No, that's the dark underbelly of having huge-ass volcanoes around. As long as there's no solution to that, possibly involving enormous straws, folks are pretty much stuck with it. Volcanic geothermal power is a fully positive method with painful prerequisites.

Thanks for the pictures, though.

Yup, but the captain of an oil tanker can be reasonably expected to be aware of the possible consequences of his deeds. I'm not at all sure if one person with a spade can anticipate the possibility of cutting a neighboring country off the Internet, much less ignore it.

I expect that 9/11 is becoming less of a tragedy and more of an unit of measurement. As in, traffic accidents kill roughly one 9/11 worth of Americans every thirty-three days, while obesity kills roughly one 9/11 worth of Americans every four days. It should come in handy: the only other such unit we've had was "megadeath," and that's really cumbersome on smaller scales.

Some people will take issue with this, but it won't cost the event any of its dignity. All the dignity it could lose was lost when it was linked to Saddam Hussein.

I hope you have a good new year.

I expect they could require that all they wanted, and it still wouldn't happen.

If my usability manuals are to be believed, people have neglected the safeties of nuclear reactors because those things are a chore and do nothing anyway. If you don't want your users to do something, then you design your system so that they never get the option.

Parish unions which, I hope, have equivalents to boards and councils, because I can't keep any more of this straight right now... and yes, I have had Monty Python's The Bishop running in my head for the last hour.

The church holds parish elections, parish being the basic territorial and administrative unit, every four years. All members ages 16 and up (18 and up until just recently) are eligible to vote, and all members ages 18 and up are eligible to run. Each parish elects a parish board, its decision-making body, which is in charge of such things as the budget. The parish boards also elects a parish council, its executive body in charge of such things as hiring most employees, every two years. One person can serve on both the board and the council. A parish council is headed by a priest, though, who's known as a vicar.

Parishes are grouped into nine dioceses, each of which is led by a bishop and has the two additional decision-making bodies of a diocese council (14 laymen, 7 priests, led by a layman) and a cathedral chapter (seven people, including the bishop, the vicar of the parish with a cathedral, and one layman). The chapter appoints parish priests and selects three candidates for vicar elections. All members of a parish ages 16/18 and up are eligible to vote for vicars, and write-in candidates are possible. Apparently a decision to turn vicar elections over to parish councils is on the table, to clear this mess up a bit.

Bishops are elected by a diocese's priests, lecturers (an aging priest-without-the-frills position, I believe) and an equal number of laymen, whom parish boards select from their ranks. Ten voters can nominate a priest to run. A similar process elects the archbishop, the head honcho and general spokesman. The archbishop can only be bishopy to the oldest diocese, but heads the synod, the church's highest decision-making body that decides where the church stands (64 laymen elected by the parishes for four years, 32 priests, the bishops and a few hangers-on like the leader of the military chaplains) and the church government, the executive body (kirkkohallitus, the archbishop, two bishops and nine laymen, one from every diocese and elected by the synod, also known as those feet-dragging bastards at my folks' so clearly they have some say).

Sorry to gab your ear off, but proper answers take time and this was surprisingly interesting. I'm pretty sure I was careful, though I had to translate some of this on the fly and of course don't know how the internal politics work. Larger cities have parish unions, which, have equivalents to boards and councils. This seems rather democratic to my untrained eye. A parish election is actually coming up next month, an archbishop was elected in the summer, and the new bishop of the capital city is a woman. There was an inspiring campaign where she and the other leading candidate, a man, both told people to ignore gender.

How does this compare?

That's what makes us qualified to comment in those fields? Having the right mindset makes up for the lack of relevant knowledge and training? I suppose it could, if that mindset was objectively and accurately analysing vast tracts of information.

Unfortunately, spending several years in an environment where just about everything is reducible to ones and zeroes is not going to cause that kind of clarity. ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE: Just recently I came across colleagues who were talking about how we ought to bring back eugenics. Why? Apparently because of engineer logic at its purest: The tech is good, it's just the users who are stupid.

I recently interviewed a Save the Children organization's representative over child pornography. She pointed out that the ample psychological harm caused by kid rape is compounded by the victim's awareness that depictions of the act are being spread and "enjoyed." What's your take on this? She had previously mentioned a gateway theory, ie. that less access to child porn results in fewer child molesters, but I'd have to see the numbers before coming to conclusion.

This sounds like a reasonable difference of interpretation. What you dislike, I both dislike and am sick of.

And in the interests of geekery: the story's badness (to me) may not be its property as much as the result of a complex and partially random chain reaction. Consider: If I had been in a different mood, less attentive or placed emphasis on different words, would the introduction of Lewis have put me on my guard? If it hadn't, would I have ignored the story's resemblance to those three horrid tropes or taken them to be excusable? If I had been less disillusioned, would saving lives by bombing Westminster Abbey have seemed reasonable instead of mean-spirited, and would I have had suspended my disbelief over the near-psychotic protagonist not only entertaining the thought of time travel but deducing it immediately? There's some fascinating interplay and self-reinforcing loops at work here. A pity that I study another field entirely.

The impression remains that Greg Egan saw that he was holding all the cards, reached over, and kicked his opponent in the groin.