Folks, please remember that this is a "fad". There's nothing of intelligence involved in choosing the diet (might make more sense, based on some of the research I've seen, to infect themselves with parasites, as our ancestors were, to retrain their immune systems and reduce inflammation). Providing logical arguments against the "Paleo diet" to a population that has self-selected against intelligence, is, itself, not logical.

Thank you.

I can use that as a model for the "crowded room", or, think, airplane cabin with 8 APs and 300+ clients. Probably still not a lot in aggregate. BTW, given my overall weight and body fat percentage, that 80 kg was just about right for the water content of my body.

As for the radiation source (sometimes) in the sky, I know THAT one kills. When the doctors ask me what SPF sunblock I use, I ask them what is the SPF of the planet Earth. I try to keep it between me and the source whenever possible (harder in summer), and "hard" shade (concrete, steel, not leaves) when not.

Playing "Devil's advocate" may sound ridiculous, but it does, sometimes, elicit useful responses, like yours, rather than just hand-waving.

If there's anyone in South Carloina with enough brains to form a synapse, please put them in charge. Stupid, brutal behavior like that make even the craziness of California look good.

Actually, they do, but the person in that position doesn't even know what it means, much less how to deal with it.

Picture an internet where home users must havea license to access the iy, or hire a "chaffeur" to manage their systems and there are penalties for failing to secure them. Many fewer bot farms, I suspect.

Most of the management types I've met have just enough functioning brain cells to kiss ass and repeat whatever mantra they learned in MBA school or during the most recent management retreat.

Target was breached because HVAC maintenance had access to the same network as the POS terminals, which is inexcusable stupidity. Unfortunately, this is exactly what will happen with the IoT devices. Putting them on an entirely separate network (own APs for wireless, blinkenlights, ...) will cost something, and, since the CIOs don't spend hard time in a closed prison for exposing their systems, or the personal data of employees or customers, they simply will not authorize the expenditure.

IOW, you don't know, but are happy to toss out an AC snarky comment.

I've worked on megawatt RADARs, and the running "joke" was that by the time you found out it hadn't been properly secured and was now transmitting, you were already dead, but had just been informed.

Yes, the RF from electronics is non-ionizing, but we have actual results of exposure to ionizing radiation and some guidelines as to what various agencies around the planet consider "safe". If I'm in a room (for example, a lecture hall), with 100+ phones, tables, and laptops, at ranges from 1 meter to 10 meters, connected to a 10-transmitter "hot spot", what is my RF exposure? What amount of that RF is being converted to heat in my body?

Just we all can be "sure" of things: what is the temperature rise due to ambient 2-5 GHz RF in a human body? After all, microwave ovens cook by exciting water molecules in the cavity. The RF energy is converted to kinetic energy, of which temperature is a measure.

Got a number in some useful frame of reference, such as degrees C per kilogram per milliwatt?

The cable cost may not be that much higher, and multiple cables are not that much more work, I agree, but the many-more-port switch to which they all connect seems much more costly than a few distributed 5-8 port near-freebies. Only in two places did I need some serious managed switches ("computer room" and right at the firewall/router). The little ones did have to be able to handle VLAN-tagged packets, of course.

Although I have a few devices that COULD be connected to WiFi, I do not have a connection at home. All computers, printers, game consoles (Wii flavors and Xbox360), NAS, and home audio are connected to a wired Gbit network. Makes the Nook tablets unable to connect to the 'net at home, but, at home, I don't need them connected, anyway, since I feed them by SD card.

In order to be a fad, there has to be some significant adoption ("pet rocks", for example). Not gonna happen, IMO, with Dolby Atmos (tm). I've got a fairly extensive last gen' home setup (1080p, not 4K; 7.1, not 9.3), and there's nothing I've seen or heard that encourages me to "upgrade" to even those levels, much less the whole room redesign needed for Atmos. I'm sure there will some adoption by those who simply "must" own the latest tech, then watch cable/satellite 720p, but it won't be enough to constitute a fad.

People sign up and never finish because the courses are downright awful. And there's no mind nor incentive for them to get better. Instructors think that just recording a lecture and putting it online is good education, but it isn't.

