you can say the drought was exacerbated by record high temperatures

You can say it -- the question is, can you show it? Take a look at the actual data and you will see that although the average is running a little warm, all of 2012, 2013, 2014 and what we've had thus far of 2015 are just about devoid of record temperature excursions.

My understanding is that it is lack of precipitation -- not high temperatures -- that account for California's current problems. Which you can also see on that same page on the bottom graph. The span from March through October is devoid of precipitation. In the background in the darker color, you can see the "normal" (the average) for the region.

Dustbowl, anyone? Much, much worse than California's problems -- and definitely not attributable to "global warming" in any significant way.

Have you seen the flooding in south Florida over the past few years?

Well, yes, but you really shouldn't bring up the favorable consequences in order to fight Global Warming.

$10 a month is $120 in a year, $1200 in ten years, $4800 over a working lifetime (40 years or so.) The question isn't what can you buy with $10. The question is, what could you buy with $4800? That, and how much will it cost to save that $4800, because that has to be taken right off the savings.

Math. Do you have it?

The gains from savings can help defray the cost of the transport.

Savings you can implement without inconvenience are always worth doing as long as they have a payback you can measure within a practical time frame.

Wasted energy is still wasted energy no matter how you produce or buy it. Getting the energy from solar is no excuse for sleeping devices to hog that much amps.

That's ridiculous. If you are tapping a constant, otherwise non-utilized stream of energy -- sunlight certainly qualifies -- if you're collecting more energy than you're using, and not running out during low-generation periods (clouds), there are no serious utilization issues unless your system is put together poorly or outright wrong.

You want to put all of your effort into reducing those things that cost you money and / or the environment its stability. Extra hungry wall warts running off solar power... they have no such significance at all.

You cannot over-utilize an infinite, zero-collection-effort resource.

Many [car] brands are much better now.

We can thank the Japanese, and to some extent the Europeans, for that. They kicked Detroit's ass back to the starting line. To their credit, I have to say, they got the message and cleaned up their act, and yep, modern American cars and trucks are nothing like what they used to be. Fit, finish, longevity, performance, handling, mileage, amenities, safety, it's all better.

But my refrigeration gear is shite.

Hell, the ads for water heaters here actually list the warranty period 5/7/10 years.

My less-than-a-year-old water heater failed. It was "repaired under warranty." Know what that meant? It meant free parts, and about $300 in labor.

Man, were we pissed.

The myth that appliances, tools, or cars lasted longer in the past is mostly false nostalgia.

That's not been my experience. I've been through quite a few "modern" refrigerators in my life (I'm 58.) My most recent purchase, a standup freezer, only lasted about a month past the 1-year warranty, and the compressor went nipples north. Cost a fair bit to have that compressor replaced -- even though it's a sealed, lightweight POS. My frig is about three years old, and we're already thinking of replacing it, as the amenities have failed -- icemaker, waterspout, filter system. Modern consumer level refrigerators and freezers just have not done well for me. Flimsy plastic shelves and fittings, ice makers that quit working in no time, filter systems that fail, the very cheapest possible compressors... meh.

There have been many days when I wish I'd thought to collect my mother's refrigerator / freezer. It's still at the old house, cranking along. It's been there since before I was born -- well over 60 years. Never broke down. Never needed repair. Never needed coolant / oil. Dead quiet. Looks pretty dated, all rounded edges and the like (it'd look right at home in a 1940's dwelling) but damn, for the money I've spent, I could have easily lived with it. At this point, it'd sure be a bitch to drag it from Pennsylvania to Montana, though. :)

Surprisingly, growing your own food DOES save money.

It's not surprising -- it just isn't worth it for most people. To do it well, you variously need land; upkeep time; knowledge (pests you don't need, creatures you do, plant nutrition, how to harvest without doing damage, control of wastage, fertilizer issues, varietal information, home-cooking skills, canning skills); seed sources; patience; storage, fencing to control animal forage, sometimes a permit...

Or you can just go to the supermarket, buy a bag of salad and a can of beans, come home and cook dinner. Or hit a restaurant.

It's pretty easy to see why most people choose to exchange the labor they do via the obvious proxy (money.). It really depends where you want to put your effort. The money you save -- whatever that is in a particular case -- has to be of at least the same value as your time, otherwise, you're working against yourself.

