It was not climate scientists saying such silly things last year, it was media and ordinary folks. Somehow the climate science prediction that local variability will increase in many places gets ignored, often by people trying to discredit the warming, sometimes by people just not wanting to understand.

The US Postal Service is in trouble because the President of the US signed a bill (in 2006) making the postal service pay into retirement for workers not yet hired and even those not yet born. A unique and crazy law. The USPS does a poor job, I think, but their financial situation is unique and not entirely their fault.

Those seeing politics in science have been fooled by the merchants of doubt. It is not the scientists that introduced politics it is a small group of physicists from the cold war with strong ties to government claiming (without any proof) that the real scientists are playing politics (douby weird given that the merchants of doubt are strongly tied to government). I have no connection with the book "Merchants of Doubt" but I strongly recommend it for explaining how science is being crushed by the anti-science folks.

According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. -- Stephen Hawking

Just Before Internet, regional newspapers (major metro area here) charged US$55 for a 2-line ad to appear for one week. For anything legal that you wanted to sell.

Which tells me the business model was already failing even if the newspapers did not know it. Failing because the newspapers were forcing people with US$1000 (and less) items to find other ways to advertise and thus teaching readers to not bother looking in the ads in the newspaper. Impulse buyers and many others simply seized on the Internet when it came along -- it really was the only game available and it then sucked up everyone's buying.

Robert X. Cringely says the worker shift will result in firing most IBMers now working for IBM. Says it is part of a plan. See cringely.com blog entries from October, 2012.

AC writes: "Actually, they last beyond the time the material is worthless".

Actually even if the author wants a work released there is no practical way to release it that is accepted in US law. Plenty of authors have no illusions and plenty of works have very short useful lives. But existing law provides no way to deal with that.

The book "How To Fix Copyright" by William Patry has details on this and much more. I have no financial or other interest, I just like the book.

I recall being told, in high school, that one's body was made up of cells. That made me uncomfortable because it simply made no sense. I could not have said why it made no sense to me. I just figured I was incapable of understanding. All anyone needed to say was 'Though the body is made up of fluids, non-cell tissue and cells, we will focus on the role of cells here.' Now we know all those symbotic organisims in our body are crucial too, but 50 years ago nobody knew that. So I never got interested in biology except as related to trying to eat right..,

Seti@Home is unrelated to the Seti Institute. Seti@Home continues unabated.

Watch TV actors driving on screen. Like Bones (which I love, so shoot me). They spend seconds looking at the passenger while pretending (one hopes not real) to be driving. Makes me wince every time. Really bad behavior.

Another Gary Larson cartoon (no link, sorry) was "what dogs would say if they could talk" with the cartoon showning all the dogs saying "Hey!" :-)

You do know that the stores sell blank cards and you can print anything on them (even how to contact you!) and pretty much whatever you print it's still called a business card? So yes, no matter what you print on a card it's pretty much still free speech.

I cannot speak for others, but I have stopped flying. Period. Instead we drive where the distance is reasonable and simply don't go many places we once went. So the argument that 'people are flying anyway, the security theater must be ok' is weak as the number flying might be much higher. Not that airports have the capacity for more air travel anyway...

Yes, my copy of Lord of the Rings turned to yellow fragments too. Wait. Is that what you meant?

I too love the smell of mold and mildew. Oh wait, that's not what you meant about smelling books.