Miscellany: Apollo 11 computer crash, Malcolm Gladwell deconstructing law school admissions ... and maggots

Today is the day 50 years ago that the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon ... there have been a boatload of articles and specials commemorating their achievement, but as a computer guy I found a Wired article especially interesting ...

During the final approach to the moon's surface, the guidance computer "crashed" several times, giving just warning codes to Buzz Aldrin, the pilot. It finally turned out that the software was too busy with other activities like changing the thrusters minutely to be able to get the right display codes to Aldrin ...

Amazing that the thing worked at all, running in a tiny memory space that they had available ...

As well as a superbly performing technical organization, NASA probably had another type of resource available:

But how do lawyers get into law school, and does law school prepare them for the profession?

Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast has been consistently excellent and fascinating, especially these two:

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/31-puzzle-rush

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/32-the-tortoise-and-the-hare


From lawyers, finally, we come to ...

Yes, maggots ... an important source of food (for humans!) for the future, according to this company ...

Yummm! :-)