Oh, so you do agree there are cold hard things in the world.
So you were wrong before when you said, "The world is cold and hard as we allow it to be. It is a *choice*"

In fact, it's not a choice.....you know it.

We can help people out when they need help, but let's not pretend we've changed nature or reality.

So basically you agree with me, the world is a cold and hard place. You choose to not focus on that, which is fine, but the problems won't disappear.

You should talk to Bill Shockley.....I think you two would get along.

What about roots?

This explains why it's not clear. Trying to understand how humans ate 50,000 years ago doesn't help much in understanding what is good for us today.

Then allow it to end death: for that is the coldest and hardest thing we all face.

This article talks about why "what we were doing 100,000 years ago" is not particularly useful for understanding a healthy modern diet. (In brief: we as humans are omnivores, especially suited to eating many different things, and in any case humans evolve to match their diet....on a much smaller scale than 100,000 years, as the paper points out).

What about their luggage combination?

I don't know why you think so.

Here's an interview on PBS: "I went to visit indigenous people and hunter-gatherers...they don’t get that much meat because hunting is hard work."

Look at the chart half-way down, of some of the hunter/gatherer tribes that still exist. There is huge variety in one they eat....some are mostly meat, some are mostly plants.
The Paleo diet today isn't good for your health.
Unsurprisingly, here is a study in Nature that points out copying Paleolithic diets would not be very useful anyway (not in the least because we've evolved since then, through the Neolithic era).

The paleo diet is yet another fully trademarked fad diet.

I'm pretty generous when it comes to hiring people to do things I don't want too, but who...

Ok, suggestion for just such a hire (so you can have an opportunity to be generous!): Retain someone to teach you the difference between "to" and "too." :/

Math:

Ameliorating $4/month waste:

$1000 / 4 = 250 months until positive ROI. Your $1000 estimate is way high, though -- what he proposed is about $300 at most, at the scale he indicated. Probably not even that. It mostly depends on the wiring. Long is costly. Short and efficient, you're way down in costs. The rest is relatively constant. Solar panels, charge regulator, inverter. I show the closer numbers along with yours in square brackets: [$300 / 4 = 75 months until +ROI]

That's 20 years. [6 years]

After that, it's a constant ~$48 / year win.

Over the working and retired lifetime, figuring age 30 is when this is done in deference to slashdot's basic demographic as I perceive it, 40 years remain, so 20 [6] of that is payment, which means the ROI is 20 x $48 = $960 [34 x $48 = $1632]

There's also the social benefit of not drawing that power. It all adds up.

There's also the benefit of not losing functionality when power goes out.

And it's fun and personally rewarding.

And it's affordable, much more so that typically larger solar projects.

So, no, no stupidity. You're not thinking clearly, and to top that off, your data is bad.

Some people are allergic to milk, and living on a diet of meat and vegetables is still a new idea not supported by science (though the paleo guys come up with a lot of weird ideas like "that is how our ancestors lived ten-thousand years ago." Which is not true).

The language you use there is weird. The world is cold and hard, and any of us could be dead tomorrow; entitlements aren't a god-given right, there's no such thing (and that's true whether you're atheist or strongly believe in God).

Why don't you say, "hey guys, these poor people are out there with deficient brains, let's go help them!" Helping people is something we can actually accomplish as a society, and saying it like that would rally a lot more people to the cause.

but why should anyone but the individual pay for said options???

We have to start from the premise that said individual may well not be able to afford these options.

Then, we pay for the same reason that we as group pay for other things that benefit society over the long term, like roads, fire departments, public education, defense, sewers, sidewalks, dikes, rain gutters. We know certain needs are going to come up, and/or certain events will actually happen, so we prepare for them in some way that optimizes the outcome.

Unwanted children are very often a serious burden both on society at large, and often upon the parents, and often even to themselves. The workforce is diminished and damaged, and people grow up under conditions that start out with a fairly strong negative impetus.

We benefit directly by stronger parent-child relations; by prepared parents as opposed to "oh crap, I/we didn't plan on THIS!" parents; By better educated and happier citizens.

It's the future we're investing in. That's one of the best things society can do.

Lastly, the evaluation should, at least in my estimation, be based upon this criteria:

Which is worse? Unwanted children, loss of productivity, social turmoil and misery, or a very reasonable levy upon the citizens in general?

All family planning services taken together ca. 2010 account for 2.37B out of the total of 3.55 trillion spent, or .06%, or 6/10,000ths of the total expenditure. That means for every $1000.00 you paid in taxes, that 60 cents of that went to cover family planning. Not too harsh, I'm thinking.

To me, if that is the question (and I think it is), the answer is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Your cite: "the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years"

Responding cite: "multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years"

I think that in presenting this, the poster may be contending that a 20-year drought is more severe than a 3 year drought. Although that really depends on the range of conditions we call a drought. If it's a narrow range, a 20-year event is almost certainly worse than a three year event. If the range is wider, not so certain. I wonder if the tree ring data can be analyzed for severity as well as duration.

Then we have this in the responding cite:

"a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years."

That means the former started 1150 years ago (within your 1200 year range) and the next one, after that.

Pretty sure the other poster has checkmated you one way or another, and perhaps both, assuming the data being cited is accurate.

The dustbowl also checkmates anything California is currently experiencing, just as an aside.

There's just no way this allows us to assign the current drought definitively to AGW, as the data shows much worse events without any such impetus.

So, could it be AGW causing the current drought? Sure. Is it? No one knows. And when people claim it is? They are full of hot air, either passing along misinformation, or being disingenuous themselves (I always assume the former, because the number of people who actually have a reasonable grasp on the situation are very few on either side.)

a) I was well aware of the kind of punitive shaming / badging he was referring to;
b) My knowledge of the history of the 20th century isn't all that bad, try me if you like;
c) I was table-turning his (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek contextual suggestion to force armbands on gays,
d) while making fun of Christians, because superstition embodies all those weaknesses.
e) Godwin's law is the mention of Nazism or Hitler as a comparison, and WRT:
f) punitive shaming / badging is common in the US now, so no need to go prior to the 1950's:
g) therefore, Godwin's law is not in play (my references here are not a comparison.)
h) My slashdot id is "fyngyrz", not "fyngyrx"

Any questions for me, AC?