Dick Cheney even said that "nobody" would build a plant without that protection, because they don't want to take on the potentially unlimited liability if something really bad happens. But why would you be worried about a risk of an accident that basically can't happen due to modern safety protections?
Even a hypothetical foolproof reactor will not prevent a class action lawsuit if disease rates go up in the vicinity of the reactor.
Nuclear is such a boogyman that correlation may equal causation for a jury.
Car manufacturers seem intent on specifically requiring special tools for their cars, and use patents to protect them.
The closest I get to a "special tool" for a car is when I borrow the auto parts store code reader to pull the trouble codes from my automobile. Considering that the car is a 2002 model, and I've done everything from changing the oil to replacing the timing belt and water pump, I think I've covered many repairs.
As for the topic on hand, I would place the blame on increased wealth (people tend to not want to work), more access to entertainment (there's better things to do) and greater urbanization (when you're 30 miles from the nearest large town, you're far more apt to try to learn how to do something instead of waste the time driving to town.
Which is a shame, since this is an amazing age to live in for information. In the old residence where I'm at, I had to replace a rotting floor under a toilet. It was a job I never did before. Had no idea about the "proper" way of doing it. Spent some time online reading, watched a few tutorials, and I was ready to go. End result looks professional and works perfectly. Even for more minor jobs the internet is amazing. Want to learn how to replace those screens in your house? Go online. Want to figure out how to install a used window air conditioner? Go online.
Which might hint at another problem, a lot of people seem to be pretty bad at researching problems and finding information. I don't know why. Laziness? Lack of skills? Maybe we've been focusing so much on test scores in school that we've dropped the ball when it comes to research skills.
You could just bring women and a bunch of frozen sperm.
Does this work assuming you *don't* sterilize male children?
We'll focus on the men (women can get frozen sperm).
First generation ignores their siblings, marries the children of one of the other three colonists.
Second generation ignores their cousins, marries the children of one of the other two colonists.
Third generation ignores their second cousins, marries the children of the last remaining colonist not related to them. (Assuming frozen sperm is used, they could marry their half-third cousin, or even a more distant relationship (assuming their third cousin has only a matrilineal descent from their most recent common ancestor, and frozen sperm was used for each generation).
Each generation beyond that continues marrying someone who shares common ancestors. This may make recessive genes crop up.
... Hmmm, I'd have to run some numbers on this.
Admittedly, if you sterilize all the male children, then you can use frozen sperm until it runs out. Although how many generations using only frozen sperm to conceive until you have enough genetic diversity to ensure the continued survival of humanity through normal means would be an interesting question to work out.
Trying it out with a route from my house to a friend's, it takes me the 4.4 mile road route along the A36 rather than than the 5.6 mile route through the new forest that avoids the main road and is a peaceful cycle.
Putting my route to work in, it takes me along a main road rather than along the cycle-path that is about 10m parallel to the road for about a mile (that it has marked on it's maps but chooses to ignore).
When google first had bicycling directions for my city in the US, it had a few very screwed up routes. IIRC, some limited-access roads were considered bikeable. But you can report the errors on the website (or at least you used to be able), and they will fix it.
Google cycling directions tend to be fairly good. Not great, and not bad, but it really depends on the cyclist and their priorities.
IMO the most interesting thing about settlement of the Americas is the whole haplotype X thing, which strongly suggests a genetic relation between the early peoples of northern North America and Europe or the Middle East. Though that fact is well established, I recommend skepticism when reading interpretations of what it means, because a lot of people take that ball and run a long way with it. However, as best I can tell it can't simply be dismissed as a parallel mutation, because of the way X is embedded down at a specific point in a whole tree of haplotypes.
Have the possibilities of an early European people moving east and then over Bering been ruled out? After all, Caucasians have been found everywhere from western Europe, to southern India, and Xinjiang.
Then again, I suppose movement over the sea ice across the northern Atlantic is more probable.
