Why would a scientist pull a paper that he had out there for over 50 years? Because he is embarrassed that Creationists are eagerly citing parts of it as proof that life cannot have arisen spontaneously. Here's the story. That is not because he objects to religion, he said... “Religion…
Today, the following Associated Press article was run on page-19 of my local newspaper (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch):
An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperature, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Water Works Association, based in Denver.
Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, utilities director for Pompano Beach, Fla.
Truly, this is a major story; our country is running out of a critically important resource. Combine that lack-of-water news, though with the equally unreported news that the world is running out of …
What it was like to practice law 25 years ago without the use of any computers It’s amazing to think that I’ve been a lawyer since 1981, which is more than 25 years ago. The years are certainly going by quickly, which is a bit disconcerting. I currently work with…
Lots of depictions of continent movement can be found here. PALEOMAP Project "is to illustrate the plate tectonic development of the ocean basins and continents, as well as the changing distribution of land and sea during the past 1100 million years." Remember when you could throw a stone from Florida…
How long should you let them string you along unproductively before hanging up and trying again?
The trick to using tech support over the phone is to quickly size up whether the alleged tech support expert on the other end of the line actually knows anything. If not, think of a reason to end the call. Any reason. Then call back and you’ll likely get another person. My recent experiences confirmed the wide disparity in competence among those who allegedly do tech support. I’ve learned my lesson, I think. I need to stop being too patient. I’ve renouced my willingness to sit there waiting for the “expert” to flip through endless knowledge base screens, for instance.
This weekend was a long weekend, tech-support-speaking. I needed to help my mother install a router and help her set up her new HP notebook computer. I assumed that these tasks would take about an hour, so I allowed myself three hours. As it turned out, it took about six hours. Plus, I had tech support issues of my own when I got back home. Things often aren’t what they purport to be when it comes to upgrading and improving one’s gadgetry.
The Linksys router came with lots of warnings: “Insert CD-ROM first.” So that’s what I did. I put the disk into my mom’s old desktop computer and followed the instructions meticulously until I came upon a screen that requested a lot of information I didn’t have or didn’t understand. By that point, …