Hear hear!

Although, I was just thinking, wouldn't it be possible for the carbon to come from a source other than the atmosphere? Not CO2, but some carbon locked up in the soil or somesuch? Combined with oxygen and some chemical shenanigans you'll get brand new CO2 that hasn't been in the atmosphere for a while.

Though I don't think that's very likely.

Barring that, which probably would not make up much of a plant's overall carbon intake, burning an entire field of corn or rape (canola) can't release any more CO2 than it absorbed originally. If you don't produce any more bio-fuel than you consume (or vice versa) the net CO2 impact is negligible.

Of course, there's still the problem of distribution. The place the emissions occur (cities) is usually far from the place the fuel is grown (farms). This means that farms will have a much lower level of ground level CO2 than cities. Not that that's particularly different from how it is now...

You mean, like, most of it? Absolute best staple: brown rice.

Really any whole grain will do, but brown rice has the nice added advantage of not making you fat. Plus it tastes so damn good and you can do almost anything with it. Cheese and rice is a good, if not particularly healthy, snack. Especially if you've been hitting the bong... speaking of...

I think a particular They Might Be Giants Song might fit here...

I'll take back my pinata, it's wasted on you
Just spinning that pool cue all over the room
And give back the blindfold that's under your shoe

Let's drink, drink, this town is so great
Drink, drink, 'cause it's never too late
To drink, drink, to no big surprise
But what words rhyme with "buried alive"?
What words rhyme with "buried alive"?

You could be a float for the Fourth of July
Based on your theme of "Wallflowers Grown Wild"
Look through your peephole, you've won every prize

Let's Drink, drink, this town is so great
Drink, drink, 'cause it's never too late
To drink, drink, to no big surprise
But what words rhyme with "buried alive"?
What words rhyme with "buried alive"?

In your monkey suit on a cigarette break
The lunchtime crowd, they won't even blink
But you'd be sad if they did
But you'll be sad

Let's drink, drink, this town is so great
Drink, drink, 'cause it's never too late
To drink, drink, to no big surprise
But what words rhyme with "buried alive"?
What words rhyme with "buried alive"?

Why is it that worms and viruses have better security than legitimate programs?

Oh dang, you're right. Still, despite not being able to think of any real examples off the top of my head, the point stands.

While I disagree on the reason I do think it reflects badly on Ellison. He needed to compromise more than he was willing to (he was willing to make quite a lot of changes, just not enough).

Unfortunately the producers, while maybe willing to compromise, were already annoyed that Ellison took so long to finish the script so they rewrote it a second time without his input (the first rewrite was by Ellison, IIRC).

So yeah, Ellison's an uncompromising jerk, but Roddenberry and the rest of the ST peoples were unappreciative of genius (understandable, when you consider the package it comes in).

The great thing is that Ellison really is a genius*, the problem is that he knows it.

* Go read his article on Superman, Lois Lane, and Kryptonite condoms if you don't believe me.

s/midsummer's/midsummer

Why now? It's not now, it's just continued from when he turned in the first draft. It really got heated after the first rewrite. I believe Ellison threw the first verbal punch but Roddenberry didn't hold back either.

Why this episode? Had you actually read the original you would not ask this question. When compared to the original script the aired version is like a bazooka bubble-gum comic version of A Midsummer's Night's Dream.

Military-issued surface-to-air missiles can't reach that height, what makes you think your home-made rocket can?

Even if it could, a plastic nose is unlikely to penetrate the radar-absorbent paint, let alone the super-light, super-strong skin that encloses the balloons, which, themselves aren't just your standard party balloon. Can you also carry some explosive payload?

It takes about two seconds per finger. So, assuming they want all ten fingers it takes 20 seconds per-person. Add the time to explain how it all works let's say it takes a minute per-person. Lets say that 857,191 international travelers come through a busy airport in a given month. Since it's December that's an average of 27,651.32 per-day which is 460.85 man-hours, just for finger-printing.

Do the same calculation for the year (11,486,547/60=191442.45). Then multiply that by the cost of each employee (wages, payroll taxes, benefits, worker's comp, insurance (for stuff other than worker's benefits), etc), it's a HUGE amount of money just for finger printing every year at one busy airport (granted it is the busiest airport, but I doubt it's the busiest in terms of international travelers). If a $100,000 computer system can automate that it's a bargain (pays for itself in less than a month, not counting running costs, which can't be much).

How do you mod something "sarcastic"? And then there's the problem of good sarcasm (funny) and bad sarcasm (you're an idiot and shouldn't procreate).

In any case I rate this Good Sarcastic(tm).

Ok, first off, republicans are still in office, my governor is one. A good portion of congress is still republican.

Secondly, what thing are you referring to that Democrats are doing? I was talking about trickle-down economics which is the idea that giving money and tax breaks to the wealthy and businesses that somehow that money magically makes it into the pockets of the rest of us. Neat theory, however it's been tried several times, all unsuccessfully.

Now I haven't seen any trickle-down economic plans from either the white house or congress, though I guess I can see how the stimulus package might be mistaken for it. The idea behind the stimulus is to artificially create jobs (something that isn't needed when the economy is healthy). While this is not a good long-term plan, this is the correct approach to an economic downturn. Governments should go into debt when the economy is bad and should pay off the debt when the economy is good.

In addition I wasn't talking about all republicans as there are some that actually have logical reasons behind their beliefs (I haven't met many, but they exist). I was talking about the GOP's main economic policy, trickle-down economics, and how it seems to be the only kind of economics republican politicians (the republitards in question) understand.

Log off, go home, log in there.

If you want the absolute safest way: never log in, ever.

Just build a faraday cage around your house.

It's not as hard as you might think, stucco is plaster on chicken wire wrapped around the house...

Except that if you use TFT screens they can be detected and decoded wirelessly...