Nobody said the microdots could only be used to stop counterfeiters. If that were true, this would be a non-issue. Modern digital copiers already have internal image-recognition software that refuses to copy something that resembles currency -- printers could too, and maybe already do, for all I know.

The problem is that the dots appear on more than just images that resemble currency. They appear on all printed documents, including those describing political opinions that may differ with those currently in power (whenever and whoever they may be), descriptions of your wife and daughter's medical conditions, your personal investments, etc. Leaving one's name off of one's document no longer makes it anonymous -- intentionally or otherwise -- to someone who knows the secret.

If you don't care about the microdots, I suggest that you don't print many of your political views. Saying unkind things about the EFF, for example, is trivial and even chic today, but neither of us knows how those views may be considered in the future. And don't do any favors for your friends -- anything you print for them would be traced back to you, not them.

I note in passing that the microdots are substantially invisible to the unaided eye, and I am willing to bet that not one member of the public in a hundred -- possibly a thousand -- knows they are there. The EFF is publicizing their presence, so that all citizens will know. How is this undemocratic?

Faster? Than the speed of light?!?

A page showing New Horizons' location relative to the planets is here. Detailed ephemeris and other data on the probe can be obtained from NASA's HORIZONS system -- click on Target body "[change]", then enter "-98" in the search box.

Yep. And you will notice that they did not predict the intensity surge from Cat 3 to Cat 5: They only issued the "Doomsday" message in response to the storm's increase in intensity. It would have been nice if the surge were forecast a day or two earlier, so that a more orderly evacuation could be made.

If it had made landfall as a weak Category 3 -- especially if the high wind field was over a small area -- and the storm made landfall in a sparsely populated area, e.g., Franklin County, everyone in the more populated areas would have been greatly annoyed at the "false alarm" sent by the Weather Service. Since the NWS' Intensity forecasts can't predict eyewall replacement cycles, it had no way of knowing in advance whether a Cat 3 or Cat 5 storm would make landfall.

Um, sorry, but speak to your climatologist first. These storms are big, and the problem is that, when they come ashore, each location will experience a different wind profile. Thus there is no single "average" wind speed to forecast upon landfall -- every location will experience something different, and listing some kind of two-dimensional overall average of the storm isn't much help: Not only do the storms vary significantly in size, but the size of the eye varies significantly, too. To make matters still worse, there's a phenomenon called eyewall replacement, resulting in an effective eye diameter that varies in size over time (along with the maximum wind speed).

It is true that there will be a maximum wind speed in the storm, and that it will usually -- but not always -- be in the right side of the eye wall for storms in the northern hemisphere. However, at the moment there is no detailed forecast of the size of the area having those peak winds, so it's very difficult for emergency officials to plan for the devastated area.

Also speak to your climatologist about your misunderstandings about hurricane wind fields. They are rarely symmetrical, due to interactions with approaching weather fronts, other nearby storms, forward movement of the storm itself, and other factors. A truly symmetrical storm, like Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico, is notable because of its symmetry. The US Navy tropical storm forecasts include the radius of 34-, 50-, and 64-knot winds away from the center for each quadrant of the storm, and you will find differences of many tens of nautical miles between quadrants.

C'mon -- you can do better than that. Things can't get "a little more refined and predictable" if the phenomenon we are predicting is incompletely defined, to the point that no two people have the same understanding of the concept.

Besides, anyone who lives in hurricane zones is also well acquainted with the fact that the present intensity forecasts are terrible, which leads to cycles of over- and under-preparation by the populace. It would be nice if we could tell, say, three days in advance whether a Category 1 or a Category 4 storm were going to hit, so that we could determine the appropriate evacuation zone. At the moment such forecasts are not the paragon of reliability.

As TFA states, while the location predictions have been improving significantly, the best hurricane intensity predictions are only slightly better than what can be obtained from a Ouija board. (No offense intended to those in the field; I know it's a tough problem.)

Just defining "intensity" in a useful way can be difficult. For example, if Storm A has a region in the Northeast quadrant with 100 mph (161 km/h) winds, but elsewhere winds do not exceed 80 mph (129 km/h), and Storm B has 100 mph (161 km/h) winds in all four quadrants, both have the same max wind speed. Which is more intense? What if Storm B has 95 mph (153 km/h) winds in all four quadrants? What if the two storms have the same wind speeds, but are different sizes? If Storm C has lower wind speed than Storm D but, due to its slower forward speed or other reasons, drops five times as much rain, which one was the more intense storm?

When I counsel high school and college students, I always tell them to "work on important problems." Even though I make a point of saying that the definition of "important" is "what's important to you," I am always asked for examples of "important problems." Getting better hurricane intensity forecasts is one of the examples I always mention.

These are the days to which I refer. Read that speech. Note the minimal amount of nationalistic jingoism, and the upbeat, positive view of exploration. There's only a single, passing reference to the Soviet Union. Sure, there was a space race, but nobody liked NASA because of it. People liked NASA -- and NACA before it -- because of the X-15, because of the probes to Venus and Mars, and yes, because of the trips to the moon. NASA made people feel like they were part of human progress -- doing things that no human being in the history of the species had been able to do before.

I'm really curious, now. Where do you get your belief that somewhere there is this fantastic research being done on the ISS? Is it faith-based, or do you have some facts somewhere? Why wouldn't the NASA web site you cite, trumpet the big news, instead of trivialities?

While I am disappointed in your belief that papers that aren't in the fields that you've studied are inscrutable to you -- a position I urge you to reconsider, if for no other reason than it limits your enjoyment of the journals Science and Nature -- let me accept that for the moment, and instead ask a "social engineering" question of you: If the ISS were the fantastic research tool that you believe it to be, wouldn't researchers around the world be clamoring to get their experiments on the ISS? Wouldn't there be position papers from, oh, the National Academy of Sciences and other such places, advocating that a second or even third ISS be built, promoting expansions for larger groups of researchers, and other such enhancements? If it's so great, where's the "pull" from the users to get more?

While it's certainly true that the vast bulk of authors do make less than they would have made by working the same hours flipping burgers, there's still significant money involved. It's the hours it takes to write a book that brings down the hourly rate.

My first visit to a contract attorney turned a profit for me. He reviewed the draft contract sent by the publisher and (because he knew what was usual and customary in the industry and I, a first-time author, did not) doubled the royalty percentages it offered. The modified contract was accepted without comment by the publisher, and the increase in first year's royalties alone, due to the attorney's work, more than paid his fee.

In addition to this, the attorney added clauses that stipulated what would happen in cases I had not considered -- for example, what would happen if the book were published in non-traditional media (only a theoretical possibility at the time, but most of my sales now) and how I would be compensated if the publisher bought the rights to the book, but never published it. Things like that.

In my opinion, people who sign business contracts without the advice of an attorney are taking a huge risk. Ask Eric Weisstein, author of Mathworld, about the dangers involved when an author signs a contract without consulting an attorney first.