Not miracles, but I can certainly create, produce and distribute episodic content at the level of Sid and Marty Krofft's 1970s TV series from the comfort of my mom's basement. (Big props to Deidre Hall and Judy Strangis ...) Yes, fairly primitive by today's broadcast standards, but 100% attainable for a vary small capital investment. You'll still need the people in front of and behind the cameras, but the supercomputer on my desk makes up for a whole lot of infrastructure requirements.

Gimme a compelling story, and I'll engage my brain's suspension-of-disbelief-engine in return.

Once you have successfully accomplished the "sex" objective, the "sleep" objective moves abruptly to the front of the list (as your offspring will deprive you of any opportunities to do so.)

Lobsturducken. perhaps?

Evolution would suggest that its biochemistry would probably be very much like that of earth life, ...

only because the terrestrial evoltionary process is biased by being immersed in a watery environment. I fail to see that a water-chemistry evolution would be optimal on a planet brimming with liquid ammonia or liquid hydrocarbons.

For life to even stand a chance, you're going to need readily available raw materials, a "solvent" that's compatible (chemcally) with the raw materials, and an energy transfer mechanism. Water is top-of-the-list as solvents go, simply because we are currently using it that way. However, I have difficulty being so arrogant as to declare it to be "the one true solvent for all to use." Put your biological system in a 900 atm pressure environment, and tell me that the chemistry all works the same as it does here on Earth. Now bump the ambient temperature to 300C and do it again. There are way too many environmental permutations for my puny monkey-brain to comprehend.

I did say "total time," which includes getting out the tools and cleaning up afterwards. I'm not running a professional auto shop where tools and equipment are at-the-ready all the time.

Don't know where you got the "just making it harder" bit. Cars nowadays are substantially more complicated than those from as little as 10 years ago. Wrenching on a mid-70s ruster is dirt simple compared to today's machines. And the auto manufacturers didn't make them so just because they could. However, the auto manufacturers do view third-party service shops as "the competition."

Aquaponics. Using the auto-siphon systems, you can grow just about anything in a gravel bed rather than soil. Uses 1/10 the water of traditional land-based farming. Cool stuff if you have limited resources, but not as simple as putting seeds on the ground and waiting.

Heh, that's cute. My Subaru requires removal of an air box, the battery, and a bunch of other stuff before the coil-on-plug unit may be accessed. And yes, the stuff has to come out, because it is otherwise obstructed. Total time to replace a coil unit is about 2 hours if you know what you're doing. Double that if my wife helps.

Auto manufacturers would love to put the independents out of business. Even better if they can legislate them away. "All your repair bucks are belong to us!"

I think you're missing the point slightly. This isn't about the cost-effectiveness of pulling water from the tap, but rather the willingness (or ability) to ask the question "What do I need if I lose power for a week?" Most of the people I know will respond "I'll just go to WalMart." This is a symptom of our transition to a disposable economy, where problems are solved by buying something or hiring someone. People don't think for themselves anymore, and they end up in dire straits when they have to fend for themselves. If NYC can't resolve the gasoline supply issues soon, be prepared for the "Gasoline Riots of 2012."

So, if you live in an apartment building, and you lose municipal water for a week, where are you going to poop? This becomes a serious problem when a million or so urban dwellers are faced with the same issue, and all decide to crap outside somewhere ... like in the street.

Most people don't comprehend the "layers" concept. We lost power for three solid days. I've got a 2kW inverter and four Group 31 deep-cycle batteries to power the fridge and sump pump. They will hold me for 48-hours with realistic power management. We have a 200A alternator on the garden tractor that will recharge a battery in under an hour. We used about two gallons of gasoline keeping the electricity available.

We heated two rooms (kitchen and living room) with firewood and the fireplace. We abandoned the entire second floor of the house. We purchased several suitcases of water prior to the storm's arrival (can't run the well pump with the current setup - a liability I *will* resolve.) The pantry was stocked with canned goods (i.e. baked beans, etc) that could be eaten right out of the can. We have two extra propane tanks for the gas grill. We sacrificed our normal behavior during the crisis, and had zero expectation that "business as usual" would return until well after power was restored.

If you're going to build a "survivable" residence, it needs to have a small core that's extremely energy/resource efficient. Simply adding armor to the outside might be an easy sell from the builder's perspective, but it's only one piece of the survive-the-crisis puzzle. As evidenced by the problems in NYC right now, as soon as the storm passes, your supply lines become an even bigger issue.

wife: " ... and stay the hell out of my lingere drawer."

More than likely, the older router was expecting a relatively clean RF environment, and was crippled when all the neighbors deployed APs nearby. The newer APs were designed to handle cluttered environments, and their more-advanced algorithms provide improved performance over the previous generations' products. As old equipment is replaced with new, you'll probably see the same degradation in performance until new countermeasures are developed (in the next gen equipment, of course.) Ref: arms race.

"Citizen, you are about to experience an accident." [auto-drive initiates "cause accident" subroutines]

Flamebait? Please go re-read TFA, but substitute "inmate" for "student" and see if it still tracks.

About a year ago, our local parents got their collective panties in a bunch because the same company that provides food to the local prisons also supplies food to the local public schools. The "uproar" part came about because the prisoners' food was better than that delivered to the children. The prisoners had advocates for their diets, where the school administrators were more concerned with budget issues.

When the school administration is motivated by "$30 per inmate per day," they're going to enact policies that bias toward tracking attendance rather than policies that bias toward education. Why not just mark all students as "attending?" I'm sure that's been tried, and the State will have auditors to prevent abuse - hence the desire to have some method for demonstrating the attendee's presence. This is definitely a Camel's Nose issue, as once the tracking system is in place, the administrators will find other uses for it.

I've always held that High School was effectively prison. Now even more so.

Wikileaks can do no wrong. Neither can SHE Who Shall Not Be Named.

FTFY. She's going to have my ass if she catches me commenting on /. again ...