Could even be that the Europeans weren't as advanced as the Siberians. Say early Europeans went over the sea ice across the north Atlantic, settled in northeast North America. Later came people from Siberia with slightly better technology/organization/whatnot, came in conflict with the Euro-americans, vanquished them and allowed the women to live, while killing the men. (Not an uncommon occurrence in history.) Hence the X-haploid mtDNA survived.
Then again, there are records of native Americans washing up on European shores. Why can't the reverse happen (although the currents don't favor it as much). Or perhaps its contamination from the Viking settlements. Who knows. Perhaps the European traits ended up having some sort of mystical or exotic appeal that made them more likely to be passed on.
Its really interesting what DNA can and cannot tell us. Obviously genetics isn't everything, but it can help us track the flows of people. Combined with archaeological evidence, it also can give us a slightly clearer picture of what happened. Then again, it can open up a lot of unresolved questions.
It calls into doubt the idea that global warming itself is a catastrophe. It suggests that humanity thrived on a significantly hotter world than any living person has known.
Well, I'm not sure saying a Roman level of civilization is exactly "thriving" by the standards we'd use in the Western world. But yes, humans can survive a significantly hotter world.
However, society does seem impacted greatly by climate changes. When farmlands change to too hot, too dry, too wet or too cold, there's been a problem in the past. These climate changes have coincided with the downfall of societies. With our modern societies that rely on a more technologically complex world, the cost of adapting is going to be high. If a population moves due to climate factors, that's a vast amount of infrastructure that needs to be replaced. If we seek instead to mitigate, that is going to also require a large investment in infrastructure - for example, perhaps sea walls for coastal cities, or large irrigation projects for a new drier climate, etc.
It's not the end result of the predicted change that is the problem, it's the speed of that predicted change, and the costs of mitigating and adapting to that change.
It's called "suspension of disbelief".
Steampunk, list most subgenres within the science fiction/fantasy umbrella, has little or nothing to do with the technology described... it's a backdrop for the story actually being told.
I must point out that "suspension of disbelief", in most circumstances, only works if the system gives the initial impression of being internally consistent. So no writing a story about wizards and magic and then having the protagonist nuke the villain in the last five pages. The audience doesn't expect that. It's cheating. However, a magical device equivalent to a nuclear bomb is clearly fair game, especially if it doesn't appear out of nowhere and is otherwise consistent with the level and possible distructiveness of magic in the world.
If it works, great. If it doesn't, one collision can set us back *decades* in terms of the Kessler effect (i.e. space junk that makes it harder to launch/maintain orbit without more collisions).
If one collision is anywhere near likely to trigger the Kessler effect, wouldn't it have most likely happened by now?
After all, several nations have blown up satellites in orbit. That is far more likely to have caused the Kessler effect than a collision between two satellites resulting in an unknown, uncontrolled orbit. We already have satellites up there that are uncontrolled.
If I was in that town I'd be pushing for it's repeal. Just like I pushed for getting rid of the ban on selling alcohol to indians in my old town. Yes, the law called them Indians.
What's exception about calling the indigenous inhabitants of America "Indians"? Yes, it's based on an inaccuracy, but there are plenty of Natives who use the term "Indian" for themselves.
If true then Americans are fooling themselves. Criminals aren't idiots, and most will not commit a murder except by accident. The average burglar in non-gun obsessed countries runs away when confronted.
You're forgetting that the US has mandatory minimum sentencing, strict drug laws, and a prison system focused on warehousing criminals.
All of that changes the incentives not to get caught.
This is why i use openDNS on my kids computer. You do realize children are not capable of making their own decisions 100% of the time right? You do realize that some things should be censored from kids so that they can have a childhood right?
I remember dirty jokes from grade school. I even remember a discussion about some celebrity or athlete who was found dead with evidence of sexual activity that was unusual at the time.
So unless kids have changed in the past three decades or so, I'm going to assume that they'll still learn stuff you'd rather not know, and they'll probably learn it rather young.
