I shut up and didn't make any remarks about that poor Thomas Eric Duncan dude . . .

People think a fire turns everything to molton slag. There was much that survived even when the 2 cars in the garage were reduced to burnt hulks.

Don't have any experience with such a thing with modern multi-100 Gig drives, but traditionally drives were built like tanks.

Maybe it was a job security thang?

The Shoe Bomber Richard Reid got stomped by the other passengers, and the Underwear Bomber Abdul-Mutalub was fought and stopped by a fellow passenger.

On the other hand, if someone really wants to crash the plane, can the other pilot or the pilot with volunteer passenger "muscle" stop this. The passenger on that one plane in 9-11 broke open the cockpit door -- they were able to thwart a fourth attack on a building, but they were unable to prevent a crash. It seems they knew there chances of living were slim and they gave their lives to prevent loss-of-life on the ground.

But what do women pilots use? What if the call is for Bodily Function #2? Even with an all-male crew, do you really want to expose yourself this way to your colleague? There is this protocol with the urinals in the Men's Room of not looking over at other dudes -- at the controls of the plane, should the other pilot have to limit their gaze of the instruments and controls?

It seems people can get very huffy about something deemed irrelevant?

It seems someone can get quite imperious about an enterprise that garners pushback for being heavyhanded?

It seems the word "conversation" really mean "shut up and hang your head in shame while I explain to you what you should think?"

I believe Charles Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll) wrote of such a thing . .

But when there is an ideological agenda, there can be a lot of confirmation bias.

Start with the title, "New Solar Capacity Beats Coal and Wind, Again." Is this an objective, nerd-centric assessment of scientific fact? Or is it a victory-lap "Eat stuff all of you doubters and deniers"?

The concern is that Renewable is not quite ready for Prime Time and being jammed down our throats.

For Mr. Obama to counter with the facts regarding present-day threats and the level of force recommended by DoD to meet those threats would not have been snarky at all. The remark about "horses and bayonets" as a "debate zinger" was not only cheap snark, it exposed the President's ignorance regarding military affairs where horses and bayonets may not be big budget line items, but they have their place.

It is perhaps a good thing that you were not advising the President because the comparison Mr. Romney was making was not to the WW-I or the WW-II navy but to the "600 ship" Cold War navy under President Reagan. And "Tablizer" can lay off the lame political references if we are to believe his case against OO.

As to snark, it was "Tablizer", the self-proclaimed Internet Troll in (his?) Slashdot sig, the man who will save us from the sirens and snares of Object Oriented (OO) programming with his table-driven or database-driven programming paradigm. It was Tablizer who said that candidate Romney wanted "horses and bayonets." This is simply untrue. It was President Obama who said that candidate Romney wanting more ships in the US Navy was the equivalent of favoring expenditure on weapons systems of yesteryear such as "horses and bayonets."

So "Mitt began with nonsense." I watched that debate, I remember Mr. Romney's argument, and I remember the President's response. I really don't know whether the US Navy has enough ships or needs more ships, and I am not confident labeling Mr. Romney's argument as nonsense. We have a civilian command authority, and it is the President who gets to say we have enough ships and not the admirals. That the admirals say we have enough ships may be their respecting the elected president and following his orders. What is so strange about that?

The proper force level is a matter for candidates to debate in our civilian command-authority system. I wanted Mr. Romney to bring this up, and if the number of ships is adequate, I wanted Mr. Obama to lay out the case. The zinger about "horses and bayonets" was not becoming of the office or of the man holding it.