The boundary between uniquely human creativity and machine capabilities continues to change. Returning to the game of chess, back in 1956, thirteen-year-old child prodigy Bobby Fischer made a pair of remarkably creative moves against grandmaster Donald Byrne. First he sacrificed his knight, seemingly for no gain, and then exposed his queen to capture. On the surface, these moves seemed insane, but several moves later, Fischer used these moves to win the game. His creativity was praised at the time as the mark of genius. Yet today if you program that same position into an ordinary chess program, it will immediately suggest the exact moves that Fischer made. It's not because the computer has memorized the Fischer-Byrne game, but rather because it searches far enough ahead to see that these moves really do pay off.

Since the early 1980s, Black Friday has been a kind of unofficial U.S. holiday marking the beginning of the holiday season and, consequently, the most profitable time for retailers in the year. But in recent years, a new movement has come to light, adding a more ecological philosophy. The movement is called Green Friday, and it seeks to raise awareness about the damage that Black Friday brings to the environment. Think of the carbon emissions caused by driving to the mall, the shipping of millions of items around the world, the plastic waste produced by packaging, and even the long-term waste produced by mindlessly buying things we don't need. Green Friday is about changing the way we see this day and switching our mindset from buy, buy, buy to finding alternative ways to give gifts during the holiday season so we don't cause further damage to the Earth. Even if only a small percentage of the population makes the switch, it'll mean great things for the environment.

U.S. commercial aviation has long had an extremely effective system for encouraging pilots to submit reports of errors. The program has resulted in numerous improvements to aviation safety. It wasn't easy to establish: pilots had severe self-induced social pressures against admitting to errors. Moreover, to whom would they report them? Certainly not to their employers. Not even to the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), for then they would probably be punished. The solution was to let the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) set up a voluntary accident reporting system whereby pilots could submit semi-anonymous reports of errors they had made or observed in others. Once NASA personnel had acquired the necessary information, they would detach the contact information from the report and mail it back to the pilot. This meant that NASA no longer knew who had reported the error, which made it impossible for the airline companies or the FAA (which enforced penalties against errors) to find out who had submitted the report. If the FAA had independently noticed the error and tried to invoke a civil penalty or certificate suspension, the receipt of self-report automatically exempted the pilot from punishment. When a sufficient number of similar errors had been collected, NASA would analyze them and issue reports and recommendations to the airlines and to the FAA. These reports also helped the pilots realize that their error reports were valuable tools for increasing safety.