As far as I remember, none of the jokes or news shocked me or scarred me for life, probably because I was a kid and dirty jokes were told because they were taboo, while the news from the TV was always happening in places far away.
The only time I recall actually being disturbed is when the 4th or 5th grade boys talked about the medical exams they underwent before playing contact football. I now realize, as an adult, it was probably a normal medical exam, but back then, it seemed rather creepy.
And before you jump on the "too lazy" part of what I just said - if you're poor or down & out, and you're playing XBOX instead of going to the library to learn whatever, or you spend the money on an XBOX instead of something that would provide you with the knowledge to get ahead, then yes, you're lazy.
In a slow economy with high unemployment, saying "I've never done this job before but I learned it from a book" is not gold star hiring material.
At least the XBox entertains you. And if you buy used, its cost compares very reasonably with a few trips' worth of bus fare to the library. Especially if you resell it after you are finished.
Electronics are pretty dang cheap nowadays. They are also pretty entertaining, especially if you do it right. The cost per hour of entertainment is pretty low. If your life sucks and you're poor, entertainment is important. After all, we aren't robots.
I'm not trying to downplay a self-taught education, for I personally do use the library as well as other resources in order to educate myself about things I want to learn. But the edupunk philosophy doesn't go over well on a resume at most places.
(Disclaimer: I don't own any of the recent gaming consoles, FWIW. But I've seen the prices used, and they are cheap enough.)
Selective breeding occurs over time, any negative effects (health, environmental) appear gradually (over generations) and can be tracked, studied and mitigated.
I'd argue that this isn't always the case. It seems that modern plant breeding has presented us with crops that are different from what we'd have from their natural ancestors. Take, for example, the super-sweet varieties of Sweet Corn, which has come onto the market in one generation, and stems from a mutation of the corn gene that creates a far sweeter corn.
Another example, of course, is bananas, which tend to be clones (at least the domesticated type). Panama disease wiped out the dominant strain in America, which lead to another, different clone being used within a generation.
We've also seen local and regional varieties get pushed to the wayside, and only a few varieties are now planted and consumed by the majority of people in some countries. That's a big dietary change. Availability of food throughout the year has changed with modern shipping and food storage methods. We've also changed how we lived, and with it, our dietary needs. We've even changed how we farm, with modern fertilizers being heavily used.
I'm not trying to sound like I'm advocating hat we all return to the diets and the habits of our ancestors. That's not doable with the population we have. But I am pointing out that we're running quite and interesting experiment with our diet and environment. Aspects of that experiment are probably bad for us.
Tell me then, where can I freely, and relatively easily find food products that do not contain genetically UNmodified corn or soy?
Most large supermarkets around here do provide Silk Soymilk. Which is from non-GMO soy. It also says so on the back of the carton. I just checked the carton I had in the fridge, and it makes that claim. I bought that carton this week, so it seems that either the company is in violation of FDA regulations, or some advertising is allowed.
The carton also mentions something about the non-GMO project, whose website just happens to have a method to search for non-GMO verified foods.
My goal, keep them online, but not making a sale for as long as I can. If everyone took 30 minutes for each of these sales type calls and never actually buying, then they would stop calling, as the profit margins would sink.
Or we'd see telemarketers being the driving force behind a Turing-test-passing AI
Here in Aus, you can get STI checks free, and they actually encourage you to get one every time you change partners. Not just for AIDS, but for Hepatitis and a couple of other more common diseases I think.
I don't know why they don't don't do the STI tests during a yearly checkup. Even if someone is monogamous, they can't be certain their partner didn't cheat, so it's a good idea.
Well.. it also means that after 5 years your photos are not your anymore. So please now image photos you made 5 years ago, they could be used in the anti-diarrhea commercial! Isn't this cool?
Are "your" photos actually yours now? If they are taken at a photography studio, you probably don't have the copyright. Which can be extremely annoying when it comes to old family photographs.
The cities are full, we like trees, air, fresh water, fishing and hunting, jobs were more readily available in less urban areas, closer to family and friends, better schools in the rural areas... and much more.
