We have owned some acreage in north Florida for decades. A few years ago a few pigs started showing up. My dear mother said to leave them be because “pigs gotta eat too”. That night, they dug up her irises. The next day she had the shotgun out. We killed over 40 of them the first year, with no end in sight. Their…

As a researcher, I am used to working with Congressional offices. You learn pretty quickly which ones are smart/stupid, craven/selfless, etc. But what they all care about is how many votes or how many jobs in their district (a proxy for votes) your research will lead to.

Why do you say the models are wrong? Is this analysis incorrect?:

Over beers, we (a group of space/Earth science/engneers) talked through how pacticial it would be to throw a bunch of sand from the moon into a shield above the earth. It turns out this looks “relatively” cheap, would fade pretty quickly so it wouldn’t be permanent, and you could adjust the amount of heat reflected…

I have friends that have built their entire bathroom, including the walk-in shower, with their orchid collection in mind. It’s like bathing in a rain forest. Though I’m not sure the two plants pictured would be the ones you’d want to keep in a shower.

I used to work swinging a bush ax in the swamps of the southeast. I would be stung multiple times by various wasps, yellow jackets, etc. every day, to the point of mostly ignoring them. Then I one day I messed up and angered some ground-dwelling bumble bees. Those things are vicious! I still shutter at the pain…

My house.

Anthony Hopkins does enjoy eating people. I’ve heard stories...

I don’t like that both the right and the left are trying to position the US to compete against much poorer (per capita) countries, and giving up on the idea of competing against first world countries. Looking at how Germany is able to be a manufacturing giant while maintaining high wages, strong unions and at least an…

I’m old enough that I was the parent that bought these for Christmas presents. For the kids. Yeah, I bought them for the kids...

Is Earth not a planet in your world? Where do the satellites exist there?

I work with egotistical jerks all the time (academia/engineering/research), and have learned that you need to get past the someone’s personality to make any kind of progress. Setting clear meeting goals is the best way to accomplish that as you state. Second to that is to take a step back and see if there’s anything…

Fair enough, I was looking only at the wages portion of the report.

I’ve also had the opposite experience. For example, while working at a private aerospace company, I had nothing to do, so told my management. They said its all right because I was a “funding unit” built into the contract and I could just coast for the next 4 years. I quit shortly after. My point is that any large…

This would be interesting if they compared similar jobs. But they don’t, probably because it tells a different story. As the CBO points out, people with a bachelors degree make about the same in private and federal jobs in terms of wages and benefits. Masters and above make about 20-25% less in the federal…

Pointing out events that are happening isn’t really end of the world talk is it? Also pointing out Trump plans to cut funding in areas Trump says he plans to cut funding isn’t really blaming Trump for anything other than what he’s said he’s going to do.

A couple of problems with your refutation. First of course is you are talking about sea ice. This is talking about land/glacier ice. The second is that if you want to stick with your sea ice story (despite this article being about something different), you should also note the extreme problems both the Arctic and…

My daughter was heavily into this series for a few years. So much so that she dressed up as a cat to go to an “Erin Hunter” book signing. I’d be a little creeped out about the whole thing, except the books are fairly violent, and not that sickenly sweet drivel usually pushed on young girls.

My father built us a bomb shelter when I was a kid. We used it mostly as storage for preserved food (we weren’t preppers, we just lived off the land as a matter of course).

So how does a long list like this get put together without all kinds of pro-Trump skirmishes? Is it possible to keep such a thing under wraps? Or did Trump’s camp know this was coming and did they make any attempts to limit the list or temper the write up? The logistics of such a thing sound kind of interesting.