The lone researcher. “lone tinkerers…who cobbled their contraptions together in small, cluttered labs and garages, gave way to drab ‘researchers’ — anonymous drones working in teams for big companies, tweaking products to be marketed by the suits.”

Drainspotting: just what it sounds like. The Wabash tie-in to this is that my sophomore year when Andy Ford became president, someone sent him a photo of a drain cover made by the Ford Meter Box Company of Wabash, IN.

If you’re a little tired of all the Reagan hagiography, the perennially cranky Christopher Hitchens has this in Slate. Dear Old Wabash gets a passing mention.

Stories in BBC and a more nationalistic schtick from The Register commemorate the 50 year anniversary of the death of Alan Turing. Via Slashdot.