Watch Daphne Koller droning on about graphical models as the video shows her standing at a lectern talking, or showing a powerpoint-style frame while she reads the text on the frame to us.

Watch Anant Agarwal go through a *hugely* dense and boring derivation, only to stop before the end and say "but this derivation is too hard, there's an easier way". Twice. For the same result.

Try to figure out how many degrees of freedom a soccer ball has, then argue with Sebastian Thrun because the answer he thought you should have entered is not the mathematically correct one. (Also, see if you can figure out what this has to do with AI.)

For a breath of fresh air, watch Donald Sadoway take you through a delightful and satisfying explanation of chemistry. (Ignore the 1st lecture which is about class scheduling.) It's wonderful.

I could cite two dozen *major* problems with selected online courses - things that go counter to the fundamental goal of learning that would be obvious to someone familiar with human learning mechanisms or a testing group or even a member of Toastmasters. When I point these out to the chief scientist at edX, he responds with "we can't change the way we do things because of X".

Let me repeat that: the *chief scientist* at edX has no control over teaching techniques or video methods or course quality.

Some people (ie - Dr. Sadoway in the link above) have figured out how to do it right, but the vast majority aren't interested in quality. It's unfortunate that edX got all those millions in seed money, because we'll have to wait until they burn through it before they get hungry enough to worry about quality and effectiveness.

It's insane.

Businesses have repeated shown no concern for their workers or the surrounding populace when it comes to safety or pollution, and no remorse for the consequences of their actions. Rivers in the Appalachians, lead poisoning in Industry, plant explosions in Texas, worker deaths and oil spills from a rig explosion in the Gulf, the Ohio River literally on fire are all examples of this psychopathic behavior.

If a business cannot provide a safe workplace, and clean up its own waste, it should not be in business, because neither of those is all that hard.

Third suggestion:

Fungi can be used to remove heavy metal contaminants in flowing water. Place a bunch of fungi mycelium in sandbags in the water stream and the fungi will filter out the contaminants as the water flows through. Come back later, remove the bags and replace with a fresh batch.

Contact Paul Stamets' group over at Fingi Perfecti and see what their experts have to say. They might even have a product you could buy for the purpose.

Here's a paper and some contact info to get you started:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

http://www.fungi.com/about-pau...

First suggestion:

There's been a lot of interest in using Zeolites to absorb heavy metal contamination in water. One specific experiment involved dragging a bag of zeolites through ocean water, the zeolites absorbed enough Thorium to be industrially useful as an ore (if there were a demand for Thorium, which there isn't).

I've found papers that indicate that Zeolites will absorb copper and lead, two of the contaminants listed for the Mount Polley disaster; chances are likely that zeolites would absorb the other contaminants as well.

Here's two papers to get you started:

http://www.yourncdinfo.com/cli...

http://cnu.edu/arc/documents/p...

Second suggestion:

There's been some success in removing non-volatile organic pollutants from soil using steam injection. Essentially, sink a pipe into the soil, inject steam, cover the area with a tarp, and collect the steam/water as it percolates up through the soil. This method can be used to extract non-volatile organic components including tetra-ethyl-lead. (I found that last bit surprising, but this was directly confirmed to me by one of the scientists involved.)

Depending on the chemical nature of the contaminants (ie - solubility, polar/non-polar character &c) this might prove useful in decontaminating some of the mud slurry.

Here's a paper to get you started:

http://nepis.epa.gov/Adobe/PDF...

Before I get slammed by a P-Chem major, here's what's really going on with the entropy.

The reaction is exothermic, and this release of heat increases the entropy of the universe. At the same time, 4 atoms of source become 1 atom of product, so this aspect of the reaction *decreases* the entropy of the universe. (There's more ways that 4 atoms can be arranged in a box than there is to arrange 1 atom.)

At room temperature, the entropy increase from the release of heat is greater than the entropy decrease from the reduction in states, so the reaction is favored.

The entropy from the release of heat is inversely proportional to temperature. Double the [absolute] temperature and you halve the increase in entropy from the release of heat. With higher temperatures, the entropy increase from "release of heat" is smaller than the entropy decrease from "change of states", the total change of entropy is negative, and the reaction is no longer favored.

I wrote a simpler/shorter explanation to avoid losing sight of the main point.