You said that we can't predict volcanos and quakes. That isn't entirely correct. Mt. St. Helens was predicted, and they cleared the mountain of most people.

And we do have signs of impending quakes, including certain mediterranian ants. Also, IIRC, methane gas release is also considered to be a quake precursor.

Which DOES make me wonder, if this methane release is normal, or recent. I guess we won't know, or even have an idea unless we compare it to other areas.

Making the earth's crust rise should not directly affect the strike-slip San Andreas fault at all. However, it has been anecdotally noted on syzygyjob.com forums that thrust quakes seem to be on the rise, along with hypothesizing that the rising crust might release friction allowing exactly that.

For my own part, I've noticed a large increase of small quakes surrounding the great elliptical basin, the southwest of which coincides with the rising sierra nevada; and occasional time-coincident radial forays into the same basin.

So I half wonder if the rising isn't part of a larger-scale process.

Why not... get with small museums and astronomy clubs in remote (low-light-pollution) locations across the US, and use smaller scopes not just at your location, but set up all across the US?

Then phase the scopes together, and use scheduling software to let the museums (and you) use them.

Early on, you should be able to get an image under any weather conditions.

Later, as you upgrade and develop your software, you should be able to get excellent 3-D images of planets, better identify the orbits of asteroids and comets, identify new asteroids (take one image, align it to others, and subtract the scaled values to minimize the overall light. Then look for arrays of speckled dots, that indicate a closer object. )

Eventually, what you could end up with is a very large phased array.

Okay, here's your first citation.

http://www.elizabethriver.org/

Now, having worked on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, I can assure you that it is common in the newspapers to have articles about projects to restart clam and oyster aquaculture, which crashed, resulting in a spike in pollution in the water.

But more to the point, I worked at Atlantic Metrocast, where the land had been taken over by the military during world war 2, and all kinds of extremely toxic munitions leaked in. That site is a superfund site, paid for by the Federal Government, because they are the ones who polluted it.
To the south is Julian Creek, where munitions were just dumped into the water, and the cancer rates and birth defect rates are sky-high.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the shipyards yet. They also were dumping in the river, aah, welding materials, lead, whatnot. AND, when the company at the old Bells Mill site needed to turn the mashland of their worksite into solid land, they used fill from the shipyards. So as you walk along the land at BayShore Concrete, you'll every so often find all kinds of heavy-metal-laden industrial parts there, embedded in the ground.

Oh, and don't forget right by the Gilmerton Bridge where there's a recycling center that tears down ships.

Now, that's just the Elizabeth. Let's move on up to the James, where you have Tenneco/Newport News Shipbuilding, the Navy's ship graveyard, and of course Smithfield Hams. And all that agricultural land that gets sprayed every year.

Or how about the Shenandoah River, which five years ago practically died due to heavy metal pollution in the Shenandoah Valley, and dumps into the Chesapeake Bay through Maryland?

Citation needed, I gave you one; I mentioned a few other places where you can find more.

One hint is that wherever you find the military, destruction is not far behind.

Open your eyes and look for yourself, and quit with the laziness, because that's what it is.

No, we just need to rethink our concept of what a 'live' human means. In the future, it can mean a human who makes a geiger counter jump off the table.

Really, though, the constraint ennvelopes for cars and planes is completely opposite, one from the other. What that means is that a flying car will perform neither job well, which means that even when (not if) invented, it won't sell. And it'll burn up those fossil fuels.

Cars have to be narrow. Planes have to be wide, for stability and lift. Cars have to be strong against head-on, rear-end, and (somewhat) t-bone crashes. Forplanes, that's utterly unimportant, but they need to be strong against vertical shocks, which doesn't matter for cars. Cars should be heavy planes should be light. Cars need to do well under low-maintenance conditions; planes that are under low-maintenance should be retired.

Or, aleernatively... letting a few crimes go unsolved is part and parcel of an authoritarian police state.

