Its not the long distance transmission lines that are the problem. Its the complication of all the gear to connect that long snaking line of panels to such infrastructure. It just seems so unlikely to be cost effective be construct and maintain such remote/repetitive gear compared to a more centralized industrial solar facility. Hell, not just keep it working but guarding it as well. There will be a lot of panels stolen from such a project.

True. Yet, that is what is in fact happening. Again, watch the Vice episode on Palm Oil production to get up to speed. It gives wonderful insight into those around the world desperate to export produce to the US.

You seem decades out of date. For example in Indonesia Palm Oil production rivals paper pulp production. The deforestation is done on an industrial scale by large corporates. Small farmers, among many others, are being displaced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Silly little boy, I'm saying that the environmental havoc in rainforest regions of the developing world is far far beyond the havoc that takes place in the US. When corporations can roll into Yosemite bulldoze the trees, burn the remains and turn the land in large scale industrial production get back to me. That is exactly what is happening in Indonesian national forests for example.

Actually, no, well with respect to solar that is. Power transmission, maintenance and repairs, etc are incredibly complicated by decentralization and distance. Practical solar needs to be concentrated. Talk to engineers rather than activists.

At $200M for 224 homes it sounds like he is building an upper middle class housing development. This does not sound like habitat for humanity-like helping the poor.

For that neighborhood it is low income, its relative. Upper middle class in the neighborhood of the elite 0.1%'ers.

One would need a massive inland industrial solar facility to power a desalinator. Assuming such a facility could be built it might be better put to other uses. A far more practical plan would involve massive updating of water policy and watering techniques in California agriculture. That is where 80% of the water goes.

Some (most ?) of that rainwater landing on roofs drains into the soil not the urban drainage system, which for the record is separate from sewage. So leave the roofs alone. Collect water at the urban drainage system.

Yes, and those places would need to burn down their rain forest to convert the land to commercial agriculture. There are massive environmental consequences for doing so, a unoffset massive carbon release, an ongoing loss of carbon sequestration and oxygen generation, the loss of possible medicinal botanics that have not been evaluated yet (ex. a new family of antibiotics that would be effective against the current resistant strains circulating in our hospitals). Plus these regions tend to be high on corruption and low on regulatory compliance. See the recent Vice episode on Palm Oil production.

Its not that simple. There is the possibility of acquiring wolves as a pup, so any personality type could grow up around a group of humans and look at these humans as their pack. It actually seems more likely pups were domesticated, they would be more likely to view the humans as their pack than a wild adult wolf.

Substituting "less dominant" for "shy" and "more dominant" for "aggressive" may be more accurate with respect to personality types. These less dominant wolves were probably the ones who were the easiest to live and interact with, being more inclined to be submissive to a human rather than only being submissive to those humans who physically dominate them. That said, both dominance extremes are entire trainable, will guard the pack, protect children from outsiders, etc.

Personally I suggest 2 usb external hard drives. One in the home media-rated fire/water safe and one in the bank safe deposit box. Swapping out the drives periodically.

Do a backup to the current home drive. Take it to the bank and swap drives. Do a second backup to the drive you brought home from the bank and put it in the home safe. Both drives in both locations are now current.

I end up doing this about 3 or 4 times a year. Had one drive go bad in the last 5 years, just bought a replacement and continued on.

And of course I have an external RAID box for my daily backups and non-fire related disasters.

CD/DVDs don't fit in the normal smaller safe deposit box. I use usb external drives, the capacity is a better match for my needs too. I have two such drives. Backup one drive, go to bank and swap drives, back up the other one. So I have one at home for convenience and one in the bank for disaster.

A former coworker who worked in a Soviet client state during that period told me that the distribution of printers was controlled because it was a "printing press" and could be used to create anti-government propaganda for distribution. That there were government offices where you could take your data to be printed if you were unable to justify why you needed a printer yourself.

You are confusing two different things. Shooting a fleeing felon and shooting a fleeing violent felon. A supreme court ruling said no more shooting of a mere fleeing felon, that it was necessary for them to be considered violent. If considered violent it was not required that they be armed at that moment. Only that they represent a reasonable and likely and immediate threat. That depends entirely on the history and/or recent actions of the specific felon.

There is another thing that comes into play, department policy. Department policy may impose further restrictions not required by law. Often policies designed to avoid lawsuits. As it was explained to me, violating department policy is not illegal, you won't be prosecuted if your actions were legal, but it will still get you fired and sued.

In short my principal disagreement is with any suggestion of a belief in superiority. I believe that to be a quite erroneous misrepresentation.

I also reject the "on the job training" metaphor, another misrepresentation of things that has erroneous connotations attached.

I have refrained from listing sources because you would lose any such comparison.

I've had formal instruction on this topic, I've had informal off the record verbal only instruction on this topic from formal instructors, I've had numerous casual discussion on the dangers of the us-vs-them mentality with family and friends in law enforcement. It is especially bad when one works corrections, some departments send new hires on such a temporary tour. I've seen people cautioned about this ahead of time, I've seen them called out by family/friends when later displaying such an attitude. I've seen people take extra tours in corrections for seniority based training reasons and decide to transfer out to patrol when they recognized such an attitude developing, feeling a need to interact with the general public more.

Developing such an attitude towards the public is considered bad and is not encouraged. Don't confuse such an attitude with being cautious and suspicious of a civilian under certain circumstances. Also don't confuse such an attitude with the trust you will show a stranger merely because they are in uniform. Its not the same as viewing those not in uniform as the "enemy".