Today's New York Times reports that Nathan P. Myhrvold, Microsoft's chief technology officer, working with a paleontologist, has developed a computer model that provides evidence that some dinosaurs may have been able to use their tails like bull whips, creating a cannon-like sonic boom by exceeding the speed of sound with the last few inches of the tail. Thus, dinosaurs, and not Chuck Yeager, may have been the first life forms on the planet to break the sound barrier.
It struck me as somehow appropriate that Microsoft's CTO would concern himself with how to make a dinosaur go so fast.