The key difference in this day and age is that the input and output streams are no longer co-located. Back when 85% of people were farmers or otherwise associated with agriculture, and only a small percentage of people lived in urban areas, getting the waste back to the fields was trivial. Now, with few people on farms and the majority of people living in cities, there can be huge geographic distances between where resources are consumed (the fields) and where they are disposed of (sewage treatment plants). Getting these reconnected will not be quick or easy. But getting concentrated nutrients from sewage waste will certainly help. Trainloads of field-ready fertilizer leaving cities - just as trains and trucks of grain, meat, and produce come in - would go a long way to restoring balance.

I'm fairly sure they would do everything they could to get the same deal from the municipality as any competitor and failing that look for legal recourse

And I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with that. But when you think about it, what a waste of resources! There is little purpose in having multiple competing fiber lines going to every home, just like there's little purpose in having parallel water or sewer lines. This is where I most favor municipally-owned infrastructure: the citizens own the fiber, and companies get to compete to deliver the service and maintenance. This is how things are done - to varying degrees - for lots of essential infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, natural gas, electricity, etc.) As I understand it, the proposed legislation would outlaw this very arrangement, which in my mind is just plain stupid. Municipally-owned infrastructure doesn't have to be the way that everyone does it, but it shouldn't be outlawed, either.

On the other hand, in my small town there is a water main break at least once a month. Their excuse? 'The system is very old and needs to be updated.' Are there any plans to do such an update? Nope.

Probably because every time the municipal utility wanted to raise rates to cover a bond issue or to enact a sensible maintenance schedule, the city council got all pissy that their water rates would increase from "practically free" to "what it actually costs" Or when the state DOT wants to raise the gas tax (which hasn't been touched in 20 years, but due to inflation has about 75% the purchasing power it once did) to pay for roads, the state legislature tells them to squeeze more concrete and steel from "efficiency" and unicorn farts.

I live in Kansas and on the one hand I'd like to have google fiber and on the other hand I can get residential 150mbps internet for $99/mo. What would a municipality funding more broadband carriers into my community accomplish

If this law is blocked, it doesn't necessarily mean that ever community is going to get into the municipal broadband business. Enacting this law, however, will mean that the status quo will remain in place: that communities not presently served by affordable broadband will remain shit outta luck, and communities served by a sole-provider monopoly will continue to get screwed.

Edward Snowden has a chance of getting the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize

Yes, but you could argue that G.W. Bush had a chance at the Peace Prize, too, since he was nominated. So could a flying pig, if it was nominated. Anyone who is nominated has a chance at winning.

Other than a price spike around 2007, the price of uranium fuel has been pretty low since the end of the Cold War. Prices are higher now than they were a decade ago, but appear to be relatively stable. Uranium can be had from lots of places - it's a worldwide commodity like any other metal. There are lots of sources for it, and the Soviet arsenal was only ever a small contribution. So, yes, prices may go up a little bit, but you aren't likely to see that in your utility bill anytime soon. The price of fuel-grade uranium isn't a major contributor to the cost of nuclear power - the cost of building and operating the plant is the big thing.

How do we know the US didn't just use it for their own weapons? I guess it says somewhere, perhaps the Russians did some 'inspection' things to make sure it was being used for power, along the lines of Iran

The highly enriched, weapons grade, bomb ready uranium was not shipped as is. Instead, it was diluted with natural or depleted uranium first, and that is what got shipped to the US. I suppose it is possible that it went from there to a U.S. weapons lab, re-enriched from fuel grade to weapons grade, and then made into weapons. Basic economics, however, suggests otherwise:

1) Uranium is a commodity, like a lot of other metals, and the amount that is produced and consumed each year is known. Mismatches in supply and demand affect the price of uranium on the open market - a price that is closely watched like other commodities. If there was diversion away from fuel processors and power plants and into the U.S. arsenal, that would be a pretty obvious signal. (There was a spike in the uranium markets in 2007, but there are more prosaic explanations for that, and it came about 13 years into the Megatons To Megawatts program.) The U.S. military has no shortage of uranium available to it, particularly as it dismantles its own arsenal.

2) Nuclear weapons production is a massive undertaking - in terms of cost and very-specialized-and-not-easily-hidden infrastructure. If the U.S. were taking the Soviet fuel and making new weapons from it, that could not be hidden, just like the original build up during the Cold War could not be hidden. Secret, yes, but not hidden.

And, yes, inspection and verification was a part of the program. And unlike Iran, the U.S. (civilian) nuclear program makes itself available to the inspectors of the IAEA. A large diversion of incoming uranium away from fuel processors and power plants would be pretty obvious - the numbers wouldn't add up. I find it difficult to believe that hundreds of tons of highly enriched uranium (and many times that of fuel-grade uranium) could have been made to disappear from the civilian fuel cycle without somebody noticing. The dismantlement of the U.S nuclear arsenal was verified by Russia, just as we verified theirs.

apparently meteorologists have just discovered the term Polar Vortex

No, meteorologists have understood the term Polar Vortex for decades. Weathermen, newscasters, and ratings-minded producers have only just discovered the term.

be nice if the files Makerbot uses could be handed to a metal sintering company

I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you are referring to the *.stl file representing the part geometry (before slicing, rastering, and toolpath generation), then you need look no further. stl files are the lingua franca of 3D printing; any company that accepts files for printing will take this. You may have to search around for a company that does inconel (not really keeping with the renaissance period, eh?), but there are plenty of companies that could do it in other metals.

I would second that.

To that I would also add another older series, "The Secret Life of Machines." This quirky series, with plenty of crude and funny animations, explained the basics and history of everyday technologies such as refrigerators, video recorders, fax machines, telephones, radio, etc. The Exploratorium website, amazingly enough, has the videos available for streaming or download for free. The creator, host, and animator, Tim Hunkin, continues to be an unreformed tinkerer, builder, and inventor to this day.

Now my head is going to hurt all day.

instead of hiring more security engineers and challenging developers to write safer stronger code, Facebook has decided to award scraps of cash to talented people who find flaws in their code that could conceivably end their business

I'm not going to debate whether Facebook, et al., exploits its employees - it's a different discussion for another day. I will point out that, even if Facebook tripled its security staff, and tripled the salary and benefits of that staff, vulnerabilities and bugs large and small will still exist. Fewer of them, one would hope, but they'd exist in some fashion. What should Facebook do to reward those white hats out there that find these vulnerabilities and report them?

That seems awfully wasteful and expensive. Just turn it off. If you are paranoid that "off" still means "trackable", then stick it in a foil pouch. Fight the (radiated) power, man!

One reason people use check cashing services, even if they have a bank account, is because it can often be easier to get to and utilize a check cashier than to bring a paper check to your local (if one exists) bank. Why resort to a paper paycheck, when direct deposit is offered by most employers? In part because setting up direct deposit is a pain in the ass: fill out a paper form, search around for routing and account numbers. The payroll department then transcribes those numbers into its payroll system, which forwards them to the payroll processor, who sets up the ACH transaction, all of which might take more than one pay period to clear. Some banks or processors will send trial ACH transactions, whose values must be confirmed, before the account is verified for deposit.

Couldn't all of this be taken care of with a single, one-time, QR code, generated on-demand by you (or, actually, by you bank's online or mobile access application) and given directly to HR, who then simply passes it on to the payroll processor?