Bob Jacobs, the deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at NASA, says the story's fiction.

(via Phil Plait)

John Quincy Adams?

I got in an argument once with someone who thought the clacks system was completely implausible. While the mechanical devices inside are pure Pratchett, optical telegraphs really existed.

That's not cool, it's boring. It's typical architectural ego masturbation. Like an adolescent, it declares that it is overthrowing the existing paradigm while doing the same thing as all its peers. Half of it looks like an inverted Borg as imagined by H.R. Geiger, pseudo-organic tendrils attempting to assimilate the existing rectilinear city.

The US Centers for Disease Control say the following:

"There are four different antiviral drugs that are licensed for use in the US for the treatment of influenza: amantadine, rimantadine, oseltamivir and zanamivir. While most swine influenza viruses have been susceptible to all four drugs, the most recent swine influenza viruses isolated from humans are resistant to amantadine and rimantadine. At this time, CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with swine influenza viruses."

Codeine and heroin are not stereoisomers. They have similar morphine-based structures, but not the same composition. Methylmorphine (codeine) is C18H21NO3. Diacetylmorphine (heroin) is C21H23NO5.

The more famous example is thalidomide. One isomer causes birth defects. The other is effective at countering morning sickness.

The Star-Trek planet classifications are useless. They confuse too many independent variables into one label, and don't cover all the possible combinations. You can't even make Uranus and Neptune fit them. If we looked at an Earth from an alternate timeline where life never started, the planet would not fit into any of the Star Trek classes.

If you want, we can say that Gliese 581 e is too close to its star for liquid water to exist, and thus rules out Class M.

However, take Gliese 581 d. Unless it already has life to put oxygen in the atmosphere, d has no Star Trek planet class. But if the hypothesis that it is low density is right, and it possesses an atmosphere with a greenhouse effect, then it's waiting for us to waltz over and start terraforming.

While it is often used sarcastically, this would be an appropriate genuine use. As it so happens, his ideas are also intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to his newsletter.

The article says "district heat". That means they are transporting the heat directly as a utility. It's a somewhat common setup in much of Europe.

Define sustained. Storm-related outages lasting a week or more are not rare, and do not lead to riots or widespread looting. This idea that power outages equal riots seems to stem from the 1977 NYC blackout, but that was a match in a fireworks factory. Most outages are just a bloody nuisance.

Only if the Pope is clapping with one hand while tying buttered toast to the back of Schroedinger's cat.

You know it doesn't run on air alone, right? It's not going to be able to make its own hydrogen. The Skylon can no more refuel itself on the ground than a conventional aircraft can.

I'm sorry, but after reading that all I could do is wonder when the style would settle down a bit and start telling me things I really need to know.

You're kidding, right? Shortages and rationing are the manifestation of scarcity, not its absence.

I get the impression that you're not really grasping the idea of a world with no scarcity. It doesn't exist, but maybe it could.

If you successfully eliminate scarcity the economic system becomes largely irrelevant. If there is no scarcity in food production, there is no reason to stop every man, woman, and child from walking home with as much steak as they can carry. If there is no scarcity in automobile production, everyone can drive a Maserati. In a post-scarcity world, supply is essentially infinite, thus the price is zero.