Right now, we have on our 'unsolved docket' Lois Lerner, war crimes by US troops in Iraq, high treason by various top operatives violating their constitutional oaths and undermining the rule of law, thus aiding the enemies of the US, embezzlement by bankers who control the Fed, breach of fiduciary duty by BoA under the blackmail of Paulson that he would break the law... and now most recently high crimes by that French bank in criminal money laundering, in one is the biggest ever (9 billion) fine, but unfortunately, we can't find the criminal.

And that's just the US. I haven't hit one percent of the unsolved crimes yet.

Leaving a 'rule of law' nation sucks.

It's doubly a trap when those same companies, which have multiple backup systems on the emails, suddenly cannot recover anything following a series of six separate 'hard drive crashes' on RAID-7 systems, so that the IRS' evidence can no longer prove criminal intent by leaders of the government.

Leaving a 'rule of law' nation sucks.

Which, if this chain of thought is correct, leads to the conclusion that in those 9 cases, either police were NOT corrupt (and so could be foiled) or were corrupt, and wanted to be foiled.

I'm not sure that the chain of thought is correct. In some areas --Illinois for example, I would expect it to be.

Here in Norfolk, we had a young man that decided to just start shooting. He first killed a 17-year old kid in Norfolk, who was waiting at a traffic light.

When the police were investigating, he shot at them, and killed one, severely wounded to other.

There then was another cop who responded, and ordered the shooter to stand down; he started to shoot, and was killed.

Now, I'm going to point out that the cop who died was a really good guy, who would always tell his coworkers, 'it doesn't matter what happens here, so much as it matters what happens in heaven. That's why you need to get right with Jesus.'

Now, with an attitude like that, I suspect he would have been a little slower on the draw. It's too bad he died.

I also think he had a good effect on those around him. It's too bad he died.

If someone's going to die, I don't prefer that the cop be the first one to die. I prefer that nobody dies.

Oops.

What's to escalate? When the schedule flat out doesn't work, and your calls to customer service get handed over to a customer svc agent's voice mail, unless they want to talk to you, and they don't... that was what happened with us, I have no idea what happened with them... escalate doesn't help.

Actually, it isn't quite that. Tenure at universities is part of academic freedom, which in turn is there to protect the deans from white elephants, such as a ten-million dollar donation with strings that the teachers must teach whoositztheory, or that they must not teach whassis to undergrads.

Thing is, donaters love strings. That's why they donate; and if the donation is turned down, then the bigwig works hard to destroy the one who turned it down.

Universities evolved the fiction of academic freedom (and the attendant tenure) to combat that. Typically speaking, at primary and secondary schools that isn't a problem at that level: bigwigs take it to the state government.

It is not the same in EVERY Virginia city, but in Norfolk whenI was a taxi driver, the city licensed a cetin number of cabs to operate. Like the commercial fisherman's license, if you had a license, you had every incentive NOT to operate a vehicle, but to rent it out to a licensed cabdriver for a rental fee of more than $100 per day. That's 1992 dollars.

Moreover, your incentive to maintain a working vehicle was almost minimal. So they were real pieces of trash, that harvested money from poor cabbies and poorer clientele, and redirected it into the pockets of the owner of each cab company.

That's the Virginia way of doing things. YMMV.

We've never had a free market. Our ancestors back 150 years ago may have, I don't know-- it's hard to describe "free" when slaves are also part of that market.

But what we have had is a regulated market, which tends to evolve into a fascist market.

Regulated markets are not free. Patent law, copyright,are aspects of regulation. They were enacted for the benefit of king's friends, and not for the benefit of either producers or consumers.

I don't know if a free market is even possible, as great as the demand for slaves is in the human psyche. However, I do take offense at people using the current American Fascism as proof that free markets don't work. Especially since they are the same people who continually prevent free markets from ever being tried.

Simply say, "I don't want you to have a free market because it scares me to not have slaves" and be done with it. Or say, "I profit from the current lack of freedom. Get back to work and shut up." But cut the malarky about âoeWe tried letting the slaves choose whether to hoe or shuck, and it proves freedom doesn't work."

The proof that you have no concept of what freedom is, is that you use that word so much.