All Red Dwarf proves -- again -- is that the English have really low standards when it comes to comedy. Ok, you did produce Python, admittedly some of the best comedy ever, but it appears that was a fluke. You're responsible for Dr. Who, and I'll never, ever forgive you for that.

You *do* realize that the equatorial zone is generally tropical, wet as heck, and quite a bit warmer than everywhere else, yes? And that plants thrive on CO2?

Doesn't follow that making it warmer will make it drier. That doesn't seem to be how it works. Drier happens when water sources go away. There's no reasonable postulate for that which would apply to most equatorial regions.

Nah, it's almost certain to be big cats. Perfect apex predators. They can deal with heat, cold, wind; they can kill anything, climb like crazy, swim, they're fast as hell, stronger than just about anything, they instinctively use available terrain features for cover and shelter, they come equipped with deadly weapons, and they're very smart and wily. Common mutations already include thumbs and other extra digits, and they have a short enough breeding and maturation cycle that populations can recover in a very short time span, given only that mankind isn't around to defeat them using already developed technology.

Is it sane, given foreknowledge of your own demise and the power to avert it, to charge full-steam-ahead toward that demise

It's not my demise; it is the demise of others, sometime in the future. I fully expect to live out the rest of my life comfortably. I rather suspect that's the same set of conditions you face when you describe these worst case scenarios to others. Some of us are sensitive to the woes of future persons, some of us are not. But it's always at least one step removed from today's reality.

In the USA, just look at the number of people who would let the financially low performing suffer the slings and arrows of disease and injury without any particular concern or guilt; you can measure that directly by the resistance to the ACA, which remains substantial, even though it's working out pretty well if you actually take the time to look at the numbers. When people don't concern themselves with the other people in town, who are there and suffering right now, isn't it a bit optimistic to expect them to concern themselves with some abstract, unknown set of people who will exist after most of them have died anyway?

You're better off looking to technology to solve this than compassionate outlooks among the citizenry.

I'm going to go back to watching the news now, where I can learn more about us shooting up Afghanistan for no particular reason other than to prop up our MI complex, as we've kind of worn out Iraq now. You know, because we care. We'd be in Africa "helping" them too, you know, if we needed more income. I'm sure their day will come, though. Both Africa and South America are deep future market resources for our weapons manufacturers. Caring. It's what we do!

I'd expect massive droughts in the equatorial zones

Why? Equatorial zones have a great deal of ocean water, which certainly isn't going to change. That water will evaporate faster, the atmosphere will contain more humidity, and therefore there will be more precipitation, if the average temperature is up a few degrees C. How does that constitute the precursors for anticipating equatorial droughts?

I can see marginal areas (US midwest, for instance) baking off the little bit of moisture they have and not reaching any threshold of precipitation, followed by dustbowls and so on, but at the equator? Why would droughts happen there?

Proposed by those the people of OHIO voted for.

Which may be sufficient to see them ousted next time around, Ohio not being a particularly ignorant state as our states go. Here in the US, politicians think that they have to be religious to be elected (and they may still be right about that) but generally speaking, they aren't controlled by this when in office (look to corporations and the money stream for that.)

In the interim, it's worth keeping in mind the degree of scientific and technological progress that's come out of the USA.

We're not all superstitious wankers, though I can see why it might seem that way sometimes.

Yep, most likely that'll be exactly how it goes.

However, right now, it's kind of fabulous. :)

Now of course gas stations don't always have fully occupied pumps and that's the point, so that almost whenever you arrive, there's a free pump available.

Well, there's likely a pump available. It isn't generally going to be free. Tesla charging stations, however, at least for the time being...

If you thought it was a quick process to build a Supercharger station, you were clearly wrong.

If you thought I thought it was a quick process to build a Supercharger station, you were just as wrong. If you thought I cared about how long it tool them to build such as station, you were wrong about that, too. And if you thought I liked java over c, you were still wrong. I could go on -- likely longer than even I, in the name oif pushing a point until it is completely blunt, am willing to do so, but I will refrain in the interest of keeping the peace.

Anyway, as it turns out, TFS serves as a veritable smorgasbord of potential if-then-huhs that can only be explained by somewhat bemused turtles all the way down.

At this time, I'd like to take a moment to thank my dear friend Yurtle.

I think he was just pinging me for the ideas, which do predate my efforts and is certainly fair -- I started my whole "object" approach to c in 1985.

Of course, the whole point was to avoid using compiler tech that generated code I didn't intend it to generate, and in that sense, I got what I was after.

I wish I could still write my code in assembler, though. I was never more at home than when churning out 6809 or 68000 code.

Thanks, looks like very interesting reading. Bookmarked it.

Have you ever written C code which uses a switch statement based on what type a struct/union is and calling the relevant code for it?

No. When I use structures as objects (which is often), they almost always contain a pointer to a block of general methods appropriate to that structure, as well as containing any methods unique to the object, all of which are called through the object/structure, so it would be unusual, at least, to be testing the object type in order to choose an object-specific procedure to call. However, I do mark each object type with a specific ID and serial as they are created, along with a tag indicating what procedure created them, as these things facilitate some very useful memory management and diagnostic mechanisms.

Have you ever used qsort?

I am aware of qsort. But I have my own multi-method sort library that I use. Most of them locate the comparison mechanisms they are to use through the procedures specified by the objects they are asked to sort. Likewise list management, memory management, certain types of drawing primitives and image processing primitives, image handling mechanisms, associative storage, basically anything I have run into that I thought likely I would need more than once. I am positively locked into the idea that if I write it, I can fix it, and the number of bugs and problems that fall into the "maybe they'll fix the library someday" class are greatly reduced. I'm a little less picky if I have the source code to a capability I didn't actually write and can supply my own version if and as needed. A good example of something like that is SQLite. Actually having the source code and compiling it in reduces my inherent paranoia to a somewhat duller roar.

Ha. Funny. Thank you, didn't know that.

People owning and running businesses should be allowed to choose whith whom they associate and do business and then the ones which discriminate against otherwise good, paying customers can rightfully go under instead of being propped up by the policies of the state.

That's precisely the kind of thinking that led to child labor in factories and mines; it is also why we have to subsidize low paying jobs through our taxes so people can survive at a (somewhat) more reasonable level. It is what led to "whites only" and "separate bathrooms"; It is why the male/female employment ratios are so skewed; it is why older engineers are replaced by younger ones who know far less and don't have families to support; it is why the EPA, or something like it, really needs to exist. And so on.

Business, large and small, incorporated or not, as entities, resemble people only to the degree that most of them, left unregulated, exhibit sociopathy and/or psychopathy. History has shown this explicitly, time and time again. No one is guessing about this: the facts have been in for a long time, and new facts consistent with the old continue to arrive with distressing regularity.

The idea that business, left to its own discretions, will do the right thing is nothing more than a fantasy. Unregulated business is a very bad idea, and further, the premise that bad businesses will automatically fail because customers will do the right thing is equally bankrupt, and for many of the same reasons. Large numbers of people are both selfish and disinterested in the welfare of others.

Yes but that doesn't make the intestines a sexual organ.

Any body part with nerve endings and/or usable contact surfaces can be brought into play in sexual relations under the right circumstances. This has nothing do do with the gender of the party or parties involved. The fact that you don't know these things speaks very poorly about your competence and experience in the sexual arena.