Of course, the text-to-speech program isn't illegal, but redistributing the copyrighted text is. The copyright holders recognize that the only remotely-feasible way to stop illegal distribution is to make it difficult to make copies. That means that legally accessing the work becomes collateral damage, but that's perfectly acceptable to a special-interest group like the MPAA. They're not interested in helping the blind. They're interested in helping copyright holders.

Actually they don't even appear to be interested in helping "copyright holders". Since they have been caught at least once enguaging in movie and software "piracy". The only people they are really interested in helping are their members.

There is evidence that it is fossil fuel related. The concentrations of different isotopes of carbon are shifting. Fossil fuels don't have much Carbon 14 in them, since they haven't been exposed to the atmosphere for a long time.

AFAIK nobody is measuring and recording the isotope ratios of fossil fuels as they are extracted. Volcanic emissions, including hydrothermal vents in deep ocean, are also likely to be very low in C14. If anything coal would be most likely to contain C14, given a source of neutrons, since solid carbon is a good neutron moderator.
Oxygen isotope ratios in water are affected by temperature. What effect does temperature have on carbon isotope ratios in carbon dioxide?
In the recent past carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has followed average temperature, with a delay of a few hundred years. Even if it can be demonstrated that human activities have had an effect on the isotope ratio, then that dosn't in itself show that these have made any difference to the concentration. There is much more carbon dioxide in the oceans than in atmosphere. More entering the atmosphere from other sources may simply equate to less entering the atmosphere from the oceans.
The fundermental problem is that we have no way of knowing what either concentration or isotope ratio of carbon dioxide would "naturally" be now. Moreover climate models predicated on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration have failed to predicted anything. Thus "geo-engineering" involving attempts to manipulate the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere is likely to be a complete waste of time. Even if something was done to actually reduce either carbon dioxide emitted by human activities or its concentration in the atmosphere. So far "green" methods have at best made no difference to human carbon dioxide emissions. About they only thing they appear to be good for is wasting money!

All the worlds plants took a collective sigh of relief. CO2 has been so low for so long, it was like hypoxia for plants.

Probably not that much relief. The optimal level for plants appears to be in the 1,000 to 2,000 ppm range. Thus 400 ppm is "too low" and still close to the 200 ppm lower limit. For animals, including humans, "too high", would appear to be greater than 5,000 ppm.
Yet there are those prediction ecological disaster at more than an order of magnitude lower.

The 800,000 year level comes from testing of air pockets locked in glacial ice. Seriously, is it that hard to try and understand something before speaking stupid things?

If these trapped air pockets formed within minutes then remained hermetically sealed until humans looked at them then it might make sense to compare them with modern measuring instruments. Since this is obviously not the case such comparisons are, at best, "apples and oranges". (Things get even worst using "proxies" which equate to rough averages over periods from decades to centuries.) That's before even considering precision, accuracy and signal to noise ratio of any of the data.

As a T1D, I'll note that the GP didn't really comment on what it means to be a T2D. The characterization, however, is mostly true for an overwhelming majority of t2d, but completely false for t1d. T2D is controllable with diet and exercise alone in something like 80-90% of the T2D population. Weight and lifestyle factors make up an overwhelming percentage of the risk factors. And while there is clearly a genetic (usually associated with the likelihood that weight/lifestyle will give way to t2d, not that the genetics alone cause t2d) and medical condition component too, this is the clear minority.

Diabetes is more of a "syndrome" than a "disease". Even divided into groups of T1 (typically no insulin produced in the body), T2 (insulin resistant), T1.5 (LADA), MODY, T3 ("Double Diabetes") & "Gestational Diabetes".
Insulin resistance tends to promote conversion of glucose into fat since it reduces the amount the body can use for anything else. Obesity also tends to increase insulin resistance. Leading to a positive feedback loop. To make matters worst hyperglycemia is toxic to cells, including those which produce insulin.
An important factor is that in the last 30 or so years dietary advice has been to eat lots of carbohydrates. (In some cases up to 70%.) With the result that both obesity and T2 diabetes has dramatically increased. Something previously unheard of called "diabulimia" has appeared amongst T1 diabetics (mostly young women.) But the idea that "Low fat, low calorie, high carbohydrate" might not be the best (let alone the worst) kind of diet for humans tends to result in the classic "heritic treatment". The biggest irony being that humans (possibly all mammals) do not actually need to eat any carbohydrates in the first place. Are there many high carbohydrate (especially high starch) foods which are not the product of agriculture?

It doesn't only solve the two mentioned problems, it would completely change the life style!
- eat whenever you want to
- stop eating when you feel you had enough, instead of eating "enough" for the insulin you took

No doubt there are plenty of T1s who can regulate their insulin dosage to be able to do this.

- no need to wake up in the night to check sugar level

If someone is frequently interrupting their sleep then it might be better to adjust their control methods.

