We want to have incredibly sophisticated technological goodies, which incorporate thousands of components in very complex relationships, packaged so that we can use them without having to understand how they work. At this point, it seems safe to say that neither Toyota nor anyone else really knows what is behind all these reported problems. It would probably be a good thing, though, for everyone to keep in mind that there are hard problems that arise in the real world; and they cannot be made easy be declaring them so.

The second RNA segment of some influenza virus strains encodes a protein called PB1-F2 that might contribute to virulence. Speaking about the 2009 pandemic H1N1 strain, Peter Palese noted that "If this virulence marker is necessary for an influenza virus to become highly pathogenic in humans or in chickens, then the current swine virus doesn't have what it takes to become a major killer."

Margaret Somerville, a bioethicist at McGill University, is still pushing her Christian-based views as if they were science. Recently, she's taken on the emerging controversy about the rights that dolphins may deserve.

The nine-year-old children who came into work with their father at the JFK Tower seem to have captured the public imagination. I've been asked my opinion on this subject at least 25 times. A lot of why people are excited seems to stem from a misunderstanding of how the air traffic control (ATC) system works.

I flew from Boston to San Antonio, Texas yesterday on American Airlines. I dutifully segregated my liquids (sunscreen and toothpaste) into a quart-sized Ziploc bag and put it in the front pocket of my carry-on. Then I forgot to take it out when going through the Logan Airport security line at 5:00 am. The 25 TSA employees present at the checkpoint failed to notice this infraction (liquids remaining in bag). It occurred to me that this has happened many times before.

Doris Haddock, a New Hampshire political activist known as "Granny D," died Tuesday at age 100. A decade ago she walked 3,200 miles across the country in 14 months to draw attention to campaign finance reform. Here's what she had to say last month about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

Just as I discussed the decreasing revenue of Atlantic City Casinos in our previous blog posts, today I came up with more news about casinos losing their revenue share. Why are casinos from a few states showing declines in their revenues?

Starting a diet can be difficult. First is finding the motivation to take that first step toward eating healthy. Barring a good friend or spouse who is dieting with you and helping you find that inner strength, most of us are on our own when it comes to jumping that hurdle. But there are lots of weight loss drugs out there that claim to help you control those annoying hunger feelings.

The March issue of Wired magazine has an interesting article about a relatively new method of generating high-quality images from relatively low-quality samples. The technique, known as compressed sensing or compressed sampling, is in some sense an inversion of the more familiar process of data compression.

I wonder if we're barking up the wrong tree (or down the wrong hole) when we obsess about "curation" of news " a favorite topic of mainstream media preservationists. Maybe what we need is to see explainers as advocates of our curiosity about the deep questions, or deep facts, such that they might become unavoidable in news coverage.

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