The Core

Reliability of the grid will also effect adoption of residential solar in the 1st world.  If I start getting frequent blackouts or brownouts due to hackers or aging infrastructure I'm going to be looking at solar systems to smooth those out.  A decentralized grid might make a lot of sense under those circumstances.

Moving away from coal fired power plants is another factor.  My whole state is mostly powered by coal and I haven't the slightest idea what those plants will be or can be replaced with. 

>Europe

That is exactly my point.  It took hundreds of years of war and trial and error for Europe to forge a "nation state" model that has eventually brought more peace to the "tribes" of Europe than anyone ever thought possible.  The thing is Europe, or parts of Europe, managed to do this many decades before their neighbors in Africa and the Middle East.  The process is still ongoing and to their credit many European countries have found peaceful means to reorder their boundaries (ie. the peaceful divorce of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  The current question of Belgian unity now that there is no external threat from much larger neighbors.)  Africa and ME are just starting a process that that Europe has largely gotten out of the way a century or two ago.

The Enlightenment comes into play here, which at least provides those nations that have embraced it most with a framework of democracy.

World Challenges:

1. Reordering the boundaries of the old Soviet Empire.
2. Reordering the colonial boundaries in ME and Africa
3. The role of multi-national corporations eroding or usurping the power of democratic nation states
4. Rising sea levels and climate change
5. The future of the EU: will it be a trading zone or the United States of Europe?

(Ack I'm getting depressed and we haven't even got to Asia.)

>alternative energy

I say do it.  The sooner we get over our addiction to oil the better for us and the less we have to meddle in the ME.

Africa and the Middle East are in for a very hard time.  The political boundaries there make no sense, ethnically, politically, culturally, nor by tribal, clan or religious sectarian standards.  They have to Balkanize and that won't be pretty.  The longer the Super powers and great powers try to, unnaturally, keep these failed states together the longer we will prolong the conflict.  They have to find their own way.  Radical religion is mainly a symptom of these underlying problems rather than a cause.

>>shale

That might be part of it, but rivalry with Iran is the key.

Happy Holidays Dogboy, and to everyone.

related Sep 2015 article:

http://time.com/4040160/amazon-walmart/

Reminds me of the old Sears vs. Kmart wars, then later, Kmart vs. Walmart.

This strikes me as silly at a time when we should be encouraging solar power.

>matter

No.  I had hoped Marissa could turn it around, but Yahoo is too hobbled by contracts, years of bad decisions, internal inertia, short term thinking, neglect and now, lack of money.  Meyer did her best working with what she had, but it sounds like too little too late.

I used to think Apple should buy Yahoo, but I don't think even Apple with their train loads of money could put Y back together again.  I do hope, if it comes about, that Apple would buy up Yahoo's search technology and patents and use whatever they can to start their own search engine.

We never did hear who Apple was going to pick for a search provider did we?