What has Peter Clarke got against immersion lithography? In Silicon Strategies (free registration required), he warns that immersion may require photoresist tweaks and decrease throughput, increasing cost of ownership. As opposed to 157 nm lithography which, he neglects to mention, requires completely new photoresists and a new exposure laser.

Peter, you're smarter than that. Want to try again?

Last September, I grumbled about the lack of apparent accountability for the TSA's no-fly list. Nothing has changed. The ACLU has discovered that the government itself doesn't appear to know how names are added to or removed from the list, who has access to it, or even how many people have been prevented from traveling because of it.It's therefore impossible to know whether the list is a critical weapon in the fight against terrorism, an excuse for harassment of government critics, or just a colossal waste of money.

Good analysis of new regulations requiring tire pressure monitors. With five of these in every car (four tires and the spare), the potential market is huge. It's a good time to be a MEMS pressure sensor vendor.

(Silicon Strategies link. Free registration required.)

Chemistry sets have come a long long way. For the budding genius on your list, how about the Discovery DNA Explorer Kit? Comes complete with battery-powered electrophoresis unit. The toy that asks: is chopping ants up to sequence their genome more acceptable than frying them with a magnifying glass?

As usual, the MRS Fall Meeting comes right after Thanksgiving, with the IEEE Electron Device Meeting next week. Expect updates to be sparse for the next couple of weeks, since I'll be attending both conferences.

I did get a bit of writing done over the long weekend, with 6175 words since my last update. That gives me totals of 238,265 for the year so far, and 24,175 for the month of November. My original goal of 300,000 for the year is probably out of reach, but the fallback position of 250,000 should be pretty doable. For December, my goal stands at 1500 words per day.