"There is no chance of another glacial period occurring until CO2 levels drop well below 300 ppm again."

Even a small scale nuclear war could do it. National Geographic did an article a few years ago where it was suggested that 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons could very well reverse the near term warming trend. That assumed a certain amount of ash and soot from secondary burning however.

Where do you get this crap about Iran being "crazy"? Fox News? Israeli and U.S. government propaganda? Iran is not "crazy" and U.S. intelligence analysts have said that there is no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Even IF Iran had a weapons program, they are not "crazy" enough to use a nuke against the USA or Israel and doom themselves to complete annihilation in the inevitable counterattack.
If oil was my only major export, I wouldn't want to burn it for domestic power production either.
The real reason is that the USA government uses a ridiculous and short sighted double standard in its foreign(and domestic) policy.

If the consumers like it, couldn't they raise prices? It might also allow the early adopter to grab market share until the competitors ketch up.
If your condiment bottle does something cool that the competitor's doesn't, I'll buy it and pay a premium.

Business owners should be able to "deny services to individuals" based on whatever criteria that the business owner chooses. Yes, that includes race, gender, hair color, sexual orientation or whatever else the owner wants to dream up. We shouldn't need to argue this on the basis of "religious freedom". It should be about "freedom" in the most general sense. Same with the "Hobby Lobby" case. Forget religion. Government has no legitimate authority to dictate the terms of a health benefits package that an employer offers to their employees.

IBM isn't actually producing a lot these days.
Their PC and X86 server businesses have already been sold to Chinese companies. They're divesting themselves of their semiconductor business as well. I assume they'll keep the P-series and Z-series servers for a while, but "International Business Software and Services" would be a much more appropriate name for the company.

Agreed. People already move about the world completely immersed in what's happening on their smart phones. The fact that you need a certain screen size to have a usable interface and enjoyable experience puts a serious limit on the evolution of that technology. I think there's also going to be a saturation point in the app space when the "cool" has worn off. Something like Google Glass has got to be the next logical extension.

Snowden gave everything he had to journalists. He didn't bring any digital storage media with him when he went to Russia precisely because he didn't want anyone else getting access to the raw data.
Whatever 'intel' he could provide has already been published in the pages of The Guardian.

"20 years ago, my house was made of biodegradable wood. It is still usable today."

+1 Funny
Accidentally modded -1 Overrated.

Drat.

Interesting. I was not aware that there was a debate about the practice of quarantine. The idea of "moving" infected, or possibly infected people certainly seems counter-intuitive.

Washing hands? These primitive savages still haven't figured out that you should keep human waste in a central location far away from your water supply and that you shouldn't bathe in water that you're later planning to drink.

"...few organizations are capable of moving thousands of people, some of them infected, to different locations on the globe"

Why in the hell would you want to move infected people to different locations on the globe? Furthermore, why would you move '1000's of people together when some of them might be infected? Putting a few sick people on a crowded bus or a plane is a great way to spread disease.

The typical response to a disease outbreak is quarantine because you want to keep the infection localized and to keep sick people away from others. I can understand how you might want to have resources in place to quickly transport medical professionals and other experts along with necessary equipment to respond to an outbreak. but moving infected people? That doesn't make much sense.

Interesting article and some good URLs at the bottom.

I always thought the idea that "ebonics" was a separate language was a bogus excuse for not learning "proper" English. I didn't know I was implicitly subscribing to "prescriptivism". If language is defined by "how people use it", then descriptivism would suggest that it really is a separate language. You couldn't possibly take an ebonics speaker and a typical New England yankee and, for the purpose of descriptivism, identify them both as "native speakers" of English.

Excellent point. I was thinking exclusively about the spoken word, but when you said "reading" I realized that incorrect grammar would find it's way into text as well. I would definitely inhibit my reading ability if I was suddenly exposed to books and articles that contained prolific grammatical errors.
+1 insightful if I had points and could resist commenting.

"It is well past time to consign grammar pedantry to the history books."

Me and him be disagreein'. It's a given that language is always going to be dynamic and evolving. We see the proliferation of neologisms and common misspellings of words and phrases(e.g. cancelled) become so common that they end up being acceptable. There must be some sort of foundation however.

"People should not be stigmatized for the way they speak..."

Wrong. I can understand getting over things like "comprised of" and "cancelled" as being too overwhelming to eradicate. I can't deal with improper use of they're, their and there, double negatives and improper verb conjugation. Those should definitely be stigmatized

"I can't get no satisfaction" is a bloody song, not a speech. It works because "I can't get any satisfaction" doesn't roll off the tongue quite so smoothly. That doesn't mean we should dispense with the conventional use. Completely discarding grammar would be a quantum leap backward in effective communication, which is already suffering in the electronic age,

Irregardless of what he think language should be comprised of, do he thinks we's be wanting too tolerating verbal chaos?

"Obama Administration Wants More Legal Power"

Leave it at that.