I agree completely. When walmart came to our town, pop about 20,000, it put many other retailers out of business within 5 years: Kmart, Ames (both before their parent companies dried up), two local hardware stores, a 50+ year old (good) local sporting goods store, etc. A few years later when they went "supercenter" and added the groceries it looked dismal for the local grocers too. However, interestingly, after shopping at walmart for groceries and thinking I was getting the best deal/prices, I found that not to always be true. Enough that I found that I can actually shop at Wegmans (a GREAT grocery store that I actually enjoy shopping at) and not really spend any more (with shoppers club card, free). The quality and selection at Wegmans also is infinitely better - especially meat and produce. I now shop at wallyworld as little as possible, which is still too often since there are simply no other nearby options for many goods.

Here in NY too, in fact I think we were the first state with a "bottle bill" back in the mid 80's. All the nonprofit groups in NY collect bottles and cans as a fundraiser, and people are often willing to donate a big old bag of cans more than they would shell out $10. Homeless people and others collect them willingly from anywhere. There used to be lots of trash, cans, bottles, etc on the sides of roads and in ditches. Not so much anymore, in fact after the bottle law passed there were virtually none (bottles and cans). They just added a deposit on water bottles (GOOD idea, IMHO) and I have seen most of these also disappear from roadsides and parking lots, etc.

Really, the deposit idea is a great system. Now, actually DOING something useful (like this plastic to fuel project, or a plastic to plastic, or etc) with the recycled goods is another story, but here in NY I think the majority do get recycled into a variety of things. There was in fact a show on TV about bottle plastic and all the goods that are made from it.

I wish I had mod points. You make some good points, and ones I have made myself in these sorts of philosophical arguments before. However, this is just a thought experiment. What if, when the copied brain is "lit up" it DOES have YOUR consciousness? What if you just "forked" yourself? It really IS you, but a 100% point-in-time clone... Makes for an interesting thought... You ARE you, but so is it. When you die, do YOU still die? YES, because you are the original. Perhaps, if you die as part of the copying process, you can be said to live on. But is it you?

What if you "stop" your brain, by putting it in some sort of halt state. Say, a deep coma. Then copy it. Do you "wake up" on the other side? If not, WHY NOT?

These are all interesting thought experiments. At any rate, this story ends with the usual "extraordinary new technology ready... in 5 years" as usual, so don't bet on any brain cloning in the next 50.

Except that the bacteria mentioned are genetically closely related to "known hydrocarbon degraders" and "... results suggest that the gabbroic layer hosts a microbial community that can degrade hydrocarbons and fix carbon and nitrogen." Not exactly producing hydrocarbons, more like living off them.

Although, I do wonder what "It has been hypothesized that these hydrocarbons might originate abiotically from serpentinization reactions that are occurring deep in the Earth's crust" is all about...

serpentinization: a hydration and metamorphic transformation of ultramafic rock from the Earth's mantle

Hmm... So sounds like they are saying the hydrocarbons are likely produced by some hot water/pressure/mineral interaction. That's even more interesting than the bacterial production that I've heard bounced around (and generally dismissed).

They were working on this from the start, as well as the "top hat" that will probably not be needed now. They had at least 3 different methods working in parallel. This one took this long because it was unbelievably complicated and had never been tried at anything even close to this depth. This (the actual stoppage) is an amazing success for the many 100's of skilled engineers that have been working around the clock on it for weeks. (Mostly not BP people BTW)

They had to fabricate all kinds of gear that had never been made before. This was a herculean effort by 100's of the most skilled deepwater engineers in the world, and they actually did it in record time. This was not a small task, it would normally take months to pull something like this off.

Actually - that's almost exactly it. Right there. If it is shown that this resulted from systemic faults or negligence on the part of BP management, and is something that results from decisions of the "Very High Up" - i.e. safety shortcuts, speed at the expense of safe(er) procedures, known faults with safety equipment and/or a culture of "get it done fast".

Things that management knew about, condoned, encouraged or "looked the other way", then I believe we should hold the CEO and entire personally responsible. That is (one of the many things) that is wrong with corporate culture in the world now. All the profits and percs of a "human" and none of the responsibility. I think if the CEO and board of corporations were held personally responsible then we'd see a lot less screwing of the public. I'm all for that and the "corporate death penalty".

If you were the CEO of said trucking company, and encouraged or looked the other way when your drivers were falsifying log books, driving extra hours, and ignoring the safety concerns of your maintenance contractor, and your tired driver plowed into a shopping mall with a tanker truck of propane because he was tired, then yes I DO hold you responsible. If that's not the case, and the guy was just an idiot or had too many tacos at lunch and got distracted, then no.

I generally consider myself to lean libertarian - but what we have now in the US is too many cases of privatizing profits and socializing losses/screwups - and that to me is the worst of all worlds.