You appear to be assuming that the curves represented by the studies I indicated represent the real and moment-by-moment temperature variations in the past. They are not. The charts I indicated are averages over long periods of time, obviously, and there's likely a lot of noise in the original data that won't appear on charts spanning millions of years. We don't have any reliable data on how quickly temperature changes happened in the geological past except on gross scales. For short time scales, we have no reason to believe the temperatures didn't vary as rapidly in the past as what we're seeing today, much of that variability would just be noise, and only over the long term would trends emerge. Thus we still have no basis for knowing that what we're seeing today is unprecedented.

Do a search for paleoclimate temperature record and look at some of the really long term charts (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg). The earth appears to oscillate between hot and cold all the time, and has been doing so all along. You could make the case that we're still just climbing out of the last ice age. So maybe it's real, but there's no reason to suppose it's new. The sources cited above point to other, more detailed studies, if Wikipedia isn't elegant enough for you.

Good point. Seems like during WWII, the Germans always had better tech than we had. Not that we should play it that way deliberately, but other factors do weigh in the equation. Ever read Arthur Clarke's short story, "Superiority"?

Yeah, but it could save you the cost of developing it for yourself. It's a long way from a wikipedia article on a reactor to a floor plan.

And expect the variety of writing made available, both stories and styles, to go way up. Did we really need gatekeepers? We're about to find out.

You can find all sorts of paperbacks in used book stores with cigarette ads and what not stuck in the middle of the book. If anything like patronage ever becomes a force in publishing, I'd bet that's the way it will happen. With ebooks, the advertising possibilities are horrifying.

Why use a simple, cheap solution when you can pay so much more for a complicated and less-effective one? The eco-industrial complex can't charge you as much for just growing a tree.

This could be great. My first SW radio was their HR-10B ham band receiver. It stayed alive from 1970 through 2008. If they put out a good general communications receiver, I'd be first in line. I don't suppose we'll see any more of the old crinkly green paint finishes, though, alas.

Maybe this tells us more about that so-called test for religious experience than it tells us about Apple.

I work for a Federal agency that shut down during the week-long snow-out around DC during the blizzards in 2010. I was able to work remote, though things were rather quiet, because most folks couldn't. Now, a year and a half on, they want everyone to have remote access in case it happens again. The funny thing is that they still are a little old-fashioned about routine telecommute, even with Congress pressuring them to get it going.

If Gödel's incompleteness theorems hold, then science might well be based on faith all the way up, whether you think you understand it or not. And one thing more: FTFA: "If creationism could pass as science, then schools could teach it–creationism according to fundamentalist Christianity–uncritically as a fact they way they teach science." If schools are teaching science uncritically, then they aren't teaching science.

My thoughts on how far we have come

No, that just tells us how far your great-grandfather had come. Don't think of it in terms of how far "we" have made it. Not everybody is going to make it.