Sheer paranoia is a good preventative measure. I was once rear ended by an SUV coming down a hill at about 45 while I was stopped waiting to turn left. Getting slammed that hard just once was enough to make damn sure I look in my rear view mirror every time I stop any place where someone might possibly rear end me, ready to hit the gas if need be. What we need is an AI that does that from the get-go, without getting burned first.

Well I guess the allure is that if you normally can see your hood, you'd rather be able to see through it.

Can you see underneath your Tacoma's engine? Because you could with this new system.

I don't think it's at all certain that quick and devastating nuclear strikes would amount to more dead than the conventional wars which nuclear weapons have made impossible. Approximately 60 million people were killed in World war II, or about 2.5% of the world population. "Only" approximately 150,000-246,000 of those dead were killed by atomic weapons.

If WWII is any indication, if a war were to break out with a nuclear-armed state, it would end abruptly. The bombed state(s) would either surrender in the face of certain destruction after the first bomb or two fell, or their military capacity would be so devastated by the strikes that they would be unable to mount an effective campaign.

Couple the brevity of a nuclear war with the higher number of potential combatants and civilians that would be killed in a conventional shooting/firebombing war, and the proportionally higher power of conventional weapons than in WWII, and it's not at all clear that nuclear weapons would increase the overall destructiveness of a major war.

It is clear, however, that major powers are loath to start a potential WWIII because of nuclear weapons, thus saving tens or hundreds of millions of lives. That's what the Cold War was about.

Yes, that is correct. The anti-birth-control, anti-abortion movements stem as much from a sociocultural condemnation of premarital and unprotected sex (primarily by Limbaugh's "sluts") as any religious proscription. A birth control/abortion ban is a way of controlling sex, particularly sex out of wedlock, which is a cross-cultural phenomenon all over the world that exists independently of religion. Religion is a means of codifying that cross-cultural pre-marital sex taboo, not the root of it.

I learned to drive around 2002 in Wisconsin. The instructor there taught us to hold it at 9 and 3, and to keep our thumbs on the outside of the wheel (to avoid ripping them off in a crash). At least some places have been teaching it right for years.

If it's taken the light from the supernova 40 million years to reach Earth, then wouldn't it take any deadly radiation at least that long to reach us? The dinosaurs missed out on any possible threat from this explosion by about 40 million years.

Wine on the rocks? It's much better neat.

... there is only one choice: the Pip-Boy 3000! This is now a real thing, being developed by LG Display, Universal Display and L-3 Display Systems UDC, and tested in the field: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/15/wrist-mounted-computers How cool is that?

Not so. The FDA ban on feeding cattle protein to cattle excepts proteins derived from blood products and fat, and beef tallow is still used as a feed supplement at cattle farms. Also, since the bovine meat and bonemeal that used to be fed to cattle are still fed to other food stock like pigs and chickens - whose meal is, in turn, an accepted protein supplement for cattle - there is still a chance that infectious prions could find their way back into cattle (and us). Check out Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, for more info.