Friday Four

1. Here's a strange side-effect of the War on Drugs modern Prohibition: Tide laundry detergent as a drug currency.

2. I love the fact that 3D printing has advanced enough that someone has written at length about its weaknesses vis-a-vis manufacturing.

3. It is amazing to contemplate how much travel speed and safety have improved over time. Just take a look at those historical maps of Nineteenth Century travel time across the United States. They cover the years 1800, 1830, and 1857. There is also a map for 1930.

4. I'll indulge my inner Trekkie by linking to a story about a recently-discovered star system with three "habitable zone" planets, and to an artists's (admittedly unscientific) conception of what Mars might look like, were it terraformed.

-- CAV

Updates

1-14-13: Corrected a link.