Happy belated Stanislav Petrov Day!  One does appreciate the world still being here, however fubarred it may occasionally seem.

Today is my birthday, and also Google's.  Every year I go through approximately 15 seconds of being creeped out by the "personalized" Google doodle until I remember this.  Oh my god, this evening they do have a ( Read more... )

I love my wife.

I got home today and saw a copy of The Watchtower on the coffee table.

Me: Oh, did we get Jehovah's Witnesses today?
S: Yes, apparently some live nearby.
Me: So, what happened?
S: They asked whether I'd noticed all the bad things happening in the world, and whether I agreed that things seemed to be getting worse all the time, and didn't ( Read more... )

I had to watch the new Star Trek movie for work today--yes, I actually do consider this a "had to," as I'd been deliberately avoiding it.  Mobius is putting together a workshop on science in the movies, using a scene from this one, and I needed some context before critiquing the entirely superfluous giant planet-core-drilling-laser.

For my own ( Read more... )

The world has always been about to end.  When I was growing up, it was World War 3.  It was the most well-documented of modern wars, so we all knew the shape of the thing.  Someone would mistake a flock of birds or a computer error for nuclear warhead, and they'd launch all their missiles, and then the other side would launch all their missiles, ( Read more... )