I always knew old people were right in their claim that everything was better way back then.

What ever happened to hunger is a disease, treat it like one? That was too hard I guess:
http://www.goofball.com/photos/thing_Paris_France_vs_Paris_Kentucky

>Rather than focusing on supposed "racism" about Oprah in a high-end fashion boutique they focus on the real issues, like the NSA spying scandal, Obama's drone wars, etc.

Personally I like terradaily.com because it only marginally covers any of the topics you mentioned.

Keiser must be dueling with the onion for shrillness. On second thought I like how onion news anchors always keep their cool, one of the women actually looked like she had been botoxed to prevent any accidental smiles.

Body hacking gone wild:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Serpent

It all makes sense now.

I suppose you need extra energy for centrifuges then. But yes I forgot.

Windows 3.?? made me switch to Linux. At some point Windows' reliance on the x86 real mode and other hacks had me look at the squandered possibilities of the M$ empire and also at possible ways out. While one of my buddies switched to OS/2 I switched to Linux.

Since then I had only in the rarest case any chance to actually program for Linux while on the job. Fortunately I mainly do embedded programming nowadays and have to work with VxWorks, VDK, or no operating system at all, which is great.

Actually the methane feedback is only one of the many positive feedback loops that are being discovered, there are also negative feedback loops however.
One I have heard of is cloud formation that depends on increased availability of water vapour and the depletion of whatever carbon stock that has been
accumulated. The cloud formation thing has been said to not be terribly effective and the depletion only happens after the methane/peat/other organic matter has been consumed.

Collecting methane from arctic shelves and permafrost regions probably requires covering those vast areas, the question is, does using the methane pay for covering the area where it bubbles up. To answer your question more directly, methane is ~100x worse than CO2 during creation and this drops to 20x averaged over a 100year lifespan from what I've heard. The arctic methane emergency group has some ideas about it, but thanks to the other global feedback loops the problem becomes far more complex than just burning of the methane.

What is the energy return on investment for space colonies?
Lets list a few points:
+ 24h sunlight, possibly in Mercury orbit can provide energy
- no hydrothermal processes for minerals enrichment (this is a big one if you like copper)
+ vacuum is non corrosive, and not mechanically stressing
- harsh radiation environment
- no known ecosystem exists we can fit into
- vacuum poses heat transfer challenges
+ vacuum provides great insulation for heat and electricity
- no oxygen to burn fossil fuels with (i.e. those carbonaceous condrites), especially since you have to create it first

I hope somebody can sort this out. What space colonization needs is a whole new approach to living.
We cannot even manage that on earth, despite easier to solve problems. To get back to EROI, I wonder whether the lower
ore concentration can be offset by more sunlight. Granted there are concentrated deposits of Aluminium and Titanium oxide
on the moon, but how about NPK.

Watching a train wreck while you are on the train is one hell of a show, eh?

If a combination out of the methane feedback
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jul/24/arctic-ice-free-methane-economy-catastrophe
and the lag of the temperature increase that is caused by the greenhouse effect mentioned here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html
happens, then we may have already triggered a number of positive feed backs that will be impossible to stop.

All those human actors that make the process so interesting are already poised to take action too, unfortunately I can't find any direct link to Snowden's info about military disaster preparations and action against green resistance movements, but hey there is talk about this.

a) Yet b) Depends on where you live.

I'm amazed at how people love to attribute the worst possible motives to oil companies, investment fund managers with big stakes in petroleum, etc. with billions at stake, but refuse to notice that industrialized societies generally depend on fossil fuels to cover ~80% of their energy budget (yes you too).

This is the big joke really, no one could without drastic changes in life style on a large scale really change that fact. (Jimmy Carter could serve as example how politicians fare who give you sweaters instead of oil (and he did give you oil eventually). But yes honesty is a good topic and the lies are so thick, a life worth of examination wouldn't be enough to get rid of them.

To sum it up, don't finger point at all.

If DOOM happened and say 1billion died, only one in 7 would be gone. Would you even notice it all that much? I mean even some big event taking a billion of people away would be a major catastrophe and yet we could go on without noticing the real impact. (Seeing piles of dead people in the news isn't real impact). With a little bit of doom you could still justify your view - remarkable.

Yeah, I have often thought "hey, I could snap some pictures of you where the SNR is way higher", then I remembered when I spent some time with the grainier girls, that they might not have been up for the job, so they shouldn't have such a high throughput of guests anyway.

I think my hungry look is gone (after a thorough study of prostitutes of all legal and sensible ages (ok, there are some gaps)). Also I tend to talk about plants now which some think of as decidedly girlish topic. This is way better than computers that nobody understands anyway. Of course, most people don't really understand plants either, but at least they are plentiful, pretty, and frequently edible, so they make a nice topic. It is also a better topic than talking about the weather since that has got a bad reputation.

That fishing vessel worker stereotype is way better than the living in moms basement one. It is also older, better known, and understood - Applause!

The country I'm living in doesn't prohibit prostitution, it just regulates it. So I had the chance to talk to some of the women off and on the job without much stress.

They told me that 90% of their customers seem to be married, which might come as a surprise for some women who start in the job.

Sometimes their partners seem ok with their hobby/job, sometimes the girls look for other kinds of employment because they acquired a partner.

This is mostly anecdotal information. There is a cool website in German called sexworker.at that might have some hard information though. No clue whether there is an english language website. Sexworkers in the US seem to be mainly represented by Annie Sprinkle and whatever she is doing but I might err.