C-film: a new spermicidal contraceptive.
New? I remember it being new in the 1980s. I also remember it being demonstrated to be jolly unreliable, before (I hasten to add) I had any reason to be involved in the use of such a product. Keep wearing those condoms, kids!

Presumably "this summer" means the next summer to occur, i.e. summer 2012. But if they are taking a road trip across the States, then maybe they are not wussies. Such a trip is perfectly possible in the winter. The wife and I drove from Mississippi to California and back over Christmas 1987, in our '76 Dodge dart, taking in the Hoover dam, Carlsbad, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco etc. Meteor crater was officially closed when we visited it, so we drove down the snowy road and hiked up to the rim. Never mind the museum, it is worth just looking at the big hole in the ground.

If you are in LA, drive up the mountain to the Mount Wilson Observatory in honour of Edwin Hubble. If you like observatories you can do the one in Griffith Park in the same day (if it isn't closed for refurbishment). It has appeared in at least one Star Trek episode. If in the southern deserts, visit the Hoover dam and Carlsbad Caverns. In San Francisco, I thought the exploratorium wasn't bad as science museums go.

I also don't think that driving without power steering is a hazard.
Indeed. My Ford focus dumped its power steering fluid during a long drive. I was able to keep going; the only hard part was parking at the end of the trip. Once you are up to about 20mph you hardly even notice that the power steering is b0rked.

Not only that, but manual transmission cars sold in the US often have the bizzare feature that the headlights go off if you put the handbrake on. How are you supposed to do a hill start in the dark, for goodness' sake?

Not an Android app, nor for Canada. But UK readers might like to know that they can get email alerts from http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ Not that they are a lot of use if it is cloudy, as it was last night.

In Britain this is what is known as bollocks.
I don't think so. My experience suggests that Sosigenes' post is rather perceptive and that the AC parent has (a) not had much contact with the higher education system since he graduated and (b) has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. AC may be right to whinge about clueless recent graduates who know nothing. But Sosigenes correctly identifies why there are so many bad graduates around. it is all down to the belief that the Blair-era govenments had that just because it was a good idea in the 1970s to increase University participation from 8% to 20% [1] it must necessarily follow that it is a good idea to increase it again from 40% to 50%. As a result, we are now wasting large amounts of money (taxpayers' and the students' own) sending people to bottom of the barrel universities to get meaningless qualifications. Just recently I have noticed people asking what a University degree is actually for, what sort of person can benefit from it and what other career paths exist. And about bloody time.
Of course, AC is right that snobbery needs to be beaten out of people ASAP. No-one is impressed per se by the fact that you went to Oxbridgeperialstolchesterburgh rather than an ex-polytechnic. But the fact remains that if you went to one of those places and did well there then a lot was expected of you and you achieved it. If you went to City University of Scuzzborough (formerly Scuzzborough Poly) you may well have excelled and be a good job candidate. But you will be a very different person from the majority of your classmates.

[1] All statistics and dates are made up. But they give a general impression of what actually happened

They didn't all agree, just ask Monsieur Diesel.
I think you will find that he was Herr Diesel (although he was born in Paris).

I could give a shit
You mean you couldn't give a shit. Your homework is to watch:
David Mitchell's soapbox (series 2 episode 2)

I look forward to the day when the floating googlemobiles have been all round the canal system of England and I can work my way up Foxton staircase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxton_Locks) without leaving my desk.

At last we will be able to get rid of all of those useless hairdressers, telephone sanitisers and middle management types.

Surely they mean "orbiting"? "Circling" even? But "circumventing"?
I was about to make the same point, but the OED gives several meaning for "circumvent", one of which is "To go round, make the circuit of." Still, it is not the way that most people use the word; I think we can conclude that TFA is not written by one of the web's better science journalists.