This article about what it was like at an Amazon fulfillment center in PA. Backbreaking work with ever increasing demands topped off with many workers passing out from heatstroke. Inside Amazon's Warehouse: Lehigh Valley workers tell of brutal heat, dizzying pace at online retailer

non-violent whenever possible, violent when necessary. And yes, that's constitutionally protected free speech.

I was unaware that violence was Constitutionally protected speech. Please explain.

Rising sea levels don't mean that people look out their windows and see the water getting closer year by year and then, if they are smart, decide to move. I don't think the comment you're replying to put it very well referring to millions of drowned Bangladeshis but read the rest of the article you linked to. It talks about things like increased flood risks and loss of groundwater and arable land. It would take not very much of those things to have very severe consequences for Bangladesh, in the form of many killed and many more displaced and impoverished.

The "not smart enough" comment borders on the offensive. The severity of floods is often impacted by environmental changes, particularly by loss of habitat that soak up water (trees and wetlands), many point to this as a big impact in the Katrina floods. Are these type of flood victims not smart enough because they didn't project the increased risk from a change in their environment?

Before Gulf War I George HW Bush said that protecting Kuwait was in our vital national interest. What was that vital national interest? What is the vital national interest that had US troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc before 9/11?

We already only get a small amount of oil that is actually shipped from the Middle East. However, since oil is a global commodity interruption in the flow from any of the major exporters would have global consequences, as we've seen whenever there's been a hint of conflict in the Middle East.

Free Software had first mover advantage over the big brother social network sites but it didn't innovate fast enough. Remember blogs? What happened? The community couldn't agree on standards for providing advanced social applications that people wanted, so the walled gardens sprang up that provided them. Seriously, remember the years of dumb ass bickering over RSS or Atom?

I personally am very sad that large parts of the social experience online are now within wall gardens, I see it as AOL's revenge from the grave. It says something about the limits of open processes that hopefully the Free Software movement and others can learn from.

... "I resemble that remark!"

latency

Hmm, International Paper is announcing earnings on April 30th. One would have to guess that those earnings will be higher than previously predicted as these checks have just started rolling in.

I am big advocate of alternative energy but I don't think the application discussed is likely to be a net win for the environment. The payback period you refer to is for devices that are in more or less continuous use when the sun is shining. A portable device such as is being discussed will not operate anywhere near continuously, it will likely be folded up most of the time. Further, its extremely unlikely that a portable device would last 10 years or that the user would continue to find it useful for 10 years. How many gadgets do you have that are 10 years old?

There is value in winning green hearts and minds but this seems more like green consumerism than actually lessening one's environmental impact.

When a clearcut happens the ecology is disrupted and many bushes grow up. This creates a thick underbrush which burns hoter and faster than fires in mature forests. This problem of over growth in clearcuts is why they use spray herbicides to keep down the brush. Instead of sustainable logging where you only take some trees but leave the ecosystem intact, clearcutting strips everything down. When it grows back you then have a forest that will never on it's own return to the stable old growth ecology. Not even in 2000 years!