Well, the Apple's Japan store is still up, and is showing no evidence for an iPhone tab. So...

Hey Hung, I don't get the ad hominem attack, but whatever.

So which part's BS? The Apollo 11 flag didn't spontaneously turn to dust, and neither will a piece of paper tossed out of the ISS. What happened in the 40 years since Apollo 11...who knows and who cares, it's not relevant.

Friction...the researchers doing the study claimed thier mach 7 wind tunnel test were enough to heat a scale model up to 300°C, and the plane will be doing mach 20 when it reaches the atmosphere. That's not compression and I'm pretty darned sure it wasn't ionic plasma...So what was your point again? Oh yeah, that friction won't heat up the model. *BZZZZT* wrong again. The Ideal Gas Law is also irrelevant, nice try. Though, I'd have given you bonus points if you'd come up with slightly less irrelevant Gay-Lussack's law.

BTW, it's 'mind boggling' not 'mind bottling'. At least end with the right damned insult.

It seems that if a flag can survive on the moon a paper plane could survive in space without spontaneously bursting into flame. Don'cha think?

Anyway, having said that, I think it's curtains for our little paper plane from space. Friction is indeed the cause of reentry heat. Friction is a byproduct of speed, and since reentry speed is largely determined by gravimetric acceleration, a paper plane will probably experience a lot of it when it hits the atmosphere. I'll put my money on this thing skipping across the upper atmosphere until it either disintegrates or burns up.

Though, it might make a good Straight Dope question...

Yeah, it looks like both the company name, Matsushita, and their domestic brand, National, will all get changed to Panasonic. I don't think there will be much of a noticeable effect outside of Japan, but the disappearance of National will probably create some market confusion.

True this is only a speed bump, and tied to Intel's chip-a-thon, but this seems to bode well for Apple making a few big announcements next week. At least it gives SJ one less trivial thing to run on about during his keynote.

@Matt, Don't worry, the government already knows your identity. That much is a given since you have a SSN and (theoretically) pay taxes. However, the government can't automatically identify you individually--doing so takes some amount of effort. Once they have a broad database of biometric facial scans and fingerprints, identifying you individually will be trivial. This means that all public spaces equipped with biometric cameras and banks and ATMs using biometric fingerprint scanners can be used to track your individual movements, both in real time or historically.

Should you care...I think so. Consider this for example, if you attended an anti-government protest and had a biometric image on record, the government would be able to automatically retrieve the personal data on everyone attending that protest, and recreate your actions before and after. And they do record and store those images. You can argue the constitutionality of the government recording those images, but they would probably pass...Things they could do include putting your name on a "No-fly" list prior to large political events, or blocking your employment in government jobs. What they will do with the information becomes a bit of a crap shoot based on the whims of the person or people controlling it. However, given the effort being put into automated data mining, the government sees value in having that information.

@Tony, Sadly, you'd be required to submit a biometric facial scan and fingerprint when arrived in Japan. Of course that's to stop terrorism, but that data is being made available to police agencies for domestic criminal cases...

Sadly, those beards (fake or not) won't be at all useful if they record a proper biometric facial scan of you.

but...but...but...now there is Wii Fitness. So, it's all better, right.

Cycling on the highways is not prohibited everywhere--it's legal in a lot of areas in the rural western US.

Hmmm...wouldn't it have been of a more harmonious symmetry for Moto to release a BMW branded version of the Z8? As it is, "Ferrari branded Z8" just sounds like a marketing mess.