I think we can develop a theory for "why chaotic systems develop equilibrium" and I think it would start with concentrations of energy sources. If there is a lot of sediment with nutrients and energy being buried on the sea floor -- it's LIKELY that some organism will exploit it eventually.

It's interesting to look at (if I remember correctly) the Pleistocene epoch, where for about 50 million years there was no bacteria that broke up and digested falling trees. So we have a lot of coal from this epoch for this very reason.

EVENTUALLY, bacteria that converted wood pulp evolved and we are not a planet layered in fallen trees.

But there's also no guarantee -- hence the runaway "Oxygen pollution" that almost lead to the earth freezing over. The worms churning the see floor were LIKELY but not necessarily inevitable.

There also seems to be a need for a dynamic environment without too many drastic swings for life to keep evolving.

I'm with you to a point. But there's a lot of "parallel" evolution and discovery going on. Two different groups of mammals became bats for instance, and there are numerous examples of nature creating similar creatures to "fill a niche". It was likely any untapped energy source of sufficient quantity and quality will inevitably produce an organism that uses that product. It's almost like predicting the weather by just charting blocks of heat -- a high pressure area of heat will move air masses, you only need to know the temperature differences and the locations of the heat.

So animals and plants move from high concentrations of energy first, to low concentrations with fewer competitors.
High birth rate means less energy spent rearing children and eventually means (in most cases) less intelligent creatures, while the inverse is also true (not to be confused with social pressure).

The Radio was developed by more than two different inventors at nearly the same time.

I could imagine that two cave men, Og and Zog were sitting on a log, when they saw lightning hit a tree, and Og says; "That bright thing may be useful". Time traveler accidentally lands on Og before he discovers useful bright stuff, and Zog is on the log alone when he sees lightning hit a tree; "That could be used to cook food and concentrate the energy for easier digestion... dang, I'm talking to myself again."

By the way, I'm keeping this algorithm -- not for the wisdom, but because it's so much more efficient than a bunch of CASE statements. Wow, vectored decision trees -- seems so much more civilized.

It would run faster if written in Swift. ;-P

SCOTUS + ((Mobs + Pitchforks + Torches) / Angry) = Sudden Concern for Public

I'm not afraid if a tiny difference in "COST" in solar vs. nuclear. What is COST if it's used to subsidize an American company and American workers vs. a company that most of it's money goes to a few, and it imports Russian Uranium?

It's kind of like "efficiency" -- an efficient economy means that you will get more work done for the same or less money. Unless I'm the hedge fund manager or CEO, it's really not going to be a benefit to me to constantly chase efficiency.

We want energy efficiency, but we will soon be looking for "make work" projects as the fast food and service industries get automated.

I'd rather be hiring people to install solar panels and build a grid into the road (to collect and distribute power).

The "Black Out" is more likely with an ancient grid during peak demand. Put people to work creating a better distributed grid (more jobs = less efficiency!!!) and the peak demand will be when the sun is up -- wow, good think I got solar.

Blackouts at night? Sure, but stuff happens. We can build solutions or we can keep paying the same rich people for the same problems and never solve new ones and give money to different people.

Add in the cost of a few security guards for the mothballed plant for 2,000 years.

Until someone privately insures a nuclear power plant and it's all done on the company dime rather than hidden cost overruns I'll believe the "cheaper than solar" statements.

I'm still waiting for the "no profit convalescence" years of the plants to be foisted on citizens -- just like the oil company doesn't pay for the military, and foreign aid money goes directly to military contractors in most cases. Cost shifting is the nature of big business.

That's why I like solar; 90% to Al Gore but no hidden fees!

I'm glad everyone pointed this out because it's the first concern that came to mind.

This makes me happy because;
1) Great minds think alike.
2) Google will instantly realize the error of their ways with weird characters and change this policy.
3) I'm not alone. This could very well be my posse.
4) Slashdot has it handled, the world is safer.
5) I don't have enough things I'm happy about on a regular basis to make a top ten list -- and I've learned to be OK with that.

