Perfect. Just what I was thinking, but I could remember all the lines. Thx.

Two comments on RsG's insightful comment:

>>>And if the American navy says something is too expensive, believe me, it's too expensive.

Truest thing I have heard in ages.

>>>Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.

Offensive...and yet I cannot turn away.

"Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted." -John Lennon

Insightful is a woefully inadequate bouquet for this pearl of wisdom. Fucking genius is more like it.

Rather ironic in this context, eh?

We are pretty much doing this already with the OSTM Jason 2 weather satellite, which measures the height of the ocean surface to an accuracy of 1 inch.

http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ostm.html

Of course, this is not being being done with a laser, but rather radar.

Mr. Lyons might want to consider that buying and reading Newsweek is also an exercise in mental masturbation.

Thanks. So why don't they get more love, do you suppose? Just the old VHS vs Betamax problem?

I understand these produce less radioactive waste and are small simpler & etc. Further, I understand that we (that is Admiral Nimitz) pushed the US towards enrcihed uranium reactors alrgely so we would have plenty of nasty stuff to make A Bombs with. (Cold war you know.)

However, I acknowledge little real knowledge.

I think the real fly in the ointment is the apparent fact that the Earth was warmer in the Middle Ages (ie when Greenland was settled by the Norse because agriculture was possible there) than it is now.

Climate change clearly occurs and is occurring. But what we have no good handle on, it seems to me, is why. Humans love to overestimate their own importance, but individually and collectively.

Also, we tend to look for single clear-cut causes, when in truth, most effects are the results of multiple causes.

Voice recognition is actually working well these days. I have been tinkering with it for 15 years. For the first 12 I kept thinking, "They are only a year away or so." In the last 3 years it has gotten to the point that programs like Dragon Dictate work very well--well enough for a ham fisted typist like me to put on a headset and eschew the keyboard for many tasks.

But background noise, or anything leading to a bad signal is still death to good VR. Thus google voice's translation will always be spotty, unless the call were to come from a high quality phone on a landline.

But my guess is that in 10 more years or so, those problems will be diminished as well.

I do not know which is best, but AT&T sucks. I am in Anderson, IN, and in these parts I lose calls all the time, and never have 3G service available. I have several friends and work associates, in this area who use Verizon and are generally satisfied.