Peat bogs are the start of plants > coal. I am pretty sure we can make more in a billion years or so ;) In several sci-fi books, future people marvel that petroleum was once burned as fuel. In a few hundred years apparently it is vastly more valuable as a feedstock for organic chemical processes than as - horrors - just burning it LOL.

Fossil fuels ARE renewable! The process that made them once can make them again. Renewable in my lifetime - not so much.

So..I'll find myself in a nursing home one day with no idea how I got there, my car will be sold, my pr0n erased, and my wife partying it up with the pool boy? I can see some surprises in store when they fire this up.

A story I think I have heard more than once: Reporter pretends to be nuts to get inside story in the asylum. All staff are fooled, but none of the patients are.

FYI it is utter bollocks because it if makes to the CENTER of the planet, that is where it would STAY.

Just got back from a trip to downtown Philadelphia. I ahd to get around parts of a wrecked car, a stalled truck, and then run a light that was on permanent red - after waiting for the other 20 people ahead of me to realize it was never going to change and do likewise. So how is Mr RoboCar going to do THAT? How long would it wait for a green light? Would it crash into a fender in the road or stop for a McDs bag?

I would have driven about 200 MPH through the middle of a nursery school when I was 16. My "day fine" would have been about $5! YEEHAWWW!!!

We made do as an isolated militarily insignificant power from 1918 to 1941. In early December we learned how bad an idea that was. Policy from 1945 onwards has been to NEVER look so weak as to draw an attack. I know a whole bunch of people around the world wish the USA would be Canada - Southen Section, but that all changes when shit hits the fan and someone needs their ass saved (again).

No it does not. If you put a junkyard, an oil refinery, a strip club, a disco, and a power plant in my neighborhood they would all have customers from SOMEPLACE, but all would be completely hated by the people that live here. Zoning laws exist for a reason.

You are not quite right on the depth rating. Granted I have never taken a watch below about 60 meters, but that rating is for static conditons, i.e. still water and not touching any controls. Being in rough water, surf, banging the watch around, etc. can all flood a watch well above the rated depth. 200 or 300 meter ratings have a real advantage when diving or surfing. That said, I tend to stick to the $30-$60 Casios and get my money's worth out of them.

You need to read General Giap's book. He knew full well the North Vietnamese had not one hope in hell of beating the USA in a war. He said the war will be won on the streets of Washington DC, not in Vietnam. He was 100% correct. By being an ongoing large PITA that would not quit no matter how many times we kicked his ass combined with the war becoming massively unpopular back home, he knew sooner or later we would decide we had "won" enough times and go home. And we did.

If you can make it to the retirement home, women outnumber men by quite a bit. It might take 70 years, but you will finally get some.

The second new ST movie was Die Hard with space ships. IIRC, the bad guys were trying to knock building over in San Francisco with a hijacked airliner - I mean starship - and they had chases and fights around the city. NOTHING resembling the Star Trek I grew up with.

I buy old Thinkpads from FleaBay and use them for all kinds of things where I need a rugged computer, doesn't have to be real fast, great display, and low enough cost to not cry if it dies. The newer Lenovos are utter crap in every possible way but raw speed compared to the old Thinkpads.

Ford is building aluminum trucks, Corvettes have been fiberglass for longer than I have been alive, and epoxy-carbon is pretty much how high end race cars and exotic street cars are made now. We ARE doing all this stuff - just needs to scale up.