You are aware that plenty of people are monitored for their entire shift in much less safety critical jobs, like bank tellers, grocery or retail store cashiers, dock workers, etc, yes? As to the speed being controlled by computer, they've been working on that for some time, but apparently the radio network to convey all the necessary information to the control box is massively behind schedule.

As far as anybody can tell, though, we could lose mosquitoes entirely with no big secondary effects. So let's get on eradicating those fuckers. Way more important than anything the Gates foundation has claimed to do.

Considering one of the pieces of the Gates Foundation anti-malaria campaign is sterile mosquito introduction in an effort to eradicate the local population I think you're a bit off there.

Public companies can also have a mechanism to halt a hostile takeover, it's called a poison pill. Generally it involves some kind of massive payoff to the current staff, but it can also be the automatic issuance of new stock which dilutes the holdings of the company attempting to do the acquisition. The first known use of the latter technique that I'm aware of was the Westinghouse corporation which issued massive amounts of stock when JP Morgan tried to take them over, ultimately providing them with enough money to complete the Niagara power station project.

The trackball was the weakness of the 8820, any of the later bold models with the optical trackball would be vastly superior from a reliability standpoint.

Exactly, just last week I was reading about a proposed Canadian mine that was vetoed by the native council, not due to environmental concerns, but because of uncertainty over environmental impact in the future because current and projected prices didn't actually support opening the mine in the near term but the company looking for approval was looking for a 50 year lease on the land. If Russia ties up a lot of the world supply and shuts down mines they own then the price will rise and mines like that one will come online, it's not like they're going to take over so much of the world supply that we'll be shutting down reactors due to lack of fuel. The real fear I'm sure is that Westinghouse and GE and their suppliers will have to pay more for yellowcake in order to produce their overpriced fuel rods.

Probably have to keep receipts and get a refund from the DOT office running the trial program.

Since it's primarily weight per axle that determines the wear caused on the roads, and the point of the tax is to maintain roads, it seems logical that heavier vehicles, whether they be SUV's or big sedans like the Tesla, should be charged more. It's not like a Leaf is particularly heavy (it's basically the same weight as the similarly sized Chevy Cruze).

Uh, most workplaces aren't going to be happy if a coworker walks by and you have a GNAA troll or similar up on your screen...

When the bottoms fall out of the fiat currencies,

Most people will be dead as it will be the result of total war. Nothing else is going to rock the worldwide markets so thoroughly that all 6 major reserve currencies have their value evaporated.

That something should be relatively rare, easily verified, have low carrying costs (i.e. doesn't rust or rot), and be somewhat portable. Gold and silver fit the bill,

So does the greenback, and in the modern world it's used a hell of a lot more extensively than gold or silver. Unless the fed goes full retard and starts printing physical bills at a rate significantly greater than inflation (would be basically impossible to do with the current infrastructure) that's not going to change.

to shoot down hundreds of incoming warheads, plus ten thousand dummy balloons.

I don't think anyone is realistically planning to use an ABM system against China or Russia, it's much more likely to be used against the one or two missile boats that North Korea or Iran manage to outfit with a handful of missiles.

No, not all towers need to have an EA done, only those meeting the criteria in 47.1.1307 which is a fairly limited set of criteria where it makes sense to me to require a review. The rules basically come down to, are you in a sensitive wildlife habitat, are you in a designated historic place like Gettysburg or an Indian burial ground, or are you going to potentially fry people if you aim something wrong. That doesn't seem like an onerous list, and the percentage of towers that falls under it has to be at most, what 10-20% (and it's probably well under 5%).

That article was very much wrong, the engine in question was Amtrak locomotive 601, of the brand new Cities Sprinter class, the class entered service in February of 2014.

No, he's right, this is almost assuredly a strict liability scenario, unless it can be proven that something outside the engineers control was to blame then he is negligent and will go to jail. It's not just that he was exceeding the speed limit for the curve, he was significantly exceeding the speed limit for the straightaways so absent a system fault that caused uncontrolled acceleration combined with complete loss of brakes (almost impossible given the evidence of speed reduction at the curve) he's responsible. A medical condition which was missed at his last physical might be a mitigating circumstance, but that's really about it.

For a fraction of that effort (although a lot more pain an initial expense) we could lay down rails through every suburb and have automated travel cars.

You don't have a clue how capitalism works, do you? If the market says it's more expensive to put in rail everywhere then there's a good bet that it's more effort. Capitalism has its flaws, but relatively efficient allocation of resources is not one of them.