Yes, I remember those times, trying to do structured programming in the unstructured environment. So, we both know that even very complex conditionals can be made readable by CRLFs, TABs, and inline comments. It is not about the language, it is about the person.
Actually, most of these regions have rain. (The Atacama does not!) And you do not need lush green forests right away, prairie grasses are a good start. Well-applied rain retention measures do work.
Before we try to bring water to a desert, we should stop turning livable places into deserts. If you take a ride on the I-20 or I-30, you will see a lot of harmful engineering and inconsiderate land use, both causing regions will lose the rain. You see, the annual average total rain is not given, it can change with the land use and rain handling. Gorchkov and Makarieva put it in good math and named one of these processes a biotic pump. Generally, we need to stop treating the rainwater as an obnoxious waste and we need to stop greedy water management practices and start sharing the water with nature.
BTW: just in case you need to know, I am not a dreamer, but I do have a good education in Hydrology. Currently, I am doing an experiment that will revive a couple of springs with very cheap and simple measures. Everything is measured and documented.
The copyright -- as long as it serves the author, not to be stolen by the publisher -- is the only source of income to authors outside of the academic world. So, that part has to be preserved. And generally, authors should have a say about the use of their work. Only misuse of the copyright (actually a forceful possession) should be restricted.
Even if everything else you'd said was true - your conclusion does not follow. A system in which the state enforces prevention of copying is an anathema and must be dismantled. The access of authors to copy-rent incoming does not justify its existence.
> The copyright is the only source of income to authors outside of the academic world.
That's not true, in two aspects. First, there are multiple other potential sources of income for authors of popular works. Second, most authors of most works don't make money off of the copyright anyway, as not very many people/organizations pay for copies.
> And generally, authors should have a say about the use of their work.
I disagree. Just like poets don't have a say about the use of their poems, so should the case be about articles, books, software, composed music etc.
> as long as it serves the author, not to be stolen by the publisher
IIANM, most copy-rent money goes to publishers, not authors.
10 years should be enough for the authors. The current laws just serve the corporations. Besides, anyone wanting to use copyright for their creations should be mandated to publicly release the source (code, material, etc) of their product after the copyright ends.
The copyright laws need an update so authors are not kept hostage to journals. The amount of work and (almost no) money corporations put into running scientific journals is not proportionate to the power they get.
Also the Antitrust Division of DOJ and the Bureau of Competition of the FTC should look into this. These companies do misuse the monopoly position and even collude and synchronise their actions.
Authors have to publish in current journals, do not get paid and then are not allowed or limited in sharing their work.
not really. So far, the issue is exaggerated. He obviously obraied made up or modified data from some insurance, used them without deep suspicion. Once it was obviousl that there experiments could not be replicated, he did publish the original data. And as soon as he saw indications of inappropriatenes, he withdraw the original paper.
So, so far, one lousy, or lazy and rushed up paper publication.
Even better, faster and more efficient than planting trees is increasing organic content of the soil. The soil has higher agricultural quality, can hold much more water and the capture is long-term, as long as the soil quality is kept. And you do not need new acreage, you imrove existing. The problem is: you have to stop using fungicides and herbicides and better pesticides too. At the state of the current ag, this can be done for many many yeas.