I used to live in a rural area, down a dirt road, where the town on my address was technically over a dozen miles away from me. I'm not really sure about all the advantages you list for rural areas. The fishing was great. Camping was excellent. Schools were good to fair, since a lot of the more rural schools were rather small, and some of them involved quite long bus trips. The economy was not good at all. It was great if you loved the outdoors, but it's a horrible place to make a living.
Now I'm in the 16th largest metropolitan area in the United States. Job market is far better. Schools can be good to poor, depending on where you live. Far easier to be closer to friends. Camping opportunities aren't excellent, but I can hop on a bicycle and be rolling through farms and cornfields within an hour or two. And if I do want the taste of true wilderness, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is less than five hours away.
I do love rural areas, where you can go out at night and not see any sign of another living being - no lights, no sounds of human activity, nothing. But it's hard to make a living there, and you give up a lot of diversity in entertainment and food when you're in a rural area.
(Warning, this post may not apply if your definition of "rural" is far more urban than mine.)
Naturally, out society should be based on the premise that one's success in life should be based on how much effort your parents put into paying your way up the ladder.
I can think of worse premises, such as AC's example of having taxpayers pay your way up the ladder.
Yep, that's what's wrong with today's youth. Too many of them are too lazy to ensure they are born to parents who save for a college education.
We need to let the free market solution take effect. Once kids aren't able to go to college because their parents can't or won't pay, kids will choose to be born to parents with college funds.
Its a unique glimpse into a long vanished way of life and people, an ancient culture of which very little if anything survives today. Some of us find every little detail to be quite fascinating, and who knows, maybe we'll be able to put a few more pieces together and build a more complete picture of our ancestors.
Considering when Otzi lived, if he had any children that has present day descendants, odds are he is everyone's direct ancestor. The period of is life is before the identical ancestors point, before which, everyone who alive is either the ancestor of all human beings alive today, or the ancestor of nobody alive today.
That just looks like a hodgepodge of cheap consumer crap he picked up at Home Depot and literally taped to the walls and ceiling of the dorm room. He even runs free apps on his Apple products to control that stuff.
The X10 stuff is cheap (at least one ebay) but I wouldn't call it exactly crap. It is what it is and it works well, at least when I used it. It isn't as elegant as other remote control systems, but it doesn't have the price either.;)
But using the phone to control things looks like a pain. When I did a project to control the lights and music in an old apartment, I built myself an infrared transceiver, then configured software so that the same universal remote control I was already using would work to control the lights and music server as well.
Therefore, the combination of business as usual for medical radiation AND increased man made exposure from reactor leaks, bombs, spills and other detritus of the nuclear power industry would be additive above baseline. You might have what is thought to be a 'small' spill that turns out to have larger medical consequences than previously thought.
Presumably, coal power would have a few more deaths to add to its thousands and thousands of calculated deaths then, since a coal power plant is a greater source of radiation than a nuclear power plant.
There is no threshold below which radiation is 'safe'. There is a threshold below which is become statistically indistinguishable from random events, but that is not the same thing.
If "the effect of a substance is indistinguishable from random events" is not a definition of "safe", then what definition are you going to use?
There are many things in our environment that, in a large enough dose, will end up killing us. Take food. A lot of food will have trace amounts of chemicals that, if concentrated and taken in a large enough dose would kill us. Heck, overdoses of water or salt will kill a person. But that doesn't mean small doses of either are harmful.
From bacteria in the gut that process ingested animal protein.
In humans, as opposed to some other animals, its unlikely we produce enough B12 from intestinal bacteria to meet our needs, vegan or not, due to our digestive system. When we eat an omnivorous diet, we are absorbing B12 from the food directly.
Also, B12 production does not necessarily require animal protein. If that was the case, herbivores would be screwed.
Not when it comes to B12. This is a scientific fact proven in numerous studies, hence the universal recommendation that vegans take supplements. Ever heard of Veg-1? This is a suplement created by vegans for vegans.
