What are the largest companies in the world?   Nine of the top ten are from the USA.  We have long been the greatest. Note that #5 shows Google in parentheses next to Alphabet, and #7 has Facebook as part of Meta.  What happened? Google, as you know reinvented the way the world accesses information.   Why restructure? Without much warning in 2015, Google renamed itself Alphabet. This allowed the parent, Alphabet, to expand into domains outside of internet search and advertising. Google now runs a lesser risk of antitrust violations. You might get confused by GOOG and GOOGL, stock ticker symbols of Alphabet.  I won't try to explain it, but  you can click here for details . 52-year old  Sundar Pichai ( originally, Pichai Sundararajan ) is the CEO of Alphabet,  while founders Larry Page ( 52 ) and Sergey Brin ( 53 ) no longer are involved in daily operations.  Sundar's compensation last year was $10.72 million. Note that Alphabet is the 5th...

The implosion of Titan opens up the age-old question of how much risk should anyone take.  The standard blowback is to stay in bed and certainly avoid leaving home if you want to avoid risk.  True, whether it's merely falling or getting into a traffic accident, security is compromised when you venture forth.  Did you know that  second only to motor vehicle accidents is falling , which itself accounts for 15% of all accidental deaths in the U.S.   But why even live if you do nothing, something only a very few rich souls can enjoy.  So we all proceed through life in school, work, family stuff, watching TV, traveling, and the like.  Then there are those who hang glide, savor bungee jumping, do night scuba diving, and, if you can afford it, take Titan to see the Titanic or, like  Jeff Bezos , three years ago boarded his New Shepard rocket on an 11-minute journey on July 20 to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of Armstrong stepping on the Moon....

Let me start with that blizzard warning this weekend.  Alaska, sure they had some snow and wind.  Perhaps that storm moving east along the Canadian-U.S. border?  Nope, the  Big Island of Hawaii .  The tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa began to accumulate snow last week.  The total snowfall could have been a foot by Sunday, with winds exceeding 100 MPH.  Just a typical winter over the telescopes on Mauna Kea, which might still someday build the Thirty Meter Telescope.  That  photo to the right  is actually from January of this year. More than a decade ago this blog site had a  series on eternal life .  This was linked to my  Huffington Post  article on  Science and the Future of Cloning:  Is Immortality Possible?   To quote: There are at least two pathways to continue your presence. One does not involve human cloning. Without going into telomeres and ribonucleoproteins, let me just say that science is actu...