I always despise these reports. They come up with something that life identical to our own - on our world could not stand up against and then say "No life is possible anywhere else".

No.

If we didn't have a Van Allen belt, some bright scientist would say no life could survive on earth, because of the radiation.

Life as we know it evolved to deal with earth. It evolved to live with at atmosphere, with a van allen belt protecting it, with limited meteors strikes (because Jupiter protected us), with our sun, with tides, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Just because we can't deal with a series of Gamma Ray burst does not mean living creatures living under an ice ocean, feeding on volcanic energy can't survive it.

Basically, what's going on here is some one asked a Physicist a question about biology. You get an answer that makes about as much sense as if you ask Stephen Hawking if the tumor in your kidney is benign or malignant.

Without people, everything is valueless.

The value of gold is only high for people. Cows don't care about gold.

All valuation assumes that there are people in that same location. If they are not there, then the value is always $0.

You are entirely correct, except you misused the word 'worth'.

Worth is dependent upon location. Gold buried under 600 tons of radioactive lava is worthless.

Water in a desert is priceless.

Water and high purity plutonium located in outer space are worth far more than gold in that same location.

That's ridiculous. The history of business is someone coming along with a way to cut their costs a small percent, reduce their prices that much plus a little extra (i.e. reducing their profit margin), then using the new, low price to totally destroy the competition. That's exactly how Japanese car markers took down GM, Ford and Chrysler.

Every single car executive knows that is what happens and there is no way they are going to make the same mistake that American car companies made in the 70's and 80's all over again.

We have already adjusted the earth's climate - both intentionally and unintentionally.

We screwed up the ozone layer but are already well along the way to fix it. reference

We can create conditions favorable for earthquakes (fracking) and we can redirect lava flows. reference

The reason why people think climate can not be engineered is ignorance.

Generally it takes about the same amount of time to actually write Good Code as it does to actually write Bad Code.

The differences are more along the lines of:

1) You often don't know code is bad - or how to write good code - until after you have done the work once. So effectively it can take twice as long to write the good code - once to write it badly, then again to write it well.

2) Good code usually requires a good working environment. You can never write good code while your boss is demanding you hurry up and finish the project.

First and foremost, the program itself doesn't have to make google any money.

Because when you do this, you are giving google information on all the websites you visit.

Want to advertise to people that visit the Onion? Well, google can do that now - as soon as you leave the Onion, your next ad will be for Cracked.com or some other funny website in competition with The Onion.

America still cares about being #1.

But the GOP has become obsessed with the idea that government is evil. They will not fund anything except military and espionage.

That includes weather forecasting.

The GOP is wrong about government being evil. But despite the recent gains, they are in for a rude awakening over the next 7 years.

Where the guy was told the water bottle would gather water from the air, so he shouldn't even bother to fill it up?

Google is not expect to be extensive, it just reports what it can find. Their algorithms tend to be very good at recent stuff, but practically worthless for long term stuff. Go and try a search - even if you have someone's name chances are it won't find any bankruptcies that are over 7 years. You will find lawyers doing bankruptcy work. If you add in a date or year, you might get it - but if you already have the date, you already know about the bankruptcy. You definitely will not know if this is the 'right' person. They could simply have the same name.

So most banks don't rely on google - and the banks often don't have the time to do extra work.

So far, it has not become a significant problem. If it does, that might change.

I found the W3 schools web site: www.w3schools.com/ to be very helpful. While not specifically designed for kids, it is well written with lots of helpful features. It is a great introduction to HTML CSS JAVASCRIPT SQL PHP among other things.

In the US, bankruptcies are supposed to last on your record for no more 7 years.

That said, sometimes debt companies try to avoid that law and you have to sue them to remove debts cleared by bankruptcy - which often costs more than the debt would have cost to pay off.

They have a specific law protecting them, so they don't use Free Speech as a defense. Free Speech does not defend against false statements - slander or libel.

perhaps "booty camp" would be a better idea.

Most people waste the time in college, spending more time chasing alcohol and dates.