The title is the entire comment. Enjoy :)

When I first moved into my San Diego house in 2003, the front porch light would be covered with flying insects at night. We had a huge thriving Bird population. Now I hardly see insects and birds are much less in number (except for the pigeons, who feed off of the humans). Along with one of the prior Slashdot stories talking about how people are cloning animals and lessening genetic diversity thereby making them much more susceptible to diseases/pathogens, It's a bit scary how much humanity is messing up the ecosystems.

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!"

Yep, agreed totally. When I was doing my Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Degree, we had two exchange students from Greece. They would always ask for help with assignments/problems and copy stuff from other students but would never contribute back. I found out that that basically cheating was a standard practice for Greek students and actually doing the work was bizarrely frowned upon. They got caught cheating on a math exam but the administration did not have the back fully of the prof teaching it. I wish I could know what projects those two worked on so that I could stay away from anything they worked on. I know that it would probably fail.

"You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you." - Golda Meir . Until Hamas/Palestinians drop their stated goal for the destruction of Israel, there can never be any peace. Because Hamas has stated that. And until people like you realize that and FORCE Hamas to state, unequivocally, the Israel has a right to exist, there will always be a state of war state the two. And this is not a "well, that's a nice thing to do". It's fundamental. Do I agree with everything that Israel has done? No, I don't. But when the other side wants your destruction and won't budge from that stated goal, then they deserve to be killed. And keep being killed until they either 1) Don't exist anymore or 2) Realize that maybe getting along is in their best interest. I don't like that philosophy or saying that. I wish people could just get along together. But some people don't want to do that. And the sad fact of life is that society is better off without them. Now you can continue to live in your fantasy world of "if we just hug everyone will get along" or you can realize that Israel got attacked and lost 1,195 people. And they are sick and tired of it. And they are going to keep Killing Hamas people until they are no longer a danger. And that killing can be stopped at ANY time if Hamas would release all of their hostages and negotiate a long term peace where Israel has a right to exist. The fact that they have not, even with all of the deaths of their "people", show that they are not worthy of respect and should be killed to eliminate them. The Palestinian people are far better off in the long term without Hamas.

Actually I'm allergic to Ragweed/Grass Pollens. It's protein structure is very close to that of Bananas, so I have a "Cross Reactivity" response. Which really sucks, because I liked the taste of bananas. Luckily, it's a mild allergy.

Agreed totally. It had one of the best "James Bond" kills when Bond takes care of Locque. Rodger Moore hated it, but it was absolutely the best scene he ever did as Bond. Link to scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Actually, we do care under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, that week was the epitome of "non normal" circumstances. So this event, which I normally would have most enthusiastically followed, got interrupted by the greatest two day drop in Stock Market History and the gnawing knowledge that we have a madman in charge of our country who is giving power to another madman (Musk).

I used to defend Musk and his eccentricities. No more. I cannot support him and any of his companies now, even though I am a huge supporter of space travel.

From everything I have read, Britain, more than most countries, puts in charge non-technical people who are totally unqualified for either leadership or their positions. I suspect this has something to do with their "Lords/peasants" society/history, but there are probably people who frequent this Website that could enlighten us for the reasons much better than me. I'll just relate what happened to Reginald Victor (known as R.V.) Jones. He became the head of British MI6 Scientific Intelligence/Investigation during WWII, making major contributions that directly helped Britain in their effort to win the war. After the war ended, his organization was "re-organized" such that he no longer headed it, he was part of a 14 person directional committee. Only one other person in the committee was in any ways qualified. He left soon after.

And yes, I'm very aware that the US is now headed down that unqualified leader pathway with our current administration. Being unqualified seems to be a specific trait that they are looking for to get you a job.

God, there is so many incorrect/dumb things here to refute that it's kinda hard to choose which one. Firstly, one does not purposely create/design such a device of injecting something to someone without their consent. No NRA member that I know of (used to be one, left after they admittedly went a bit nutso on some of their postions) would ever want or allow such a thing. 2ndly, just because there are a bunch of anti-vaccine people in this world and one of them has (temporarily) become head of the Heath and Human Services Branch of the Government, don't assume that the vast majority of NRA members/people are going to join him in this anti-vaccine push. Most NRA members (not all) are actually quite sane and are very versed in looking at the data and making informed decisions based on that and will want their families/children vaccinated. That's why they own guns and want you to responsibly own one also. The problem with you rabid gun hating people is that your not into informed decisions. You don't look into the fundamental reasons of giving you/the public a right/freedom. Your into emotion and "LOOK AT THE DEAD BODIES!!!". Let me give you a clue. Every right, every freedom that the government gives you has a downside. Every right/freedom can be abused and made to hurt/kill another human being. The question one has to ask is "Do we want the public to have this right/freedom, even with the possible downside?". And just about every NRA member has said "Yes, we want the public to have this right". Please note that they are NOT saying that only THEY should have that right. They want EVERYONE (including your ignorant ass) to have that right.

The program worked in one work environment. What about all the edge cases that the old program was tested for and had to successfully work in before it was published? I doubt that the "new" program was fully tested to ensure that it meets all of the compatibility of the old program.

That thinking is not confined to people and pet interactions. My wife's mother was in the medical field and she many times saw a situation where the Husband/Mother/Daughter/Son wanted for their loved one to undergo a procedure (even if it would dramatically lower their quality of life) because "They couldn't live without them". Basically, putting their needs above what was good for the patient. My wife, who is sadly no longer with us, was very blunt with me and told me that if that situation ever arose with her, I was to put her needs and wishes above what I wanted. I thankfully didn't have to make that decision but if I would have had to, I would have done it for the benefit of my wife and not for me.

No disrespect intended, but California realized a very long time ago the issues you are highlighting and actually does have an interconnected water system. It's just not a pipeline. It is the California Aqueduct system (Info here: https://education.nationalgeog... ). Because it is an open canal system, it very admittedly suffers from evaporation issues (which a pipeline would not suffer from). Some solutions to the evaporation problem are currently being tested, the best one (IMHO) being to shield the open canals with solar panels that would be connected to the grid.

Your call for desalination plants was also acted upon in certain regions, specifically San Diego. The largest desalination plant in the western hemisphere was constructed in Carlsbad at the cost of approximately $1 Billion Dollars and feeds into the San Diego Country Water system. It provides approximately 7% of the counties needs. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )

It was not a computer room, it was the Grade 7 and 8 "Science X" class. This class was basically an R&D class for students Grade 7 and 8. You could do literally ANYTHING in that class. Chemistry, Physics, Electronics, you name it, it was fair game. You just had to apply common sense safety principles. You had to tell the teacher what you wanted to do, do it, and hand write up a report on what you did and what you learned. It was fantastic and I learned SO much :) .

This. SOOOOOOOOO much this. The government used to fund so much more basic research. I was part of that system. The government said "we want someone to try X", with "X" being some bleeding edge concept or idea. Companies (including mine) would bid for that research and attempt to do it. Sometimes we succeeded beyond all expectations. A lot of times we failed. But we LEARNED from the failure, so the next time the Government wanted to do "X", we would bid for it again and say "Hey, we failed last time but we made a good faith effort, here is what we learned and here is how we will succeed next time". And the government people were pretty sharp and would know if you actually did made a good faith effort (which my company always did) and we'd get another contract. And that funding model eventually lead to multi-billion dollar contracts for my company for equipment that benefited both the government and us. Was a fun time.