Soymilk, at least Silk, tends to be fortified with B12. Same with breakfast serials. So no problems there. Just make sure your diet has some fortified foods (get some vitamin D as well to be on the safe side) and you're done.
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Even a hypothetical foolproof reactor will not prevent a class action lawsuit if disease rates go up in the vicinity of the reactor.
Nuclear is such a boogyman that correlation may equal causation for a jury.
Would you want to take that risk?
The closest I get to a "special tool" for a car is when I borrow the auto parts store code reader to pull the trouble codes from my automobile. Considering that the car is a 2002 model, and I've done everything from changing the oil to replacing the timing belt and water pump, I think I've covered many repairs.
As for the topic on hand, I would place the blame on increased wealth (people tend to not want to work), more access to entertainment (there's better things to do) and greater urbanization (when you're 30 miles from the nearest large town, you're far more apt to try to learn how to do something instead of waste the time driving to town.
Which is a shame, since this is an amazing age to live in for information. In the old residence where I'm at, I had to replace a rotting floor under a toilet. It was a job I never did before. Had no idea about the "proper" way of doing it. Spent some time online reading, watched a few tutorials, and I was ready to go. End result looks professional and works perfectly. Even for more minor jobs the internet is amazing. Want to learn how to replace those screens in your house? Go online. Want to figure out how to install a used window air conditioner? Go online.
Which might hint at another problem, a lot of people seem to be pretty bad at researching problems and finding information. I don't know why. Laziness? Lack of skills? Maybe we've been focusing so much on test scores in school that we've dropped the ball when it comes to research skills.
Does this work assuming you *don't* sterilize male children?
We'll focus on the men (women can get frozen sperm).
First generation ignores their siblings, marries the children of one of the other three colonists.
Second generation ignores their cousins, marries the children of one of the other two colonists.
Third generation ignores their second cousins, marries the children of the last remaining colonist not related to them. (Assuming frozen sperm is used, they could marry their half-third cousin, or even a more distant relationship (assuming their third cousin has only a matrilineal descent from their most recent common ancestor, and frozen sperm was used for each generation).
Each generation beyond that continues marrying someone who shares common ancestors. This may make recessive genes crop up.
Admittedly, if you sterilize all the male children, then you can use frozen sperm until it runs out. Although how many generations using only frozen sperm to conceive until you have enough genetic diversity to ensure the continued survival of humanity through normal means would be an interesting question to work out.
When google first had bicycling directions for my city in the US, it had a few very screwed up routes. IIRC, some limited-access roads were considered bikeable. But you can report the errors on the website (or at least you used to be able), and they will fix it.
Google cycling directions tend to be fairly good. Not great, and not bad, but it really depends on the cyclist and their priorities.
Have the possibilities of an early European people moving east and then over Bering been ruled out? After all, Caucasians have been found everywhere from western Europe, to southern India, and Xinjiang.
Then again, I suppose movement over the sea ice across the northern Atlantic is more probable.
Could even be that the Europeans weren't as advanced as the Siberians. Say early Europeans went over the sea ice across the north Atlantic, settled in northeast North America. Later came people from Siberia with slightly better technology/organization/whatnot, came in conflict with the Euro-americans, vanquished them and allowed the women to live, while killing the men. (Not an uncommon occurrence in history.) Hence the X-haploid mtDNA survived.
Then again, there are records of native Americans washing up on European shores. Why can't the reverse happen (although the currents don't favor it as much). Or perhaps its contamination from the Viking settlements. Who knows. Perhaps the European traits ended up having some sort of mystical or exotic appeal that made them more likely to be passed on.
Its really interesting what DNA can and cannot tell us. Obviously genetics isn't everything, but it can help us track the flows of people. Combined with archaeological evidence, it also can give us a slightly clearer picture of what happened. Then again, it can open up a lot of unresolved questions.
Well, I'm not sure saying a Roman level of civilization is exactly "thriving" by the standards we'd use in the Western world. But yes, humans can survive a significantly hotter world.
