From the Washington Post's Blog section: Eugene Volokh, On google's employee demographics

OH GOD We're all gonna die!

Can't they just use Ringer's Lactate or Hartmann's solution instead? That should buffer the acidity a little bit better.

No, no. It's a Powerglove, you only do its because it's so Bad!

FYI, while GPS specifically refers to the American implementation, the generic term for a GPS-type system is a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). As a nationality-neutral term, it applies equally to GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, and anything else satellite-based that might come along.

At the beginning, yes. Eventually it might be much faster -- but your point still stands, processing speed is irrelevant because the AI could easily be designed such that it could emulate any slower speed it wished, like toggling the Turbo button on an old 286.

Quick reminder that polio outbreaks occurred periodically in the U.S. up through the 1950's, prior to the development of effective vaccines.

Even being born to a wealthy and high-status family in the U.S. was no guarantee of safety from polio infection, as was experienced by Franklin Roosevelt, at the age of 39.

There is a specific term in astrophysics for such a theoretical object:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...

Well, he probably also ended up jamming a lot of people people using their phones as navigation units. I keep a few frequently used areas cached in Google Maps, but the rest requires me to have an active data connection.

FYI: ATK Launch Systems (formerly known as Thiokol) was the prime contractor for the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster, and as far as I know they mostly do solid-type rocket boosters -- which is what they are proposing for the (maybe) upcoming Space Launch System.

A brief primer -- this is a modern twist on the Sterile Insect Technique that has been used since the 1950's to control the Screw-worm fly, and other insect pests.

While the screw-worm's life-cycle was almost tailor-made to work with this technique (females only mate once in a lifetime; large numbers of insects can easily bred in the laboratory; sterilizing doses of radiation do not significantly cripple the males' ability to compete for mates; the males can self-distribute over a wide range), this technique proved to be harder to apply to mosquitoes (else we would have been doing it in the 1950's) -- while a few mosquito species could be controlled with this technique, irradiated Anopheles males suffered from too large a fitness drop to be effective.

Genetic engineering allows us to side-step male fitness problems that occur with radiation sterilization of mosquitoes, and improves the reliability of sterilizing large batches of reliably and efficiently.

Aural Sex will give you Hearing AIDS.

The dead body undercount is potentially detectable, if someone were to compare over-water approaches with over-land approaches; if a significant number of bodies are going missing, this should show up as a skew in the survival rate.

I am not a doctor (but will be in a few more months ;)

In this matter, you are certainly correct. In the past (and in some places, even today), there were human settlements in which there has never been a doctor -- at least not in the modern sense of a doctor. And for the most part, life went on. Humans managed to be born, grow up, and grow old. Occasionally those lives might be cut a bit shorter and harder than otherwise -- but on average, these occurrences were infrequent enough that we could be assured the younger generation would survive to repeat the next turn of the cycle.

Yet, in each of those villages, you would find a healer. A shaman, a medicine-man, or maybe some weird old lady living at the edge of the settlement. Sometimes their herbs and potions would actually be useful; mystical incantations probably somewhat less so. Regardless of how primitive these healers were, they would be summoned to offer up what they could. They were a source of comfort that could be turned to, when a loved one was sick or dying. And they were also one of the few educated people (whether formal education or by traditional teachings) in the village that could be turned to for knowledge and advice (clergy being the other major source).

Many of us on Slashdot do not have families of our own, or at least that's the stereotype. We often have only a dim understanding of what illness can do to the structure and functioning of a marriage, a family, a clan, or even an entire village. When people don't understand what is happening and begin to fear, when they believe nothing can be done and begin to despair -- the social bonds that hold us together fray and rip apart. This dynamic is why healers exist and are so highly valued in society, even in a modern age where miracles are commonplace and expected to occur on demand. And why post-apocalypse, they will continue to be valued.

That being said, I would agree that some doctors would be more useful than others. Rural Medicine, Wilderness Medicine (an uncommon specialty), General Surgery, and Veterinarians would be the most immediately useful. As for the rest of us, at least all doctors go through medical school and internship, have studied anatomy and physiology, dissected cadavers and such -- it might take some retraining, but it should be possible to get at least the more adaptable ones back up to speed on how to remove an inflamed appendix or gallbladder, perform a Cesarean, or set a broken bone. As for our other skills -- the skills of compassion, comforting, and guidance -- hopefully they practice these most basic Physician's skills on a daily basis (although sadly enough, I know not all of us do).

In my case, being a medical student -- what if I happen to be studying infectious diseases at the moment? Maybe some novel Influenza strains, or bacterial antibiotic resistance profiles, or epidemiological models of disease spread? Possibly even actual bio-terrorism agents, as these were a pretty big item on my board exams (probably someone at the federal level pushed the NBME/NBOME to emphasize them, there was way too much given the relative clinical utility of the topic).

My colleagues would find those topics perfectly normal and usual items of study, but I'd hate to end up on a watch list because MUH TERRORISM.