I seem to remember that, back in the day, the Apollo astronauts had a year or two of training, physical and operational. Has the Blue Origin crew in the article had any preparation at all, or do they just take the trip with someone else worrying about the actual details?

Suppose for the sake of argument that Donald Trump rules the Electoral College and he returns as President. A clock started ticking yesterday and will still be ticking as Trump goes into his seventh year as President. All of a sudden, the chloroquine clock rings, and it's time for chloroquine retinopathy. Trump's eyesight will be considerably impaired, and if his doctor doesn't get him off the stuff, Trump will go blind. That's why it is of limited value for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis; you can't take it for more than 4-5 years. So, I hope his doctor grows a pair in the next few years, because even if a vaccine is found in 1-2 years, you know that Trump will keep taking "what works."

The development of Watson stems from employers' inability to use human intelligence 100% instrumentally -- i.e., people can't be used as clocks. Once Watsons are prevalent, humans will be economically superfluous in nearly every area that requires thought. Our overlords won't even bother to bring out the old line about freeing up humans' time to do "better things."

I can see the NSF starting to issue CFPs for researchers to find Noah's Ark. What nobody realizes is that it's in the same warehouse as the Ark of the Covenant.

June 30, 2000: Slashdot reports that some overclockers have solved their cooling problem by immersing their motherboard in Fluorinert. Crazy kids. Who knew it would eventually catch on?

The LA Unified School District, starved for funds, has cut one week of instruction from the school year; it is threatening to cut a month from the school year if Proposition 30 (temporary tax hikes) doesn't go through. Public education in California is headed into the toilet, and it's taking the students with it.

Up until now, when my doctor prescribed something for me, I always looked at the datasheet the pharmacist gave me and sometimes looked the drug up on the NIH website to find out about the side effects. I am somewhat suggestible; would I be better off not looking at drug information lest I get psychosomatic side effects? I can see some potential problems, like dying due to my failing to read some other crucial parts of the datasheet.

It would follow that, in order to achieve these socially desirable ends,e.g., lower crime rates, governments and religions should instill and promulgate belief in a vengeful God and in divine punishment. Plato had much the same idea in his Republic when he introduced the idea of the "noble lie", a constructed mythology that would be taught to all in order to promote social harmony and love of the State. Excellent for the myth-makers, who shape our minds for our own good -- and their own benefit.

I wouldn't be surprised if some people took the cart outside, drove away with the Kinect and the tablet, and left the groceries.

Isn't this story a little vaporwarish? The companies "hope to develop" these new techniques and materials. There's no mention of an underlying discovery which the two companies might help each other commercialize. There's just this idea -- "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this? Let's look into it!" Is this actually news yet?

I remember the first time California used the Emergency Alert System to broadcast the "Amber Alert" child abduction notices. When I was a kid, I had dreams of hearing those tones, followed by the announcement that a nuclear war had just begun. Now, my heart leapt into my throat -- we were all going to die. When the voice came on to say that there had been a child abduction, I was partially relieved -- by comparison to the prospect of nuclear annihilation -- but also royally pissed off. Really. Earthquake. Tornado. Nuclear war. Broadcast those on the Emergency Alert System. Not the other stuff.

The pictures of this car raise two small and eminently answerable questions:

1. How do you see out the rear window to back up?
2. How do you change the rear tires? Are there removable panels I'm not seeing?

I imagine InstallShield will license these at once for click-through software licenses which need fine print -- really fine print.

It is possible to foresee an educational model in which ghostwritten papers are sent straight to the outsourced graders, eliminating the inefficiencies that students and educational institutions bring to the process.