However, society does seem impacted greatly by climate changes. When farmlands change to too hot, too dry, too wet or too cold, there's been a problem in the past. These climate changes have coincided with the downfall of societies. With our modern societies that rely on a more technologically complex world, the cost of adapting is going to be high. If a population moves due to climate factors, that's a vast amount of infrastructure that needs to be replaced. If we seek instead to mitigate, that is going to also require a large investment in infrastructure - for example, perhaps sea walls for coastal cities, or large irrigation projects for a new drier climate, etc.
It's not the end result of the predicted change that is the problem, it's the speed of that predicted change, and the costs of mitigating and adapting to that change.
I must point out that "suspension of disbelief", in most circumstances, only works if the system gives the initial impression of being internally consistent. So no writing a story about wizards and magic and then having the protagonist nuke the villain in the last five pages. The audience doesn't expect that. It's cheating. However, a magical device equivalent to a nuclear bomb is clearly fair game, especially if it doesn't appear out of nowhere and is otherwise consistent with the level and possible distructiveness of magic in the world.
According to the news, one of the charges stems from an allegation that Assange was engaging in sexual acts with a sleeping person.
When is an unconscious person able to give consent?
Sounds like rape to me.
If one collision is anywhere near likely to trigger the Kessler effect, wouldn't it have most likely happened by now?
After all, several nations have blown up satellites in orbit. That is far more likely to have caused the Kessler effect than a collision between two satellites resulting in an unknown, uncontrolled orbit. We already have satellites up there that are uncontrolled.
What's exception about calling the indigenous inhabitants of America "Indians"? Yes, it's based on an inaccuracy, but there are plenty of Natives who use the term "Indian" for themselves.
You're forgetting that the US has mandatory minimum sentencing, strict drug laws, and a prison system focused on warehousing criminals.
All of that changes the incentives not to get caught.
I remember dirty jokes from grade school. I even remember a discussion about some celebrity or athlete who was found dead with evidence of sexual activity that was unusual at the time.
So unless kids have changed in the past three decades or so, I'm going to assume that they'll still learn stuff you'd rather not know, and they'll probably learn it rather young.
As far as I remember, none of the jokes or news shocked me or scarred me for life, probably because I was a kid and dirty jokes were told because they were taboo, while the news from the TV was always happening in places far away.
The only time I recall actually being disturbed is when the 4th or 5th grade boys talked about the medical exams they underwent before playing contact football. I now realize, as an adult, it was probably a normal medical exam, but back then, it seemed rather creepy.
In a slow economy with high unemployment, saying "I've never done this job before but I learned it from a book" is not gold star hiring material.
At least the XBox entertains you. And if you buy used, its cost compares very reasonably with a few trips' worth of bus fare to the library. Especially if you resell it after you are finished.
Electronics are pretty dang cheap nowadays. They are also pretty entertaining, especially if you do it right. The cost per hour of entertainment is pretty low. If your life sucks and you're poor, entertainment is important. After all, we aren't robots.
I'm not trying to downplay a self-taught education, for I personally do use the library as well as other resources in order to educate myself about things I want to learn. But the edupunk philosophy doesn't go over well on a resume at most places.
(Disclaimer: I don't own any of the recent gaming consoles, FWIW. But I've seen the prices used, and they are cheap enough.)
I'd argue that this isn't always the case. It seems that modern plant breeding has presented us with crops that are different from what we'd have from their natural ancestors. Take, for example, the super-sweet varieties of Sweet Corn, which has come onto the market in one generation, and stems from a mutation of the corn gene that creates a far sweeter corn.
Another example, of course, is bananas, which tend to be clones (at least the domesticated type). Panama disease wiped out the dominant strain in America, which lead to another, different clone being used within a generation.
We've also seen local and regional varieties get pushed to the wayside, and only a few varieties are now planted and consumed by the majority of people in some countries. That's a big dietary change. Availability of food throughout the year has changed with modern shipping and food storage methods. We've also changed how we lived, and with it, our dietary needs. We've even changed how we farm, with modern fertilizers being heavily used.
