The Brighter Brains Institute in conjunction with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies has announced that its next conference will be held on 6 February 2016 and bears the title Argue 4 Tomorrow. As usual, the conference will take place at the Humanist Hall in Oakland, California. The format of this conference will differ from previous conferences in that it will take the form of a slightly modified Oxford style debate rather than a collection of presentations as we usually think of them. The three debate topics will be Open Borders - For or Against, Basic Income Guarantee - For or …

Anybody know what's going on? Is this only where I happen to be sourcing from right now or are other people seeing this?

drwho@windbringer ~ $ whois google.com | less

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM
IP Address: 69.41.185.195
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net

Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.DOWNLOAD.MOVIE.ONLINE.ZML2 …

Note: additions are being made after the cut and edits are stricken.

If you're not familiar with the work of Dr. Peter Watts, you really should be. His degrees in marine ecophysiology aside, he is also a sci-fi author of some talent and is best known for releasing his novels under a Creative Commons license in addition to having them published through Tor, among them Starfish and the mind-bending transhumanist novel Blindsight, which will certainly make you reconsider what you think about how you think. His work is well known by the science fiction fandom for taking hard SF in …

Given what happened with the wedding of 'lex Pendragon and Marlise this past weekend with some of the attendees and celebrants having problems attending due to delayed airplane flights or layovers due to weather, I think it'd be a good idea to post something about camping out in airports: Why you might have to do, how to do it, and what to look for.

While there are some people who actually plan to camp out in airline terminals for various reasons, most people don't. Those of us that do are usually constrained by transportation to the airport to begin with …