Random bullets to ponder in mid-February

• We should designate February the "Dream Big" month. We do this at the beginning of the school year, but maybe now would be a good time to think about this. How would you shake up your life or change, if you'd like to do that? 
• Thinking about Google's self-driving cars: Can I give a self-driving car a driving test under actual conditions?  Here's one, and it's not hypothetical or even uncommon: two-lane road, with a 4-foot shoulder and a 300' dropoff on your side, no guardrails. You see a set of headlights barrelling down the road in your lane. Okay, Google car, what do you do? Go.
• It's a link I can't find now (this one is close), but I'm surprised no one has written about corporations mining employee health data, including when women have birth-control pill prescriptions refilled, to predict in advance whether they're trying to get pregnant. "This would never be abused," the article piously stated, but in corporate thinking, knowing an employee is getting pregnant = about to tap into more medical benefits, leave policies, etc. What's to prevent this from being used against the employee in performance reviews and hiring decisions? Haven't we seen ample evidence that corporate interest is, to understate the case, not always aligned with the individual or public good?
• How happy would you be as a big donor to a college if your gift was going, not to students or faculty, but to the president's travel budget so that she can go to Davos and hire new administrators? 
• Every day in February where there's no snow and ice is a gift, even if it's raining. If you get up and there's no snow, it's already a good day.  I'm even seeing some delusional early daffodils coming up and am grateful.
• Those big splash panels demanding that you subscribe that now infest almost all web sites and that hold your phone hostage if you're trying to read there? I'm grateful to them, because I always click away--no article is ever worth it--and thus decrease my junk internet reading time. 
• For excitement in real life, I got a Netgear WiFi Range extender and am looking forward, more or less, to installing it this weekend.
• I'm on the seventh day of a chain of writing at least something every day, regardless of how tired I am. 750words.com is again my salvation on this. It tasks me, it heaps me, and I see outrageous strength in it, sitting there waiting for me to do something every day.