We have a tower garden here. It was a gift, so the initial cost (to us) was nothing. Even so, the costs for the nutrients and starters and the small amount of electricity the nutrient pump takes adds up to be non-trivial, and the amount of produce isn't fabulous overall, all things considered. The quality of what it produces is, though. Buying it... I wouldn't even think of it. It's expensive. It's also kind of pretty when it's all growing like a little vertical jungle, but that's pretty minor in the larger picture.

Dateline: Millions of light years (even faster parsecs than the Kessel run)

Lede: Scientists in the Dark; Does it Matter?

Today scientists announced that they can't see anything happening with stuff they can't see, but think is there, because otherwise the math is no good. After receiving directions to his laboratory on the phone, I went to see an authority on dark matter. During the interview, Dr. Seemore Lichspittle told this Any Paper, Any Time reporter that the thing about dark matter that one has to understand is that "it goes to eleven." When confronted with the observation that the sensing instruments only had scales from 0-10, he responded "Yes, yes, that's exactly it. The numbers... the numbers only work out in the dark. When the instruments are off. Matter of fact, it's all dark, really." At that point the interview was cut short as two lab assistants in white coats hustled Dr. Lichspittle into his own custom white lab jacket. Late for an important meeting, no doubt. As he left, nodding, he called back "it's really quite dark." Food for thought! Leaving Arkham, I was struck by the picturesque beauty of the stonework, and very appreciative of the tight security. We can rest easy, knowing that national treasures like Dr. Lichspittle work in such a safe enviroment.

And this is why closed source combined with black-box development is so much safer than open source. Sigh.

I really don't mind -- actually, I think I'd be kind of of flattered -- if people were able to look at my code, go "hey, I can use that" and then proceed to use it. And in fact, I've written a fair bit of code I think would fall into that vein. I think I could write something book-length in the line of "cool coding stuff" and quite a few programmers would find it quite useful. I've been doing this since the early 70's. I write signal processing, and image processing (but I repeat myself, sorta) and AI code, with a strong background in embedded and special-purpose systems, a bunch more.

But because a lawyer might look at my code, and use it to screw me, and through me, my family and employees quite harshly?

Bang. Closed source. The opposite of furthering progress by virtue of passing along what I've learned. I give away some of my work product such as this, but you will never see my source code because of the legal environment.

As far as I'm concerned, if I wrote it without referring to "other" source code, then no one else has any claim on my work. I don't have any idea how to fix copyright and patent and still retain the supposed commercial motivation to create, but fact is, as it stands, it's completely fucktarded.

Pisses me off, it does. :/

Fast; efficient; not bloated; not buggy; respectful of the user's privacy; hardened with regard to hacking if that's relevant; not encumbered by dependencies; adequately featured; well supported; well documented for the end user.

As far as I'm concerned, if you can't hit those 00001000 or 00001001 targets, you should be looking for different line of work.

Of course it is lovely if it's easily read code, well commented, well structured -- but if the former list is covered, I'll give the 00000011 latter a pass.

Adding weight to the airplane reduces its range and/or capacity for carrying paying passengers so it would be an ongoing cost.

Who says it has to add weight? Use modern materials for the partition; carbon fiber structures can be ultra tough and very light weight, for example. And probably not used in any near-current design as aircraft take a very long time from paperwork to production. A door in the fuselage weighs about the same as the fuselage; thicker in the middle, thinner at the edges. It might even reduce weight by creating more open space in the cockpit. You can argue that it would reduce passenger capacity, but inasmuch as US passenger aircraft are typically not fully loaded, it doesn't add cost in most cases either. No matter what, it wouldn't cost as much as the TSA does, between the actual money spent and the huge amount of people's time they subtract from pursuits that would actually benefit the economy. Not to mention the level of irritation and the follow-on effects on productivity and civility...

Always wondered why they didn't design the passenger seating to be removable and collapsible and just pull all the empty seats out as a pre-takeoff action after the aircraft is fully loaded. Be a heck of a weight savings. Plus they could probably leverage it to reduce the anti-passenger effect of the seat designs created by the one-armed, one-legged engineer that all the airlines seem to hire.