Free Republic

<p>A plan by California’s biggest utility to cut power on high-wind days during the onrushing wildfire season could plunge millions of residents into darkness. And the vast majority isn’t ready for it.</p> <p>The plan by PG&E Corp. comes after the bankrupt utility said a transmission line that snapped in windy weather probably started last year’s Camp Fire, the deadliest in state history. While the plan may end one problem, it creates another as Californians seek ways to deal with what some fear could be days and days of blackouts.</p>

Quiet down, now TIm. The grown-ups are talking During last night’s debate, you saw Mike Pence demolish rival Tim Kaine. It wasn’t even close. Pence came across as measured, well-versed in the facts, and - dare I say the p-word - presidential. Kaine, on the other hand, came unglued. Hillary’s VP spent the night in a wild-eyed fit of interrupting, stammering, and painfully canned jokes that landed with a thud. He quickly became tiresome so, if you managed to make it all the way to the end, congratulations. You have one more accomplishment than Hillary Clinton.

Call it “mansplaining,” “bropropriating,” or “Kanye at the VMAs,” women are familiar with being interrupted by men when they speak. So when Donald Trump repeatedly interrupted Hillary Clinton at Monday night’s debate — 51 times, according to Vox — it hit home for much of the audience. Women have been interrupted by men in professional settings for decades. Whether it’s Kanye West cutting off Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards or an executive halted midsentence by her peer in a corporate meeting, studies have found that men are more likely to block women from talking entirely, to correct...

The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state. The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of "In Praise of Slowness," is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished. Honore, who cited the estimate of an interruption every three minutes, acknowledges that he would not part with his laptop or phone....