  Monday, December 31, 2012  bad moon rising. again.  There are
tough times ahead, the Austerians tell us, as they continue to
pull ahead of everyone else.  Of course, just as only Nixon
could go to China, only Obama could destroy Social Security.  It
seems the mark of an honest politician is that they stay bought.
Sunday, December 30, 2012  no one's talking  Just a thought or
two (again) on the great radio silence of space in the face of a
probable multitude of life-bearing planets in the universe.
Even if a species gets smart enough to avoid thermonuclear
suicide or environmental degradation, there's another hubris
trap for any sapient species.  It's likely that the quest for
space warp technology will also produce a series of mistakes
about quantum black holes, which could destroy an interplanetary
species that hadn't spread beyond its home system.  The voice of
conventional theoretical physics assures us these would be
harmless. But governments continue to pour massive amounts of
money into research on