For those who insist the Earth is just way too large for human activity to make much difference, here's a curious fact.

• Total human enercy production/consumption is estimated at about 17.7 TW (in 2012).
• Total radioactive decay on the planet amounts to about 20 TW.
• And the total heat flow from Earth's interior is about 47 TW.

I was a little surprised that human energy use was in any way comparable to the natural heat flow from the whole planet so I had to check it out, but there you are. Pretty impressive and it means, right there, that we're a significant fraction of the planet's energy budget even now. Be clear, this is still pretty tiny compared to the total energy arriving at Earth from the sun which is about 173,000 TW.

Kurt Vonnegut

original posting was on this site

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.

See also the attached PDF "How To Write With Style" by Kurt Vonnegut

From This Guy, who says it's OK if I post his comics here, which sounds maybe more special than it really is since he says anyone can do it, but still I like to think he knows who I am and said to himself "sure, this cvining.com guy is cool and I'm pleased as punch he posts my comics on his website."

Permanent link to this comic: http://xkcd.com/1489/

"Physicist Brian Cox of the BBC Two program Human Universe recently visited the world’s largest vacuum chamber at NASA’s Space Power Facility outside of Sandusky, Ohio, to demonstrate the effects of air on falling objects. In the video, a feather and bowling ball are dropped at the same time in normal Earth conditions and after the air has been removed from the room.

"Source: http://laughingsquid.com/a-feather-and-a-bowling-ball-dropped-together-…

Now we know the real meaning of life:

-- From http://xkcd.com

From http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023454509_apxdeputyscarstolen.h…

"Spokane County sheriff's officers say a car theft suspect being chased on foot Thursday night by a deputy managed to double back and steal the deputy's patrol car."

From the B612 Foundation:

Between 2000 and 2013, a network of sensors that monitors Earth around the clock listening for the infrasound signature of nuclear detonations detected 26 explosions on Earth ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons – all caused not by nuclear explosions, but rather by asteroid impacts. These findings were recently released from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which operates the network.

To put this data in perspective, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945 exploded with an energy impact of 15 kilotons. While most of these asteroids exploded too high in the atmosphere to do serious damage on the ground, the evidence is important in estimating the frequency of a potential “city-killer-size” asteroid.

A list of the impacts shown in the video can be found here.

Very likely, the video will have more impact:

This morning there came a knock at my door.  Upon answering, I found a well-groomed, nicely dressed couple.  The man spoke first: