45 years ago today, the footprint heard around the world ... leaving a lasting impression on the human race.  Our first step off our own planet.  Pretty hard to look at that picture without feeling chills.

Jason Kottke has assembled a page where you can watch live coverage of the landing, as reported on CBS by Walter Cronkite.  Hard not to feel nostalgic for real news reporting as well as the seriousness of purpose and magnificent engineering that led to this accomplishment.  Yay!

Buzz Aldrin wants to know, where were you back then?

Of course the lunar landings were the epitome of a team accomplishment, but no doubt there were brilliant engineers making significant individual contributions.  I always think the team sets up the individual, but can never take her place.  Have we reached the end of 'genius'?  Looking around me, I don't think so... 

Heh: selfies are awesome.  "I take a lot of selfies. You know why? Because I’m fucking adorable." 

Those were the days: space disintegrator gun and helmet.  I feel like I'd want one of those right now (and yeah, I'd take a selfie with it :) 

Scott "Dilbert" Adams: the user interface to reality.  "Today when I hear people debate the existence of God, it feels exactly like debating whether the software they are using is hosted on Amazon's servers or Rackspace."  Both subjects certainly prove strong feelings! 

The perfect use for a 3D-printer: making Barbie armor!  Wow, this is genius.  I wonder if we could print her a disintegrator gun? 

Meanwhile another great use: 3D-printing ice cream!  I am not making this up.  Where do I get one?  (This happened at MIT, I hope my Caltech brethren are paying attention.) 

Oh, and this company lets you print selfies on toast!  Seriously.  Just when you think you've heard it all... 

Robot swarm descends on NYC's museum of math.  Excellent. 

Weird to think the compute power of these little robots probably exceeded that of an Apollo space capsule, right?

An article in Salon (!) examines the recently announced Tesla Model 3.  Less expensive, and with a range of 200+ miles, this could be the mainstream electric car everyone has been waiting for.  We'll see... I haven't seen any pictures of this car yet, only rumors and mockups. 

Also electrifying: Airbus' shows off its largest (A308) and smallest planes at the Farnborough air show, including a new electric "jet".  How cool is that? 

Apparently Airbus sold 496 planes for $75.3B at this show.  That's a pretty successful exhibit.  Whew.

I'm going to have to work on this: how to get ahead by speaking vaguely.  Fortunately among our political leaders there are many good examples :) 

ZooBorn of the day: a little South African fur seal pup.  Aww, he's so cute!  

(but probably, a lot oftrouble :)