If you define a geological stop for at least a day to take pictures and maybe manipulate rocks/soils. The MERs have done over a thousand of these stops in their combined 6000 days of work. Lunakhod nor Apollo never came close to this number.

As a cousin of mine is accused of saying. Motifs come, leave and return in computer science as in any other discipline. Bill Atkinsons HyperCard was vey good. Web browser URLs supplanted this several later. But URLs never really captured the geometric metaphors possible in Bill's systems (chains, grids, loop, decks, etc.) .

Whats it with tech CEOs hidign serious health inssues?

James Waston, the 3rd man to have genome sequenced, had 28 serious genetic diseases according to the published article in Nature. Yet none of them had expressed. Steve Pinker said had the gene for male pattern baldness.

I listened to a MOOC talk by an enthusiastic state-school tenured professor last year. Then a a Univeristy of Phoenix professor in the audience arose and said they had been doing these online courses for years. They have some idea of what video and chatroom techniques work and dont work and all the cheating that goes on. The Couseras of the world are re-inventing the wheel this professor claimed. Although for-profit schools are dismissed for their fnancial sleaziness, they do have a point.And wehen the venture capitalists demand their "pound of flesh" will the Courseas be any less sleazt than the existing for-profit online schools? I am hoping for "best of both worlds" result, a merger of both best experiences.

There are plenty of worldwide services who proctor in-person exams for NBAr, medical, SAT, etc. This would require one in-person visit per course, and a fee.

There have been several papers on the topic every year in the geodesy section of the American Geiphysical Union meetings. Earthquakes, ice sheet melting, mantle convention velocity changes, seasonal ocean storms all cause mass shifts int he earth and a slight change in pole position. Before satellite GPS geophysicists used Very Long Baseline radio telecscope inferometry of quasars to measure pole position. VLBI is essentially a "galactic GPS" but more expensive than satellite GPS methods.

A closely related geophhyscial measurement is Length-of-Day, that is the time between repeat viewing of stars which varies nanoseconds per day and milliseconds per year. All the same large earth mass-moveoments that shift poles also change Length of Day.

A US state cannot arbitrarily ban a good or service from another state in Article 1, sections 9 & 10. Only the federal government has this power to regulate interstate trade. This was one fears during the early years of United States that states might shut out each other, so it was banned.

The quietest time of the day-night. I dream of those 100-dollar bills flying away to plumberland.

I used to like to browse the print editions of journals in reserach libraries. These have shrunk by 80% - 90% as many libraries switch to as-much-as-you-can-electronic policy. Plus its difficult to get electronic browsing permissions if you are just a visitor.

Nature, another annoying paywall journal (but very good), had a detailed study about two months ago on the of publishing an article in both print and pure electronic forms. This even assumed reviewers work for free. They included editorial staff, printing, distribution, archiving and all that stuff. Journals recover costs through subscriptions, author charges, and society fundraisers. In one society I am in the annual commercial convention is the largest fundraiser.

Multicellular plants just getting established then with larger concentration fluctuations. However life can adjust to slow, large changes. Significant changes in just centries instead of millions of years may stress life.

> Fortunately for science the Mauna Loa readings are in good agreement with those taken at hundreds of other sites around the globe. Roughly. Each hemisphere has the opposite season fluctuation of about 2%.

Moores law predicts 1000x per 15 years.

Its a market like auction houses or friendship networks: there basically isnt no reason fro a #2 or #3. Bitcoin may not be the winner due to it flaws, mainly speed.