I hope she happened to have a copy of the book Robinson Crusoe on hand to take her mind off of her predicament.

I've used Google Earth and NASA World Wind in the past to visually find some clear-cutting, but it's not up-to-date and hit-and-miss and not exactly... clear-cut. This tool seems much MUCH better adapted.

Those idiots you're dealing with might be alien immigrants with really good plastic surgeons.

So that gibberish my wife spouts when she's pissed is really volumes of highly advanced information in disguise? Where do I get a decoder ring for that?

Not stupid at all. There was no broadcast. We were listening with our hands to our ears, not trying to phone them up. We were hoping to hear something from 20 years ago. That's a heartbeat on the scale of sapient civilizations. The likelihood that they'd develop radio sources precisely during the 20 years just before we start listening is pretty slim. More likely is that they heard US first and have 'gone dark' to keep us from hearing them when we'd inevitably get curious.

They might actually still be there and just be maintaining radio silence. We'll hear them eventually... when they show up in orbit around Earth.

Guess which 'environment' they're trying to protect?

That's right: the oil fields environment!

24 ounces of a soft drink or 'fruit' juice with sugar or fructose or HFCS is still quite unhealthy. In the case of the ones containing fructose or HFCS, doing that ritually could wind up overwhelming and damaging your kidneys, since fructose is initially metabolized as if it were a toxin.

Right, and I'm guessing the reason for his curious selectivity might have something to do with where some of his fortune is invested....

Control your literalism. Both soft drinks and beer are carbonated. Both have an enormous amount of empty calories. Why target one and not the other? My implication is that the latter is too sacred a cow to get equal treatment. Same goes for the worst of the 'fruit' juices, which may not be carbonated but have been identified by others as contributory to childhood obesity. I stopped short of mentioning wine, in part because I don't drink at all and have forgotten some of the chemistry involved.