Well, they work for cars. For the drones used in place of American soldiers, not so much, and for the algorithms used to determine whether a phone SIM is the equivalent of a terrorist, I'd say there are even worse problems.

Actually, three or four of the six states would immediately become very conservative and some of the poorest states in the Country. Also, the water wars might spark an actual insurrection, since Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Diego would all be depending on waters from other states.

Rackham and Grove's The Nature of Mediterranean Europe has a picture of a 2300 year-old olive tree sitting on the stone wall of a terrace which was undoubtedly older. That's a baby compared with the Methuselah Tree already sited, and the 11,700 year-old King Clone creosote bush in the Mojave, let alone Pando, the…

Well it is bloody obvious to sane people, I agree. The point I wanted to bring up is that nuclear war+climate change looks a lot more like the K-T mass extinction than does climate change or nuclear war alone, and speaking as a resident of this wonderful planet, I'd like to avoid the mass part of mass extinction…

Actually, using nukes would be a VERY BAD idea. Here's why:

That's a fair question, and I'm not sure any have been (note that I pay most attention to California, and those laws are still standing at the moment). I do seem to remember that it was a line of attack against the Wilderness Act, but since that's still standing, it failed. Looking back at it, I probably should have…

Yeah, "Wild Bill" Cronon's essay has caused a lot of heartburn for environmental managers over the years. Um, thanks for bringing it up. Really.

Sigh, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is portrayed as part of Wisconsin, embarrassing both states.

Like this is a new problem? Film noir was invented in LA back most of a century ago, and there are whole books written about how the place is in eternal pre-Armageddon, what with the sunny weather/smog hiding horrible corruption, the place sucking the Owens Valley Dry (remember Chinatown?) like some bloated water…

Thanks George. It's a neat discovery, and I'm glad you posted it.

For anyone who's interested in what's actually happening in this field, google "phytoremediation." Plants are somewhat useful in getting low concentrations of hazardous metals out of soil. You then have to deal with the metal in the plants (often by incinerating them, then doing something with the ash, which has an…

I'm not sure that 9000 BC is the same as "9th Century BC" as noted in the article. So far as I remember, the 9th Century BC (900 BC) was in the early Iron Age, not the neolithic. Perhaps the 90th Century BC would put it in the proper time range?

I think you missed the point of Black Swans. They are retroactively explainable, but not predictable. The issue with Black Swans is that you can't tell from the data analysis (the part where you retroactively explain what happen) that what the analysis told you is of absolutely no use whatsoever in prediction. …

Everyone likes giving this their own name: Black Swan, Improbability Principle... Sheesh.

Thanks. I didn't see that.

Interesting that no one has pointed out that this is an updated version of the Newtsuit, which is also rated to 1,000 feet, and that Atmospheric Diving Suits capable of reaching at least that depth have been around since the 1960s.

Anyone read Cyrillic? That's some Russian radioactive stuff. Or more likely, Soviet.

Just to point out more fan service:

Actually, chemistry says that using helium in chemical reactions is kind of pointless, because there aren't a lot of compounds that helium makes. It's a noble gas, after all, and they're famously inert.

That's not a representation of the Laetoli trackway? I thought that those footprints were old enough to have been made by Australopithecus afarensis.