- exercise whenever you want to w/o worrying that your sugar level is high enough for the effort

The only organ which really needs glucose for respiration is the brain. Muscle cells can directly use amino acids and fatty acids for respiration. Also the liver will perform both gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis to prevent hypoglycemia. Which can in some cases result in reactive hyperglycemia.
All a reading before exercise will indicate is how much glucose is in the blood. It won't indicate how much glycogen is in the liver or the muscles to be used. How much gluconeogenesis the liver is capable of. Even which metabolic pathways the muscles might use.
Even if this were to work exactly as intended you'd still need to know when it's time for the next injection.

Pregnant diabetic women could be much less worried too.

Presumably you mean T1s diagnosed before they became pregnant. Rather than those diagnosed with "gestational diabetes".

This is a neat idea, but not yet remotely ready to try in people. There were quite significant local infammatory reactions (big lumps!) in some of the mice tested. There's probably ten years of work, and well north of $150 million dollars before the first human tests.

Would any sensible T1 want to try this if all it will do is get their blood glucose level below 200mg/dl? Which is still nowhere near normal (non diabetic) for either a mouse or a human.

Lettuce isn't a fruit, so lack of pollination on the field shouldn't be a problem, tomatoes and potatoes are from the new world

You really wouldn't want to eat the fruit of potatoes. They are rather toxic to humans. Though both the fruits and the flowers do make it clear that potatoes are closely related to tomatoes.

The Herschel Space Observatory is 1,500,000 km away at a Lagrangian point. Servicing missions of any kind are out of the question.

A robot tanker resupply is rather different from the kind of EVA service performed on the HST.

My issue is that the price difference per pound isn't going to be more than a few cents is it? Passenger weight is fairly insignificant compared to the weight of the plane itself. There might be standard 50 tons of people/luggage on a jumbo (250 lbs combined * 400 ppl).

There have been crashes where the aircraft being overweight has been identified as a factor. Anyway Samoa Air dosn't have B747s (or A380s). Instead they operate very much smaller planes. Around 10 passengers seats.

Yet these people never explain why millions of people with no inclination to drink more than a couple of glasses of wine or beer a week -- despite the fact that it's legal, cheap and broadly accepted to drink more than that -- would suddenly start having interest in heroin, amphetamines or cocaine.

Even if they were "interested" wouldn't it be more likely that they would be interested in something equivalent to "beer" or "wine" than "spirits". When there was alcohol prohibition in the US the black market supply was virtually entirely crude spirits (moonshine). But when legal alcoholic drinks reappeared it was in a diverse form.

The only way I can explain this happening is "legalizing" being made semantically equivalent to "mass commercialization and marketing" and the general public suddenly being largely tricked in consuming products with these drugs blended in ("Mountain Dew Super Rush!") or in new formulations ("Tylenol UltraPain, now with 10 mg oxycodone!") or as "new" products with their real content hidden.
First of all, no legalization regime for anything stronger than marijuana would ever allow for these substances -- all accepted as drugs -- to be added to existing consumer products, and the FDA would likely NOT approve them being added to OTC drug formulations, either., even under existing law. Secondly, I don't think even the biggest legalize-everything advocates would back the kind of crass commercialism we have now, even at the limited levels permitted for alcohol sales..

People currently do things like mix alcoholic and soft drinks. (As well as with coffee and chocolate.) So there might well be a market for "coca-cola" with actual cocaine in. Even heroin in something like its original form.

Most importantly, the social stigma of these drugs wouldn't go away overnight if ever, really. I can drink a beer at a suburban kids birthday party, it seems highly unlikely though that in anything less than a generation I'd be able to snort a couple of lines of coke or heroin; even pot smoking would probably be sketchy due to the smoking aspect.

Snorting a line is more like downing a quarter litre of vodka in one go than having a beer. That might be more sipping Coca leaf or poppy flower tea.

The only thing that closes the window of opportunity in some countries is their adherence a political idea that windmills and solar cells will be able to provide all the power needed for their future populations. That works if the populations are drastically reduced.

Also that don't want electricity when it's dark and windless (or too windy).

Sail is useful, but only for stuff that doesn't need to stick to a timeline.

Not even that useful. Otherwise sail powered commercial shipping would not be confined to history.

The manufacture of photovoltaics is environmentally harmful (probably more than nuclear fission.) It takes 1000 wind turbines to generate the same power as a single nuclear fission plant - where are all of those wind turbines going to go? Hydroelectric is tapped out. Geothermal is very location-dependent.

Photovoltaics and wind are also rather location specific. But the most important problem both of them have is that output varies essentially randomly.

It also take a lot of upfront cash. So as nice as it would be to have more nuclear energy; the window of opportunity is gone. Renewable energy sources will be far cheaper by the time a new nuclear plant opens.

Fission power is about the only form of power generation which can be called "renewable". Since you can produce new fuel from that which has already been used. The first nuclear power plant took more like 3 years to build. So there is no good reason why it should now take 7 times as long!