I think if there were smart people -- let's call them PhDs, Professors and Teachers until we've got something more developed -- and they might think really hard about the types of concepts a student needs to learn. They'd string pre-packaged "modules" together. We could call that a "course" -- like a buffet of unlimited food, but we didn't mix the fish with the pop tarts because, "barf" am I right? Anyway, as a clueless person, let's call that a "Student" -- I would not necessarily know that I will do better with a nice lemon and caper sauce on my pasta coupled with the Sea Bass, but I will get a better meal because I trusted the Chef (that we are calling a teacher, just to be confusing).

>> all kidding aside; I think the module idea has merit to "hone" specific topics so they can be standalone. But those modules can be assembled into regular classes by educators. The only FLAW is the quality of the educators. And too much difference between courses means schools don't accept credit hours from other schools.

The other problem I see is if someone just "likes" one thing about optics, but not about the module on "glass materials". They end up memorizing in an ad hoc fashion and get into situations where they can't solve a problem because they know "A" and "C" but not "B". Once they are professional, it makes perfect sense to go back and "pick up B", but that's a person who knows what they don't know.

So true, They never include; "Pay for security guard in mothballed nuclear plant for 2000 years" in the cost projections on Nuclear.

Other than a few Socialist countries -- what country thrives on truth? A Half truth is often Patriotism when a full fledged Lie would prove better.

Sure, you can say "results in violence" because the French did away with some crooked royals once, but there was quite a long run of "lying our asses off". You think the cult to stack rocks in Egypt was anything but a "keep people busy" program?

Political Correctness can be annoying -- but it used to be called "Polite" -- only now it extends to people outside of the Privileged class. The main problem I have with Political Correctness is to try and bend over backwards to create euphemisms. Retarded kids get called challenged, and then special and then alternative or whatever because as soon as everyone knows "Exceptional" stands for "Retarded" it's a slur.

But it doesn't seem to be THAT huge of an issue. It's just a problem for people who would rather talk like Archie Bunker and someone in HR is spoiling their fun. You know what drives Political Correctness? Lawsuits. Not so much angry feminists burning bras.

Dude, stop quoting from the History that Never Happened.

Outside of a few bad science fiction movies, or perhaps in enclaves where someone snuck in a listening device to a group of angry divorced women -- I've never heard of this populist movement of "getting rid of men." There's no plan, there's no conspiracy, there's no secret lair with volcano mountain hiding the space ship. It's not a factor and to be threatened by this is to start wearing double anti-unicorn underwear. Sure it works -- because there are no Unicorns.

Also on that list is Liberal Terrorism in America. One off-duty security guard got accidentally killed when not targeted by the Weather Underground. What are we at, 250000 to one for proportionality?

The T-Rex would go extinct after only 50 years if all it had to eat was lions.

Unless of course someone raised a lot of lions to keep feeding T-Rex's. Or maybe T-Rex might think it was really cute how a kitty was chewing on it's bunions -- that tickles.

I'm sick of people saying that any fee or tax is "Paid by consumers" -- as if we consumers wouldn't be ruined if all taxes were on sales and wages and NONE on profits. Stop parroting this corporate drivel -- it's stupid, and it's damaging.

Taxes come out of profits. If all companies pay them they are the cost of business. Yes they make a company slightly less competitive with exports but we don't export goods that much anymore and we have business being bought from countries that have "onerous" government taxes -- so this is more nonsense.

OK, that off my chest -- I think that T-Mobile and Sprint pooling money and sharing bandwidth is a good thing. It's the only way they can compete with larger cellular companies right now AND the consumer benefits because they've paid more taxes with a higher bid and gotten rid of a few more closed networks. In fact, if all the cell companies just shared the same bandwidth -- we'd be fine.

What about we just tax them 30% of all gross fees on the cell bands and be done with it? More money comes in, and the fee doesn't stop startups.

We don't do this because selling off the public goods to monopolies is the way of business today. And then they take those extra profits and buy yachts or politicians so they can inform people of how consumers end up paying more for a corporate tax and will magically be better off if one guy gets an extra billion each year.

Of course it's useful, let me introduce you to my "Phase changing candle!"

In it's liquid/gas state, it burns. When it cools, it becomes a nonvolatile decoration.