They're not going to pop like a party balloon:

"Because the aerostats are not highly pressurized, bullets won’t burst them; they can actually remain buoyant for hours after suffering multiple punctures." (http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/the-usas-raid-program-small-aerostats-big-surveillance-time-02779/)

If you google harder than I did, you'll find more information about aerostats.

However, if you'd like to be a worrier consider the following:

• Aircraft landing at Washington Nation, Dulles and Andrews (home of Air Force One).
• Ubiquitous surveillance of civilians

You've got to be kidding. As someone who grew up on Merritt Island and had many friends whose dads worked at the Cape, we did not want it changed to be named after Kennedy.

From the wikipedia article:

It would have been more appropriate to have renamed Cape Cod as Cape Kennedy, as that was the Kennedy stomping grounds. There's even a museum about Kennedy there. Cape Cod was named in 1602 and Cape Canaveral named in the first half of the 16th century. It was inappropriate for a Texas politician to name a Florida historical site after a Massachusetts politician. Thankfully, in 1973, the mistake was corrected.

Excellent summary. My bachelor's was in Physics and after several years of coding I got my Master's in compsci. Understanding state machines (via Automata & Computability) helped with untangling complicated conditions and process. The analysis of data structures was also a big deal. I blush at some of the algorithms I wrote.

The only thing I would add to the list above is mathematical logic as applied to programming. While I'm not wild about program correctness techniques, preconditions and postconditions are useful for deciding if a piece of code is correct and has applications in unit testing among others.

Basically, what I got from my CompSci degree is that I finally really understood what I was doing. It made getting the degree a series of aha! moments.

I grew up on Merritt Island in the 60's and 70's and the space program inspired me in my schooling and life. I hope the shuttle program has inspired some youth with the vision for the next steps in space. Regardless of our manifest failings, space exploration and travel represent fine qualities of the human spirit and give me some hope for what humanity can achieve. I know, it's pretty easy to be cynical given the sheer brutal, nastiness that we demonstrate, but I prefer to focus on the positive. That being said, the "Mission Completed" patch really hit home with me, especially the nebula in the background. It is gorgeous. The others are remarkable, the tributes to the lost astronauts are moving and I'd love to have each of these patches.

Actually, I am in a basement writing code in a cube. I had a window office once. I dream of those days even though that company was evil.

The Moors invaded Spain in 711 AD. The Roman Empire ended in 476 AD. I suspect the concept of zero entered Europe in some other fashion. Perhaps until the Moors came into Spain, zero was nothing to write home about.

My AI course teacher said that AI was whatever we hadn't figured out to do with computers yet.

It's always been fascinating to me that most fiction is repeating the same stories (see Joseph Campbell), but that certain writers can make the tale shine in a new way. It's what she can do with these "generic fantasy" stories that makes her either a good or bad author. Whether she can take the "I, Robot" series and make them memorable and entertaining remains to be seen.

Besides, IMHO, the "I, Robot" stories were to some extent just detective stories, with robots and some interesting speculation about robot "morality", with Asimov exploring how that morality could be circumvented. It is up to the discerning to recognize that he was really talking about human morality...as well as making a living as an author. ;)

For the record, Ms. Reichert is a she. Also for the record, the "I, Robot" movie was as bad as you mention. You are fortunate. The only people who remember the movie completely are locked in institutions.

nobody knows you're a dog. And all you have to know is 200 words.