Really? It's been driving me crazy that I can't find a mail client which makes encryption "clicky clicky" easy. All I want is a mail client/plugin which automatically searches an authenticated keyserver for public keys that match my recipients, and offers to import them. Doesn't seem to exist as far as I can see. What's your setup that allows normies to encrypt/sign 100% of their email?

There's a fantastic talk from the San Francisco Exploratorium's Mars event this summer, where an anthropologist talks about exactly this issue... "learning how to see like a rover." She talks about the decision making process behind everything the mars rovers do... and ultimately how the people on the human team on earth end up anthropomorphising the robots. The best part is, it goes both ways: they assign human characteristics to the rovers, but when talking about what they want the rovers to do, they take on robot characteristics themselves. There's even a can't-miss set of instructions of the "rover dance" that people use when they're trying to show various parts of the rover and how it works and feels. http://www.exploratorium.edu/tv/?project=2&program=1386&type=clip (the first minute or two intro is quite slow, but the talk itself is great) Really fascinating. But the key takeaway is that we can strongly connect to robots that are visually non-human. After all, we all felt worried for R2-D2 when he got "eaten" in the swamps of Dagobah. The latest research in this area confirms that trying to mimic humans makes us uncomfortable. But a robot that looks like a robot is easily accepted.

Thank you. There's too much to say, so I won't. Just: thank you. For all the years of work and dedication. For having so much fun along with all of us. Whatever your next venture may be, know that you have your own personal army on hand. :)

How sad. Even if the research there seemed like piddling in LOE, it was one of the first massively international projects in human history. It was certainly a major step in the "internationalization" of space, and in multilateral relations. Quoth Harrison Ford, "It belongs in a museum!"

It's doubly sad as a metaphor for America's lost, multinational space age, in this time of international suspicion and violence. If anyone remembers, the significance of Star Trek was it's vision of a future where race, creed, and color were irrelevant; where black, white, yellow, and even Russian humans worked together to explore the vast unknown of space. That was the ideal of the space age, and our generation gets to watch that ideal get classified as junk, and sent to sink beneath the waves.

Apparently it's time we set our ennobling, international past behind us, to concentrate on blowing up people of other colors. We must stop creating multi-PhD astronauts, and start creating uneducated religious extremists, so we can fight other extremists. Let us beat our ploughshares into swords, our rocket ships into rockets, and get back to doing what we've all wanted to do for tens of thousands of years. Let's blow ourselves up over ownership of scraps of earth, air, and sea.

Sounds like a great idea. Tell you what: you raise as much money as the rest of the GOP combined in a low fundraising quarter, dominate 2/3rds of the straw polls (1st place in 43 of 67 straw polls conducted), and come second place in a few primaries. Then I'll have a few questions for you. I get very frustrated with people who complain that Paul has no chance. This isn't a competition to guess the winner. This is a competition to choose the candidate who is most closely aligned with your values and opinions on how the country should be run. If you really base your vote on your perception of a candidates likelihood to be elected, then I'll have no sympathy when you elect a dictator because the TV told you so.