Dr. Flamand: Do you mean what this could mean to California residents?
Nick: Wow! They'd have enough salt to last forever!!

> It is not a very plausible solution for agricultural use-- too
> expensive. Do you realize that those people take the water
> and just dump it on the ground?

HA! I *wish* they would just dump it on the ground. I've driven by farms in the valley where gigantic sprayers are just launching it all high into the air, and a good amount of it evaporates before it even has a chance to hit the ground.

If you shoot a piece of space junk, it splits into two. You shoot each of those, you get two more. You shoot those, they disappear. Documentary on the process here.

Pinky out, near the exit, and over/under, right?

All you need is a solar powered project to convert sea water into potable water. I'm pretty sure $30B will go a long way to set up several projects all along it's coast. Also, converting current pipes from metals to plastic so your sewage systems etc can handle a little bit of salt water, then you don't need to flush with clean water and it's a lot healthier (salt water is inhospitable to a lot of bacteria)

We do alter the genetic material in 'traditional' artificial selection and given the current genetic sequencing methods, we could definitely demonstrate the pathway we'd have taken if we were doing it 'slowly'. But if a crop takes ~6m to become mature enough to reproduce, we'd easily take decades for a simple mutation. Doing it in a lab allows us to skip some steps but you get the same end result.

I don't agree with the patents but AFAIK none of our food is patented nor could it be. I think gene patenting has been completely struck down recently. Yes, there has been research in a terminator gene and it made big headlines a decade ago but further research proved that nature has a way of overcoming these artificial limitations. There is currently no crop outside of a lab that cannot reproduce itself (besides dessert banana's, but that limitation has been around for about a hundred years).

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=organic+p...

As far as I can see these complaints are all coming from investor owned for profit electrical utilities. What do publicly owned electrical districts (like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power or the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to name a couple of big ones) have to say? Do they make the same complaints or do they just get on with the business of making it all work? If they're not making the same complaints then I think the complaints of investor owned utilities are more about profits than anything else.

Privatized? That word doesn't fit with the rest of what you said.

I listen to Internet radio in my car. Generally not a problem since the apps use a large buffer, entire songs are streamed in advance so I only notice when skipping a song in a low coverage area. Music is only 196kbps and could be as low as 64/96k. Even 2G can withstand that.

OK, show of hands... before today, who here would have thought "double Irish arrangement" meant something kinky?