The problem with eBooks, though, is that in most implementations they can reach in and retroactively remove the books you've purchased. So even if they chose to sell a book and you chose to buy it, they can choose to un-sell the book to you if they decide the content is a problem for them.

What if the parents didn't agree to the deal? What if parents thought that the school's predetermined whitelist was too much? Or too little? Maybe the parents were parenting, and decided that their kids should have more rights than the school would like them to have.

You can proxy over standard https port 443, so blocking proxying is mostly a dead end. You'd have to stick with the whitelist.

Next time be sure to add a backslash at the beginning of your commute.

That's covered, because the gag order gags itself, so you can't show it to the court.

The next time I have to travel across a border, I need to remember to leave the real laptop at home and bring the old & busted. I want to see them try and get data off of it. Maybe I'll even pull the hard drive.

The cellular backups only last for a day or two, at most. In the northeast we lost power from hurricane Sandy last year for a few days, and the cellular networks didn't last all that long. Fortunately, they're also high on the priority list for restoring power, so they were some of the first things to come back.

If you're not from America, a Yankee is someone from America.
If you're in America, a Yankee is someone from north of the Mason Dixon line.
If you're north of the Mason Dixon line, a Yankee is someone from the northeast.
If you're in the northeast, a Yankee is someone from New England. (which does not include New York, thank you.)
If you're in New England, a Yankee is someone from Vermont (though I hear New Hampshire in this spot a lot, too.)
If you're in Vermont (or New Hampshire) a Yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast.

(Disclaimer: I'm from New Hampshire, and pie makes the best breakfast whenever possible.)

I think this is sarcasm, but my sarcasm and bullshitium detector has been on the fritz ever since Snowden's documents went live and the NSA started the spin machine.

It is just as much hassle to open a letter passing through the post office by steaming it open as it is for a lawyer somewhere to subpoena and get the contents of an email you sent through gmail.

However, it is much easier for the NSA to use their backdoor into gmail to make an automated request for all of a person's emails and all of the emails of everyone that emailed them and store that information. Even if they decide that they don't need that information, it will still get stored, and that stored information could be leaked. Just the other day we heard about how Snowden used the "brilliant" tactic of privilege elevation and masquerading as other users to get data. If the NSA's system is designed such that one person can do this, you can bet that there are plenty more who do it and put the information to their own use without feeling the need to go public with it.

If an area the size of Greenland is depressed 300 meters, I'd wonder if it is deformation of the Earth's crust and the whole thing could be pushed back up by internal pressures when the weight is gone. Not assuming anything, just wondering if that could happen and what the impact on sea levels would be if it did.

"If the Greenland ice sheet melts completely it will raise global sea level by 7 metres and swamp many major cities" (article)

Does this account for what would happen when Greenland floats back up?

Propaganda. Erik the Red named it that in 985 AD to get people to colonize it with him.

That's the amount of ash that escapes the controls. Look at how little it is as compared to the captured ash. Put on the same scale, 100g/MWh vs 85,000,000g/MWh retained fly ash & bottom ash.

"the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy"

The quote isn't actually comparing coal waste to nuclear waste, it compares coal waste to overall nuclear power production. No nuclear power plant can be 100% shielded from all escaping radiation, nor can containment of radioactive waste, unless you build a vault so thick that no gamma ray can pass entirely through it, which is statistically practically impossible. Therefore, nuclear power production leaks a very small amount of radiation. At a certain distance from the reactor or waste storage, the radiation emitted from the reactor or waste drops to a point where it becomes indistinguishable from local background radiation. It is in this range that the radiation has added measurably to the environment. In a proper plant design, this range is within the plant's perimeter, and ideally within the containment structure itself.

So, no, it isn't saying escaped/released nuclear waste, it is referring to the radiation emissions from nuclear power production, which some percentage of will pass through the available shielding.

At some point, when I have some free time, I'll try and work out the relative radiations of actual waste products, out of curiosity. For reference, coal fly and bottom ash, together, release 5-6 (up to 8) picocuries of radiation per gram. A modern coal plant produces fly ash that leaves the stack at about 100g/MWh (going directly into the environment, uncontrolled) and produce 85kg/kWh of ash (recovered fly & bottom ash). Therefore a typical coal plant producing 3.5TWh/year creates waste emitting 1.8 curies/year, or 66.6 GBq (GigaBecquerels)/year. I don't have numbers handy for the waste products per power produced for nuclear.

Of course, I'll agree that this is somewhat overstating the case. When stored as a unit in a giant landfill, the vast majority of this radiation will never leave the landfill, because the material surrounding it will act as shielding. Only radiation emitted within, say, the outermost 10 meters or so will have any significant chance of reaching the outside world.

But the point isn't really that coal ash is a particularly dangerous radioactive substance, it is that we analyze nuclear power to an extreme but other sources of power get a free pass because they look easy to understand. When analyzed side by side, taking all factors into account, nuclear power, especially modern plants, should come out on top. At least until we have a significant fusion capability, or solar becomes significantly cheaper, more efficient, and lower in production toxicity.