What does this have to do with America? There have been actuaries around well before there was an America. Some of the best known mathematicians we think of today were actuaries, which was their day job.

In the early to mid-seventies we did the bomb drills (I think they called them "emergency drills") where the siren posted on top of the tower right next to the elementary school went off once a month (the first Wednesday, if I recall correctly). At that time the teachers didn't insist we crawl under the desks any more, so that is probably a sign that the fear was waning. I haven't seen any of those sirens in a very long time.

Yes, but somehow I think that his shareholdings are probably a little bit larger than most of the million of other shareholders. He probably has a little bit more sway in the shareholder voting than you and your million friends do as well.

Isn't that all handled these days in the tzdata file?

Don't forget the third type: the ones who can't figure out why people get so worked up angry about an hour difference, and couldn't care either way.

Rehnquist wrote a very interesting book The Supreme Court that not only talks about the history of the court and some of its important cases (he did not include any cases that were decided by any judges that he served with), but he also described very nicely the day-to-day workings of a case moving through the system. I found it to be very interesting reading.

It's part of Gödel's incompleteness theorem: for any list of acronyms, there will always be acronyms that are true, but that are unlisted wthin the list.

I should add that although I have only written a handful of Amazon reviews, mine are mostly highly rated because products that have work well for me (or at least met or exceeded my expectations) are almost the only ones I write about. If I ended up on the bad end of a lemon, I would probably write a review about it, but that hasn't happened to me. I would like to think that if I was part of a program where I was sent free stuff to use and review, that I would be honest in the ratings I'd give.

I'm surprised that spam is still a lucrative business model, and I'm surprised that spam is still relevant enough to garner the attention of researchers.

I'm glad that Amazon started calling out which reviewers received the products for free. I have noticed (and this is not based on any kind of rigorous analysis) that those reviews seem to be generally 4 or 5 star reviews.

Too bad. We actually make an on-topic reference to one of the most overused memes on Slashdot, and not a single point of moderation love is thrown our way. Kids these days just don't know their history. :)

They're trying to figure out if ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space.

What does that does that have to do with it? It was civilians who launched it and ran it as well.

First off, there never was a scientific consensus that there was going to be global cooling. There was a Newsweek article on it in 1975, but you'd have to really stretch to claim that a scientific consensus was warning of global cooling. At the time the two major competing mechanisms going on was cooling due to atmospheric aerosols, and warming due to greenhouse gases. You also have to keep in mind that in the 1970s the aerosol issue was dramatically addressed by banning CFC aerosols, which dramatically reduced the aerosols in the atmosphere (and thus, dramatically reducing their cooling potential), so we're left with greenhouse gases dominating. It isn't "they keep changing their story," it is that one of the issues was successfully addressed. Now, it would be nice if the other issue could be addressed.

You can see what the guy who wrote that Newsweek article has to say about it in retrospect.

No, unless they just changed them, the instructions were to do a fresh install. They say if you want to try a upgrade in place, then they give you some steps (like changing to the proper apt repositories) to do, but they also let you know that YMMV and you're on your own if you hose it up.