" Two brothers in a cramped Manhattan apartment build a homemade supercomputer to chase billions of digits of pi—and a glimpse of order." (1992) One of the all time great articles.

The Mountains of Pi

Oncoming headlights are a huge problem for me as I have cortical cataracts with spikes in my lens that create tremendous glare. This winter I am using yellow-tinted glasses which are a huge help.

about cosmic rays. Starlink is building a shield to protect Earth from all cosmic rays.

Same. And, yeah, this is super on topic.

There's an intriguing therapy for advanced prostate cancer which uses antibodies that bind to prostate cells. Attached to each antibody is an atom of 177Lu, a radioactive nuclide that emits beta radiation. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/...

FYI Abilene Christian University is currently building a small research molten salt reactor, although not with thorium I think.

... with ALS who communicates with the "letter by letter, blinking his left eye in response to a helper who repeatedly recited the alphabet" method. He's been paralyzed for 25 years with just eye movements and a little in his face; he's on a ventilator. Family members and caregivers facilitate talking. They have the alphabet divided into numbered groups. The facilitator begins by slowly saying "1,2,3...". The guy twitches his cheek at the appropriate time. The numbered groups are 4-5 letters in order of common occurrence (e.g. group 1 is something like e,t,a,s). If the guy twitches on "1" then the aide slowly says "e, t, a, s" watching for a twitch. In this way he spells out a message.

The guy uses a computer with a device attached to his glasses that reads his eye movements. Typing is excrutiatingly slow. The reader or listener must be very patient. The best way to communicate with him is asynchronously by email.

Nevertheless, he is hilarious and a delight to be with.

I got to see Mike Brown (@plutokiller) speak earlier this year. He said that if the Vera Rubin Observatory starts its principle mission October 1 as planned, it should detect Planet Nine by the end of the year. I guess that depends on its NSF-DOE funding holding up. P.S., Brown's 2010 book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" is a very enjoyable read.

Note also the construction of a molten salt research reactor on the campus of Abilene Christian University in Texas. The reactor happens to sit on the playground of the elementary school I attended, which the university acquired a few years ago (the school is in a new facility at a different location). https://acu.edu/research/next-...

We don't know how the study was conducted--especially how test subjects were found and selected--so there's little value in looking at the results. Likely this was presented at the conference but the reporter didn't know it was important. When this research gets properly published, then we'll know whether the results are believable.

Thank you for this clarification. I have used both RSX-11 and VMS, forgot about the former.

Give Me VMS or Give Me Death!

and I say the hell with it. (with apologies to E.B. White).

1. I strongly recommend the book by Ed Yong "I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life" (2016).

2. Unfortunately, there haven't been many studies that have shown a beneficial effect on diseases by interventions on the microbiome. Not for lack of trying (i.e., there are many negative studies).

3. Nevertheless, eating plenty of vegetables and fruits is a good thing.

On "Fresh Air" recently, Zeke Faux (author of "Number Go Up") said the supposed value of Bitcoin is in its scarcity, since only 21 million bitcoins can be made. He likened that to the fact there were 21 million VHS tapes of "Toy Story" and no more can be made, so they should be about as valuable as bitcoin.