to a century. It's not clear that we'll *EVER* be able to do it in any other way.

If you're in a hurry, you were already born too soon.

Actually, I didn't recognize the name "John Connor". But then I intentionally avoid anything sponsored or paying to the MPAA.

Each one is a custom job. Not that many are produced per year. It's "high tech".

I must admit that it's expensive, but not rediculously so.

You've got it. The plurality wins system of voting is a near guarantee of only two parties, too. But those in power have no interest in reforming it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to read large ext4 volumes. Gentoo is looking like the better option.

You misunderstand. Syslog is used. The problem is that syslog only keeps so much data. The logs can very quickly cycle through the limited data that syslog holds. I've had systems where multiple daemons work together and an issue that led to a crash would very quickly get cleared out of the logs even with 600MB of log data being held (6x100MB files in rotation, managed by syslog) if the software was simply restarted.

Publically intended, yes. Truely intended? I doubt it. It's a highly flawed piece of legislation that should never have been passed.

The saying "Laws are for the little people" used to be funny, now, not so much.

Was only ever funny if you still had your eyes closed. OTOH, it *is* getting worse.

Do you really think voting for a third party, or refusing to vote, makes any difference?

If nothing you do makes any difference, is it really your fault? There might have been something that would have made a difference, but voting isn't on that list. That became quite clear when they refused to even count the votes for Pat Paulson. (I suspect he would have won, but there's no way to tell.)

FWIW, in Fukishima one of the main problems was with the cooling of spent reactor rods that were stored on site. Being SCRAMmed wouldn't help there. And they were a problem even on the reactors that had shut down normally.

Now Diablo Canyon wouldn't need to worry about corrosion due to using sea water to cool it in an emergency, but just how *would* they cool it in such an emergency?

Except that it's my understanding that there has been explosive releases from methyl cathlates in the past. LARGE explosive releases (or we couldn't tell from this distance in time).

I think this is a different source of methane.

IIRC, they decided not to mine the methyl cathlates because:
1. It would be too expensive.
2. There was too much chance of setting them off explosively. (State change explosion, not a normal chemical reaction.)

Apparently they're only stable at low temperatures, and the ocean is warm enough that they're iffy, and could be set off by an attempt at mining.

I think there are about as many positive feedback loops as positive feedback loops. The thing is, if a positive feedback loop isn't offset by an aligned negative feedback loop (or set of loops) then that part of the system tends to be unstable, and the system moves away from that point.

Heating the planet strengthens the positive feedback loops involving methane release. The initial heating was caused by an increase in CO2, which is continuing, so it's continuing to strengthen the release of methane. The corresponding negative feedback loop involves the degradation of methane to CO2 which is a less powerful greenhouse gas...but, whoops! it's still a greenhouse gas.

There are LOTS of sources of methane. Rotting pools of what used to be permafrost is going to be a big one. This identifies one under the ocean. It could be a big one, but might not be...because the methane might degrade to the weaker greenhouse gas CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere. Of course, CO2 will still contribut to global warming, just not as much. The real question mark (in my mind) is the methyl cathlates, which may become increasingly unstable if they get warmer. They *could* release explosively, in which case there will be a sudden large increase in the amount of methane in the atmosphere, Or they could release slowly, in which case there will be a slow rise of CO2. Or, if the ocean were cold enough, they could just remain in place. They appear to have released explosively a time or two long in the past, but I don't know how certain that is, or what the results were. Or how quickly they reform during periods when the ocean is colder. (Perhaps they've already done all the explosive releases they're going to do.)