Just to clarify, the Carrington event was not an extinction event. Yes, it fucked up electrical grid type thingies (devices connected to large antennas of copper strung between stations separated by many miles), but it did not have sufficient energy to vaporize, ionize, or otherwise cook things at the microscopic level of the pits on optical media. Had it actually done so, thee, me, the birdees and the beeses would no longer be here.

Empirical evidence (the more or less continual presence of life on Earth for the past 6,500 to 3.75 billion years) would seem to indicate that our star doesn't misbehave in this fashion, so step back, breathe, and for God's sake cut back on the hyperbole. :)

Terrorist Jim: Bob, we will have you wear the antimagnet cloaking suit. All we have to do is have you walk into a restroom right before you go through the scanner, open this forty gallon Thermos container and pour the liquid nitrogen all over yourself.

You'll walk to airport security and pass through the security check with no problems.

Day of the terrorist strike.

Bob enters the airport dragging a heavy carry-on suitcase. His suit is disproportionately large compared to his body, and seems quite stiff. He moves with great difficulty.

He takes his luggage into the airport restroom and enters a bathroom stall. Witnesses report a hissing noise and a strange fog coming from under the stall door. There's a splashing noise, followed by a sizzling sound and a loud wail. Bob flings open the bathroom stall to reveal his suit, bathed in vapor. Steam rises from his exposed cracked skin. He takes two steps and falls to the floor, writhing in pain, as parts of his suit shatter and skin sloughs from his hands.

Terrorist Jim (upon seeing the news reports): So next time, we strap a small refrigeration unit to Sam's back ...

Given time, they'll find their focus. This is the balance I have been waiting for since the Tea Party came into the picture. The US needs a citizen-originated anti-corporatist organization. We need a powerful "grass roots" movement to answer the swing to pro-corporation anti-worker conservatism we've taken. I see OWS as the first step in a corrective turn away from fascism and back towards a more humane democracy. I'm hoping it will eventually provide the yang to the Tea Party's yin. I was a child of the 60's, raised in the 70's when the 60's optimism was still relatively fresh in some people. I've been waiting for the awakening that was promised but never delivered by the great demonstrations of that era. It is long overdue.

Test it to see if it can withstand sufficient spin. If it can, tunnel under the surface and create inverse domes, etc. Spin it up. Apply thrust. Live on the ceilings. Find a comet with sufficient hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, and trace elements. Send it on the same course, separated by a safe but commutable distance. You have your generation ship and your food supply. Of course, the thrust to move such huge bodies is a problem, but if we're talking about thousand year journeys I'd hope we would have solved that particular problem. -Joe

more moving people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTzMeDiv-7U

People will take a phenomenon verified by hundreds of scientists in dozens of studies, global warming, and dismiss it because they got stuck in a snow drift. Then they'll turn around and forward an email that cites a brother's wife's uncle's cousin as breathless proof of impending calamity? I know the answer -- people are stupid. The question is purely rhetorical. :)

As the most populous state in the union vis à vis the largest textbook market, it seemed odd to me that California would lose out to Texas in deciding what content textbooks should contain. How about giving the rest of the US a choice between Texas-styled and California-styled editions of textbooks? Although one version is obviously most cost effective for publishers, two versions isn't as bad as fifty separate editions. -Joe

they haven't worked in the field long enough. All it takes to develop a different perspective is one twenty four hour work day and a supervisor who complains that his icons are misarranged on his desktop.

It's like reporting on the flavor of turkey in a Vegan magazine, or presenting a paper on the physical evidence for unicorns for peer review by Nature.