Idiocracy was a puff piece that took on all the soft targets like corporations. No mention of religious cults or conspiracy theories. Utterly lacking in courage.

Here's a guy who writes stories specifically to show that you can live without the supernatural, and they're loaded with magic! Try writing stories where the heroes defeat witches and daemons with rationality.

#2 is way better than the version you often see, that a theory is some idea that has been rigorously tested. That definition is flat-out wrong because there are non-scientific theories, like music theory, and highly speculative theories, like string theory, that are not at all established scientifically. Other…

Hundreds? In 1850, most African colonies consisted of a few trading posts and ports. By 1970 they were almost all gone.

You engineer bacteria that can drift high in the atmosphere where temperatures are survivable. As they convert CO2 to more useful things, the greenhouse effect will lessen and they can drop lower.

Got metals? Almost all ores on earth depend on water in some way for their formation. Aluminum is mined from bauxite, essentially a tropical soil. Other metals form from hydrothermal action, or erosion and concentration into placer deposits.

Oh, so now intervention is just. Bully for you.

Against my very strenuous warnings, my sister once got a raccoon as a pet. It hadn't been well socialized as a cub and never did get very friendly. But when startled, it would climb to the top of the tallest "tree" around, which was always me. You haven't lived until you've had a raccoon climb sunburned legs. It also…

Yay! Now install gates at the TSA screeners that block anything bigger. Flat out ban roll-ons. Limit overheads to coats and small objects and require passengers to use only the space above their own seat. Check your luggage, don't carry it on.

I think we need to establish the principle that if you can afford to advertise, you can afford to give your employees health care and pensions.

Fake! Who opens by advancing knight pawns?

We can't have villains who are evil just because any more. Villains are always bad because of poverty, refined sugar, spanking, classic Road Runner cartoons, or the current catch-all cause of evil, religion. If fictional villains simply choose to be evil, maybe real-life villains do, too.

Sleeping Beauty is one of the best Disney classics, far better than the cloying and saccharine Snow White.

I am okay with cars and pretty good with household repairs. To the point where my wife sees something she likes and asks "Can you make that?"

Samuel Goudsmit's book "Alsos" details the quest to track down the Nazi nuclear program (The operation was called Operation Alsos. "Alsos" is Greek for "grove," an allusion to General Groves who commanded the project, as well as the Manhattan Project). Goudsmit wrote that the German operation was so small scale as to…

Pershing wanted to keep fighting for a couple more months and force the Germans to throw down their arms in the field. Otherwise, he presciently noted, they'd merely say later that they were forced to surrender by the politicians.

On Sol 3, perspective makes the TRAILING edges of things appear smaller.

Technetium is another fun rare element. It has long lived isotopes - a million years or so, but any primordial Tc is long since gone. The principal source is spontaneous fission of U and Th, and cosmic ray interactions with Mo or Ru.

I've seen mineral databases that list aluminum but without much in the way of detail. There have been reports of native silicon in fulgurites (melted sand from lightning strikes). Extreme high temperatures plus rapidly expanding vapor to evacuate oxygen. Makes sense. Before checking the link, my guess was it might…

I think of New York, where the Empire State Building has a timeless classic look and the self-conscious Chrysler Building looks cliched and dated. Apart from a few architectural details, the Empire State Building could have been built any time. The Chrysler Building screams "1920's."