It doesn't help that he ended up in Russia. With the Crimea mess he just looks like Putin's puppet. To an extent that can be blamed on the "spy bureaucracy," but if Snowden knew he was gonna piss of the State Department, and he knew that he'd only be allowed to travel if State didn't revoke his documents, then he probably should not have gone through Moscow.

If I were Edward Snowden I would not want to route a series of flights to South American, where he was originally intending to go, that would take me through airports in American-friendly countries. Going to Russia on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow and then to Cuba and then from there to somewhere in South American would have been the smartest thing to do. I doubt the US would be willing to piss off the Russians by sending out the F-15s to intercept a Russian-flagged airliner. And as Snowden has pointed out, once in Russia he was unable to go any farther except back to the US because the State Department had revoked his passport. However, it is rather fortuitous that Snowden is in Russian. That is probably the best place for him to be, especially now because Putin is not going to be doing any favors for the American government.

This must have been very poor quality kitty litter. Given what my evil black cat puts into her cat box, the highest of quality in kitty litter must be obtained to prevent a similar explosion.

It just occurred to me that even if we were to find only bacteria whose ancestor's hitchhiked their way to Mars from Earth on one of our probes, that would be a remarkable find in itself. It would demonstrate that life could have existed on Mars at one time even if we don't find any native Martian bugs.

It has been speculated that life here on Earth came from space. And there has been speculation that this life may have come from Mars thanks to asteroid impacts ejecting material with enough energy to reach escape velocity, some of this material reaching the Earth in its early primordial history. Well, if this is the case, we're returning the favor.

What this means to me is that on a certain corner in downtown Sacramento there is a Street View photo of me on my motorcycle showing my license plate but obfuscating the engine block embarrassing both Google engineers at the weakness of the despicable AI they use to hide identifiable features. If I had known that that damned car with the cameras mounted on top would be on the street at the exact same time I would be at that intersection, I would have waited a couple minutes. Fortunately, I obfuscated my own face by wearing a full-face helmet.

Think of it. Here is this scare resource, IPv4 addresses, and no more are going to be allocated in North America. I see great potential in profit, online exchanges opening up allowing the trading of IP addresses, etc. etc. To quote the Ferengi, my lobes are tingling.

Why is there an assumption that we (or I) will retire? I like working too much to ever retire. It will only happen if my body and/or mind keep me from working. And all that requires is one good eye (no glasses because I'm near-sighted), two semi-functional hands (or decent speech recognition software), some way to manipulate a pointing device, and a way to get to the work place.

And even if I quit working, I will never quit "working". There will always be something I will do. I will probably continue to write, filling composition books with scribbles from my fountain pen that no one will ever read. And I am a life-long learner. I may never go back to school again, I will never stop reading history or biography or memoirs or something else that fascinates me.

I've had the Swiss army knife of knives for more than 25 years ago. It is, not all that surprisingly, a Swiss Army Knife that my sister bought in Switzerland and gave me for Xmas one year long ago. I still carry it with me everywhere and used it a few days ago when I was replacing some knobs on bathroom drawers at my parents' house.

The development of anti-drone weapons is the next step. Small radar-guided missiles the size of a bottle rocket used to destroy "enemy" drones. Or "fighter" drones armed with heat-seeking missiles. It could add a new dimension to the phrase "too close for missiles, switching to guns".

Of course, as someone has already pointed out, legalizing pot is the best solution. Then the pot growers and the thieves can kill each other off.

Oh, what sort of trouble? Court action? Are you going to spend huge amounts of money to fight the IRS seizing your assets for failure to pay the tax for not having the coverage when you had the opportunity to have it? Are you going to risk a prison sentence for tax evasion? Are you going to risk having liens placed on assets, have your house sold from underneath you, all because you have this weird notion that you don't need to have health insurance coverage? If so, you are a fool.

Sure, the government cannot MAKE you do anything. You have free will and while the law can compel you to do something, you can simply refuse to comply. But if you do so, there are consequences. In this case, it's 1% of your gross income or $95 whichever is more. You can refuse to pay the penalty but if you don't, the government will come and take it eventually... and if you refuse to do it often enough, they may eventually come after your physical body as well.

Frankly, if you qualify for health insurance coverage, especially for subsidized coverage, and you can afford it and you come down with some horrid disease like cancer, you will get no sympathy from me and thoroughly deserve to be driven into bankruptcy because of your foolishness. Let's face it, healthy people can get very sick, get hurt in accidents, etc. etc.

Kathleen Sebelius just announced her resignation. It's likely tied to the HealthCare.gov debacle although she is merely a scapegoat. Perhaps it also has to do with the supposedly funny numbers.

I'll start to worry about the German Wikipedia when a swastika appears on the main page and the those who threaten to curbstone other editors resort to more Gestapo tactics. Then we'll know that they have fully returned to their old ways. Until then, I won't lose any sleep.

Only in the UK. ;-)

As with all artistic judgments, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The same applies to the sound of a Strad vs. a fine modern violin, or even another 17th or 18th century violin. I am not a violinist or not even that much of a musician but I know a good sounding violin when I hear it. The finest sounding one in my opinion is not a Strad, it's "David", the Guarneri that Jasha Heifetz owned and preferred. The rest of you may disagree.