I thought of this too, but couldn't remember who wrote it. I remember reading one of the series he did on slow glass waybackwhen. It definitely caught my imagination then. Good stuff.

Too bad no-one's come up with a way to account for deviant numbers.

"A plan to try is to go to bed at least 8 1/2 hours before the time your alarm is set"

'Tis a good plan. Tends not to work for people with a shifted diurnal pattern.

Obama is now Nixon? The man's rep is growing to mythical proportions.

If you're not zapped by the primary blast of radiation, the next thing to defend against is inhaling radioactive dust. While skin can provide some defense against radiation, the lungs have no defenses at all. "Hunker down until the dust settles" is a good defense. If I remember my old training correctly, it should be relatively safe to come out after 7 days.

They explored unknown flight envelopes.

"We're Gonna Be In the Hudson"

"People want space flight because space flight is sciencey. They'll talk about colonizing Mars and saving ourselves from extinction, but that's really fancy talk. They want to live in Star Trek, end of story."

Hell yeah. Wouldn't need your "socialized medical research institute" in that case.

Hear, hear! That comment about heroes rubbed me the wrong way, too.

Sorry, I read "But really, the science will not be that different in two centuries from what we know today" and realized that you haven't been keeping up with either science or history.

Like Soyuz.

I'll call your century, and raise you five millenium.

I don't think it's ok either, but the reality is that if you're young and immature or old and infirm, there are regs to keep fraud to a dull roar. All others, caveat emptor.

I think private orgs like Consumer reports, epinions.com, product reviews at shopping sites, etc, is an effective way to get past the bs.

My SO already has these.

"The world would be a better place if corporations had to be objective and stick to the facts when advertising their goods"

While I agree with the sentiment, this would increase the regulatory bureaucracy, which would inevitably be influenced by, you guessed it, lobbyists.

Interestingly, sadly, paradoxically, freedom of speech implies freedom to lie. To effectively combat this, I think we would end up losing some of that "essential liberty" in your tagline.