I suspect that plants do not use 100% of available energy reaching the surface of the Earth. Its not like we'll be coating the surface of the Earth with solar panels within the next 100 years. But what it does provide us with is additional time to perfect fusion.

When discussing global warming and energy policy with associates, the typical basis of my point of view is "we either figure out fusion or we're screwed." Wider adoption of solar/wind/geothermal at least gives us more time to get there before society collapses.

I do agree, however, with your concerns about the effect of wide adoption of solar energy on weather patterns.

The existence of corporations arose by virtue of express permission from the government of the country/state in which the corporation desired to transact business with a corporate liability shield. Because they cannot conduct business with the privileges and protections of a corporation without the express permission of the applicable government, the government is empowered to condition the granting of the corporate charter upon certain conditions. One of these conditions is prohibition against certain types of anti-competitive practices.

So yes, private property came first, but a corporation cannot exist to be an owner of private property without the express permission of the government in which it wishes to transact business. That entitles the government a certain level of control.

I would be curious to see what would happen if an individual tried to go out and do something like this - say, some particularly wealthy fellow decided to go out and buy all coal reserves in the United States, then refused to develop it. I don't think anti-trust laws would apply. I suppose the government(s) would just claim imminent domain.

Eh, don't forget the GMO soy bean and their efforts to destroy heirloom soy bean farming.

Well, according to wikipedia, the largest estimates put the Oort cloud out at 3.6 light years, so this brown dwarf is probably too far away to perturb the Oort cloud, but as an aside observation: If the Sun's oort cloud is 3.5 light years in radius, and Proxima Centuari is only 4.2 light years away, and assuming Proxima Centuri has its own oort cloud (if it didn't get swept away by the gravitational interaction of the multiple stars), would our system's outer members and Proxima's outer members intermingle? IIRC, the Oort cloud objects aren't necessarily on the plane on the system.

Ten light years away... How far out does the Oort cloud extend? Its NEMESIS!!

How can you say we got nothing out of it? I wouldn't have survived the 80s without Tang!

Apparently, those people are not married.

Mass Effect 2 > Fallout 3 > DA:O

After a certain dramatic event in Fallout 3 that changed the course of the game, I just didn't care enough about the general population to keep "fighting the good fight." DA:O became incredibly boring for me while in the dwarven caves - I wish I would have stuck with it, but I would sit at my PC and just yawn and wonder what was on the tele. ME2 has been non-stop action through about 30 hours (except the tedious, ridiculous mineral searches).

+1 Insightful

This is way off topic, but in response to the above...

I've always considered liberal policies to be the more emotionally based. For instance, universe health care on an emotional basis makes a lot of sense. Consider, for example, Keith Olberman's one hour special appealing for the passage of the health care bill. But if you can overlook the immediate emotion of the issue, issues regarding long term fiscal shortages and potential effects on innovation arise.

Really any social program, from affordable housing to corn subsidies to health care typically relies upon an emotional response for support. "The Poor Farmer" "The Middle Class is being left behind..." Etc...

If you have a heart, its sometimes difficult to remain conservative (at least by my definition). Its difficult to tell senior citizens that we're scaling back medicare because we simply don't have the money to pay for it. Its difficult to tell failing banks and their employees that we're not going to bail them out and that thousands will be laid off because the leaders of those companies made terrible decisions bankrupting the company and its not the government's responsibility to save their ass.

Now please keep in mind that I don't judge a government program based upon what party proposed and/or passed the bill, but by its overall effect. I can't think of a conservative thing the federal government has done since Clinton scaled back welfare.

Accordingly, the asshats currently claiming to be conservatives are just as guilty in relying upon emotional response for expansion of government, e.g. "The terrorists, the terrorists, the terrorists."

We've become (are? always have been?) a reactionary society. The politicians take advantage of this fact to gain and retain power. Its works on both sides of the aisle, but each with its own respective heart strings to pull.

I didn't RTFA, but exactly how detailed is this information? Will my facade of sophistication bolstered by my renting/viewing of foreign films remain intact? Or will it be torn asunder when it is revealed I only fast forwarded to the sex scenes?

Yup, same here. The standard def stuff starts pretty quickly. It was the 1080p on demand that DirecTV just recently offered that took ridiculous amounts of time to d/l.

Agree agree and agree. We use netflix streaming for a most things, which is ok picture quality when it jumps to HD.

I have DirecTV for television. Its PPV offerings are downloaded over a broadband connection. Whether the bottleneck is with my connection or their servers, I don't know. It was several hours before the download indicated it was ready to be viewed (which was also prior to it being completely downloaded).

Additionally, my understanding is that only urban areas have fiber right now. Don't forget that about 1/2 the population of the US is in rural areas without all the comforts and luxuries that y'all city folk take for granted.

And let's not forget the instant gratification demanded by many consumers. On typical broadband, a song downloads in less than a minute. The significantly longer time required to download a movie (if purchased and stored in Blue Ray quality) is longer than the time required to drive to Blockbuster or Walmart to buy the physical copy of the same movie.

For instance, a few months ago, I ordered PPV Gran Torino in 1080p for my wife and I to view one evening. Six hours later it was ready to view, but she was already in bed.

And to what extent can higher salaries for teachers counter our societal anti-intellectualism?

The fault lies not with the teachers, but with the parents. Most folks, even "educated" ones, are not particularly intellectual. My father barely graduated from high school, but has always been a "thinker". I learned from him to appreciate "thinking" and eventually figured out that an education supplements my ability to think. Unfortunately, it seems most Americans have learned to replace critical thought with education, instead of supplement it.