IT Insights Blog — Linux Pro

Lots of things in life have expiration dates. Food and drink items that you buy at the grocery store, for example. The expiration date is printed right on the side of that carton of milk in the back of your fridge. You don't even have to take a sniff to know whether it's still good. (Once in a while, of course, you should probably still take a sniff anyway.) Can't remember when you bought those hot dogs in the cheese drawer? Just check the package.

Someday, perhaps even someday soon — pause for raucous laughter and bitterly aggrieved forehead slapping — American author George R.R. Martin will finish writing The Winds of Winter, then start and finish writing A Dream of Spring. Then A Song of Ice and Fire, the internationally famous high fantasy saga that began in 1996 with A Game of Thrones, will finally be complete. It's been eight years since publication of the preceding volume, A Dance with Dragons, so, well, let's all be patient.

Once upon a time in 1937, the Hormel Foods Corporation created a cooked lunch meat product sold in a distinctive tin can. The main ingredient is pork — originally pork shoulder, which was believed to be a less desirable cut of meat — along with ham (pork meat from the leg), salt, sugar, water, modified potato starch, and sodium nitrite. The brother-in-law of a Hormel Foods executive won a $100 cash prize for coining the distinctive moniker "spam," quickly trademarked as "SPAM."

At some point in the near future, possibly as soon as 25 or 30 years from now, a tiny spacecraft accelerated to one-fifth the speed of light (134 million MPH) by an Earth-based laser could arrive at the Alpha Centauri star system. Alpha Centauri contains three stars and at least two known planets, and we'll probably find out a lot more about our nearest stellar neighbor after the "nanocraft" arrives.

Depending on who you ask, it's either 50 miles or 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) straight up from the surface of Mother Earth to "space." The discrepancy is accounted for by a variation in measurement between the United States and the rest of the world. You might ask the students of Clint Thomsen, a CTE instructor for Tooele County School District in Utah. The kids have firsthand ...