Its of course not a perfect measure, but the ability to communicate would probably be the easiest guidepost as to what we should/shouldn't eat. Language of some sort is required for a society/culture to develop and without society/culture creatures often act on a purely instinctual level. I don't think we have any concrete evidence of a non-human species on Earth having a language, the closest possibilities would be certain cetaceans. I am sure there are other guideposts (personality, intelligence, problem solving, etc) but communication should be the easiest to recognize.

I think we're a LONG way from needed to know information the "down to the tree/building level", but I would be very surprised if they aren't using reflectivity and intensity characteristics from satellite photography (usually about 3 meter resolution). I would think that kind of information would tell them the heat generation/absorption/water evaporation of a particular area reasonably well, they may even have to simplify the data so they can compute it "real time". I work with mapping quite a bit and I can tell you that working at that level uses up a lot of processing power, even mapping small areas. I've seen water flow models running on a very high end PC for an area of only a few square miles take an hour or more at those resolutions.

Where are you that weathermen are reliable enough for you to want to keep them around. Around me there's a running joke that you'd be more accurate at predicting the weather throwing a darts blindfolded at a board with all of the seasonal weather possibilities.

"Security overreaction/faulty airport exit/wholly inadequate security measure causes Airport evacuation" would be a far more accurate headline.

I can understand some limits, home/business owners back feeding power onto the power grid could under limited circumstances cause some issues and where they are allowed to back feed forcing utilities to pay more than they would for wholesale electricity sounds a bit much. But complaining that people aren't using enough electricity is ludicrous, the strain on utilities during the mid-day was one of the pushes for peak metering. One of the biggest causes of those higher loads are AC systems, which are used most heavily at the same time where solar is at its peak. Now utilities are arguing the opposite, that they need to up rates because people are drawing less power during those peak hours? Hopefully the technology/economics will develop to a point where completely off grid systems are feasible, at that point we can just let the market figure figure things out

I imagine it differs from state to state at least somewhat, but here in Michigan I think you can go about 3 years without paying your taxes, maybe 4 or 5 if you pay parts of them, before your property has a "Sheriffs Deed" recorded on it effectively making it property of the State/County/City/Village government. Then said municipality can auction it off, keep it for public use or sell it to someone specific. If you're living on the property at the time the Sheriffs deed is filed what happens varies from municipality to municipality, mine for example just auctions the property off a few months later whether or not the previous owners are still occupying it. It is up to anyone who purchases it at auction what to do about any inhabitants (rent, evict, etc). Its not a perfect process to be sure, but people get multiple warnings (mailed, newspaper, posted & signage) & years of leeway so it seems to be pretty reasonable.

I don't care how warm and friendly a scientist is, I just want them to not form/publish erroneous theories. I realize the scientific process isn't perfect, but these days its getting so bad in some areas (especially medicine related) that half of the published papers are disproven a few years later because of egregious mistakes our outright falsified data.

Unfortunately space combat is all but inevitable, humans are a long way (probably thousands or hundreds of thousands of years) from outgrowing our stupidity as the events of the last few decades make quite clear. It definitely won't be anything like Star Trek/Star Wars but some form of combat is likely, either that or we're going to become extinct on this planet. A few shows/Anime have tried to imagine what space combat would be like (Babylon 5, Starship Operators, Planetes, etc), but most forsake some level of reality for story telling (sound effects for example). As with most things it will probably vary with the technology & tactics of the time. At times it will probably be stand off battles with groups of large ships pecking away at each other from a distance with railguns/energy weapons. A few decades later it might be stealth battles with smaller individual ships sneaking around trying to locate the opposing ships or decimating the other sides resources. A few decades later it might be long range missiles. Each side will come up with a weapon and the other will counter it and vice versa.

I can definitely see the applications for some stuff. Such as dog tracking collars, remote weather stations, stolen item tracking, etc. But I don't want my fridge, HVAC, TV, stove or any other major appliances connected to a mobile network. I like my stove to just heat/cook my food, I don't want to risk it catching a virus so the hacker can either extort money from me to use it again or try to use it to burn my house down for lulz (unlikely I know, but I'm sure some would try).

And what exactly were these "milestones"? The only one that I can really confirm is the Critical Design Review, which Boeing only recently completed (no word on how close SpaceX is). Even if they aren't neck and neck with Boeing on their paperwork they should get some points owing to the fact that they're actually flying at least a version of their hardware (ISS Resupply) when Boeing is just testing out components.

Real world situations are rarely so cut and dry as "we can't handle the entire load, so we can't handle any of it". Being able to at least transfer the communications/information to another center(s) would allow for directing of a portion of the flights. A very similar thing happens every day with inclement weather, with flights being slowed, redirected or delayed.

NASA didn't really have any other choice. They couldn't give the entire contract to Boeing without risking falling into the same defense contractor cost plus revolving door situation that has held back our space program for decades. They couldn't give the entire contract to SpaceX without causing an uproar in the "space belt" congressmen/women that could possibly scuttle the entire CCtCap/CCDev/CCDev2 program (which they've been trying to do anyway). So they took a middle of the road approach, with both SpaceX and Boeing providing launch services they keep enough political support to keep the program afloat but down the road having the two compared side by side either encourages Boeing to keep its prices reasonable to stay in the game or gives NASA the evidence to say "hey, we've got two proven launch systems and one is costing us a whole lot more than the other, why are we still using them" in a public congressional budget hearing. SNC just had the position of being the lesser of the two second chair choices, not saying its right but that's politics unfortunately.

Giving people a reasonable sense of job security is definitely a step in the right direction, but you still have to be ready for the rare nut-job (employee or otherwise). While that includes onsite backup equipment (which they apparently had) it must also include off site backup facilities. I work with my local PD a bit and from what I understand even they have contingency plans for if the 911 dispatch center is evacuated/destroyed. If something happens the entire call load for the county can be redirected to one of several other sites in a few minutes. If a mid sized county (less than 100,000) can manage that kind of capability you would think a multimillion dollar air traffic control facility would be able to.

Aren't these kinds of critical systems supposed to have backups? I see DHS/TSA is too busy strip searching children/grandmas, securing chicken farms & writing up justifications for their abuse of authority to bother with the "unimportant" things like securing/fortifying the transportation infrastructure.

The big car manufacturers have been trying to use the dealership laws to prevent a competitor from bring a product to market, dealerships have been trying to use the laws to force Tesla to cut them in on their sales. This court ruling bloodies both of their noses for their foolishness, now if only more courts follow in this ones footsteps. I wonder how these laws even came into being in a society that claims to embrace free market mentality in the first place. I realize that Ford once tried to bypass the franchise model, but if they were able to provide their product to customers cheaper then what was the issue? Replace "car manufacturer" with any number of other products (corn, light bulb, TV, desk) in these laws and it becomes quite clear how foolish the whole thing is.