You've heard or at least read about the pledge of the United States Postal Service: "Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep the postmen from their appointed rounds."  Well, that was before government workers had a union because today they quickly note that unshoveled snow, icy sidewalks, or snow plowed up against mailboxes are all exempt from that credo.

For innovative and high-tech startups that need financing, a worldwide drought is in the offing.

Coming shortage of equity investment

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports a surge in early-stage entrepreneurial activity worldwide in 2011. Over 12 percent of US adults started a business in that year, compared to less than 8 percent in 2010. Entrepreneurship increased in three fourths of the developed countries GEM studied. Even in China and other countries where entrepreneurship was already high, entrepreneurial participation jumped 25% in 2011 [Klein].

Some reports show US venture capital funding 22 percent above 2010 levels [Bigelow]. Other news stories paint the Austin VC market as hot. And yet...

You know it's true.  It's common sense.  Continue to exercise and you will have a better life. Muscle mass will decrease as you age unless you stop it but 12 weeks of training geared towards improving muscular power in older people were shown to be highly effective for improving their functional capacity and quality of life, according to studies carried out by the Biomechanics and Physiology of Movement research group at the Public University of Navarre.

If someone in 2012 wants to criticize Henry Ford because he didn't know everything about automobiles a century ago, it's a little silly. He knew what he knew given the science and the technology of his day - he revolutionized his field.  Freud got a lot wrong about psychology but he created the only unified theory of psychology recognized by people today. Criticizing him is as quaint and pointless and irrelevant as someone criticizing a 19th century analysis of Coleridge - any researcher doing it is likely to get a "someone paid for them to write this?" response.

The Freeport News--"Grand Bahama's First Newspaper"--ran an article today that was a mix of highly detailed biology and complete bone-headed confusion.

Could there be a healthy squid population living in local waters? has a fantastic opening:

Is it a possibility that there is a healthy squid population in waters around Grand Bahama?
Although, at this point, there is no official answer to the question from the proper authority, this daily will continue to search and keep our readers updated.

Mystery! Intrigue! The authorities may be ignoring the situation, but never fear, the journalists will poke and prod until it all comes out.

A new result by the CMS collaboration has been produced today on top quark physics. For those of you who only get triggered by the search of new particles or new forces, the study of "yesterday's signals", such as top quarks, is boring and uninformative; but high-energy physics is a rich field of research, and we extend our understanding of subnuclear physics no less by getting to know how exactly top quarks get produced in proton-proton collisions, than we do by placing limits on ephemeral particles (SUSY ones, e.g.).

So I salute the new measurement as an important advance. Using over one inverse femtobarn of data collected in 2011 (about a hundred trillion proton-proton collisions), CMS was able to study top quark pairs in great detail.