Michael Hopcroft Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Swallowed by the sea? Damned water hoarders! Oh wait, 'fresh' is required? nevermind, sympathies restored They already buy fresh water from Oregon Oh and with fresh water shortages starting to hit (thanks climate change) in the next decade or so (or sooner) look for companies to buy the rights to fresh water from the government. Nestle is in the middle of doing so here. It will start making news when people start dying I suspect. Oregon's supply of fresh water is hardly infinite, especially as the climate warms. The snowpack in the Cascades, on which the supply for Western Oregon depends, gets more and more meager every year, and the Portland metroplex is still seeing substantial population growth while the tech industry continues to demand increasing amounts of water and agriculture throughoujt the Willamette Valley still requires substantial irrigation (and, again, will need more as the climate gets hotter -- which reduces the supply). And every so often Portland faces severe contamination issues with their drinking water supply. It's even worse in Eastern Oregon. There is an ongoing crisis in the Klamath Basin in Southeastern Oregon as farmers and ranchers demand ever-increasing shares of the dwindling supply in the Klamath River, not caring that taking too much can heat the river to the point that the fish demanded in other parts of the state can't survive and breed there. This also seriously upsets the local First Nations community, which needs fish desperately both as a food source and as a cultural necessity. Fresh water is eventually going to become a global crisis, made worse by the corporate attitude that there is no "right to water" even though nobody can survive without it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Actually, I'm kind of reassured that we'll wipe ourselves out and then Earth will happily move on when we're gone. That's my back up hope. Some people are engaged in a quixotic and futile effort to convince us to do it deliberately. The difference between their position and what you expect is that they believe that if all human beings stop having children and live their lives to completion, they can start to repair the damage man has done before passing on and letting nature resume its course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 There was an article in the most recent Physics Today about desalinization with semipermeable membranes, but it's probably behind the subscriber wall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gewing Posted June 21, 2015 Report Share Posted June 21, 2015 There was an article in the most recent Physics Today about desalinization with semipermeable membranes, but it's probably behind the subscriber wall. I am NOT a scientist, but I read a lot. Haven't they have been working with that for decades, but the problems have been scalability and contamination causing blocking/deterioration of the membrane? It sounds great in theory, but any form of desalination probably has potential to cause problems from disposal of the salt and other minerals left over. There could be problems involved with local conditions due to removing the water from the source, I suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 21, 2015 Report Share Posted June 21, 2015 Yeah, the physics boil down to scalability, though there are some new membrane possibilities that look interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sociotard Posted June 22, 2015 Report Share Posted June 22, 2015 Etsy has banned the sale of magic items and spells. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/119/273/851/stop-etsys-ban-on-metaphysical-items/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 22, 2015 Report Share Posted June 22, 2015 I must admit both the ban and the petition to rescind it baffles me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burrito Boy Posted June 22, 2015 Report Share Posted June 22, 2015 I must admit both the ban and the petition to rescind it baffles me. Etsy is against Monty Haul style campaigns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 22, 2015 Report Share Posted June 22, 2015 Something for Chulhuesque flavor here ... Millions of dog mummies, and a 48-million-year-old marine mammal fossil, in an Egyptian tomb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted June 23, 2015 Report Share Posted June 23, 2015 I must admit both the ban and the petition to rescind it baffles me. Eh. You can understand the reason for the ban in 3 letters ...IPO. Etsy's planning to go public and the last thing they want is a lawsuit (or even the possibility of a lawsuit) because someone claims the love potion they bought turned out to be an ordinary level 1 potion of cure light wounds. Or more seriously, a lawsuit because people are selling services that - let's be honest here - are outright scams, like claiming to sell a love potion. They're marketing a service via which craftspeople sell tchotchkes - not high priestesses sell magical spellcasting services. As long as they don't target one group or religion - by banning, for example high priestesses and not pastors, then I'm good with it. The petition to rescind it makes perfect sense as well: after all, scammers are selling these services and someone is buying them. I'm not surprised that they're annoyed. This is how some people make their living, or at least a little cash on the side - now they're going to have to go over to craigslist or somewhere similar. For their customers, the direct implication is that they are being scammed with the extra gloss that it could be seen as their religious practices being made light of. cheers, Mark Cancer and Cygnia 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted June 23, 2015 Report Share Posted June 23, 2015 Female French teen makes MLB history Is it possible that Mayeux will be signed? Sure. Is it likely? Probably not, but the simple fact that Mayeux has been added to the list solidifies her status as a legitimate player. Mayeux, for her part, just wants to play. She speaks little English and is unaware that her presence on the registry might be seen as newsworthy in the United States. "Melissa just wants to have to most opportunity she can in baseball," said Boris Rothermundt, a coach with the French national team who has been working with Mayeux since she joined the program two years ago as a member of the U-15 team. "She is not at all thinking about being the first female on the list." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sociotard Posted June 23, 2015 Report Share Posted June 23, 2015 I'm most surprised that baseball is played in France. gewing 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted June 23, 2015 Report Share Posted June 23, 2015 They do like rugby. Perhaps they watch baseball to balance out the action? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted June 23, 2015 Report Share Posted June 23, 2015 Justice Elena Kagan drops Spider-Man references throughout Kimble v. Marvel opinion gewing and Ternaugh 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted June 24, 2015 Report Share Posted June 24, 2015 I'm embarrassed that the possible adjustment to overtime slipped past my radar until I saw this opinion piece Who owns your overtime? I guess I'm really in danger of going from moderate to hippie as this sounds like a great thing to me. I've got friends who can't get projects done at work because others keep throwing more things on his desk. He's actually had to take a day off from work so he could get some work on a project done. He goes into work in the morning early, and doesn't come back home till late at night. It's insane how many employers assume that a person's time is theirs even off the clock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted June 24, 2015 Report Share Posted June 24, 2015 Man pets bear thinking it is a dog. Horrified by mistake. CES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted June 24, 2015 Report Share Posted June 24, 2015 It's insane how many employers assume that a person 's time is theirs even off the clock. ftfy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted June 25, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 25, 2015 Larger Than Stonehenge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted June 25, 2015 Report Share Posted June 25, 2015 But Stonehenge is only 18" high. wcw43921 and Ternaugh 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted June 25, 2015 Report Share Posted June 25, 2015 But Stonehenge is only 18" high. No, no, no. You're reading it as """. It's actually ".". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted June 25, 2015 Report Share Posted June 25, 2015 Then why did you write """? (And it's just as funny the other way: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/life_imitates_comedy_spinal_tap_uncannily_anticipated_black_sabbaths ) death tribble 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted June 28, 2015 Report Share Posted June 28, 2015 Cat stationmaster Tama mourned in Japan, elevated as goddess death tribble 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted June 29, 2015 Report Share Posted June 29, 2015 Mafia in Australia: Major drug trafficking group linked to senior politicians, investigation revealsUnknowingly, of course, but still interesting. death tribble 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 29, 2015 Report Share Posted June 29, 2015 indicator condoms I am surprised this hadn't been thought of before. tkdguy and death tribble 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 29, 2015 Report Share Posted June 29, 2015 practical astronomy death tribble 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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