I'm not trying to sound like I'm advocating hat we all return to the diets and the habits of our ancestors. That's not doable with the population we have. But I am pointing out that we're running quite and interesting experiment with our diet and environment. Aspects of that experiment are probably bad for us.
Most large supermarkets around here do provide Silk Soymilk. Which is from non-GMO soy. It also says so on the back of the carton. I just checked the carton I had in the fridge, and it makes that claim. I bought that carton this week, so it seems that either the company is in violation of FDA regulations, or some advertising is allowed.
The carton also mentions something about the non-GMO project, whose website just happens to have a method to search for non-GMO verified foods.
Or we'd see telemarketers being the driving force behind a Turing-test-passing AI
I don't know why they don't don't do the STI tests during a yearly checkup. Even if someone is monogamous, they can't be certain their partner didn't cheat, so it's a good idea.
Are "your" photos actually yours now? If they are taken at a photography studio, you probably don't have the copyright. Which can be extremely annoying when it comes to old family photographs.
I used to live in a rural area, down a dirt road, where the town on my address was technically over a dozen miles away from me. I'm not really sure about all the advantages you list for rural areas. The fishing was great. Camping was excellent. Schools were good to fair, since a lot of the more rural schools were rather small, and some of them involved quite long bus trips. The economy was not good at all. It was great if you loved the outdoors, but it's a horrible place to make a living.
Now I'm in the 16th largest metropolitan area in the United States. Job market is far better. Schools can be good to poor, depending on where you live. Far easier to be closer to friends. Camping opportunities aren't excellent, but I can hop on a bicycle and be rolling through farms and cornfields within an hour or two. And if I do want the taste of true wilderness, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is less than five hours away.
I do love rural areas, where you can go out at night and not see any sign of another living being - no lights, no sounds of human activity, nothing. But it's hard to make a living there, and you give up a lot of diversity in entertainment and food when you're in a rural area.
(Warning, this post may not apply if your definition of "rural" is far more urban than mine.)
Yep, that's what's wrong with today's youth. Too many of them are too lazy to ensure they are born to parents who save for a college education.
We need to let the free market solution take effect. Once kids aren't able to go to college because their parents can't or won't pay, kids will choose to be born to parents with college funds.
Considering when Otzi lived, if he had any children that has present day descendants, odds are he is everyone's direct ancestor. The period of is life is before the identical ancestors point, before which, everyone who alive is either the ancestor of all human beings alive today, or the ancestor of nobody alive today.
The X10 stuff is cheap (at least one ebay) but I wouldn't call it exactly crap. It is what it is and it works well, at least when I used it. It isn't as elegant as other remote control systems, but it doesn't have the price either. ;)
But using the phone to control things looks like a pain. When I did a project to control the lights and music in an old apartment, I built myself an infrared transceiver, then configured software so that the same universal remote control I was already using would work to control the lights and music server as well.
Presumably, coal power would have a few more deaths to add to its thousands and thousands of calculated deaths then, since a coal power plant is a greater source of radiation than a nuclear power plant.
If "the effect of a substance is indistinguishable from random events" is not a definition of "safe", then what definition are you going to use?
There are many things in our environment that, in a large enough dose, will end up killing us. Take food. A lot of food will have trace amounts of chemicals that, if concentrated and taken in a large enough dose would kill us. Heck, overdoses of water or salt will kill a person. But that doesn't mean small doses of either are harmful.
In humans, as opposed to some other animals, its unlikely we produce enough B12 from intestinal bacteria to meet our needs, vegan or not, due to our digestive system. When we eat an omnivorous diet, we are absorbing B12 from the food directly.
Also, B12 production does not necessarily require animal protein. If that was the case, herbivores would be screwed.
Soymilk, at least Silk, tends to be fortified with B12. Same with breakfast serials. So no problems there. Just make sure your diet has some fortified foods (get some vitamin D as well to be on the safe side) and you're done.