Last week, Fox News published a story (now scrubbed from their site, but available here) titled “Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies.” CNET News asked whether we’ve reached the “dawn of the corpse-eating robots,” while Fast Company mocked Fox for its “gleeful conjecture.” Now, the manufacturer of the EVIL FLESH-EATING ROBOTS OF DEATH has responded with a press… Read more »
Millions of people in India, China, and other Asian nations will have a front-row seat for the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century tomorrow: The event begins at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, July 22nd, in the Gulf of Khambhat just east of India. Morning fishermen will experience a sunrise like nothing they’ve ever seen before. Rising… Read more »
As you probably already know, today is the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing — arguably mankind’s greatest achievement (though, as Conan O’Brien pointed out, putting cheese inside the pizza crust is surely a close second). In honor of the anniversary, Mac OS X, iPhone and iPod touch users can download Carina’s SkyGazer astronomy application, free for today only…. Read more »
…is brought to you by William R. Forstchen, author of One Second After — a novel about an electromagnetic pulse that plunges America into third-world chaos (with a foreward by Newt Gingrich!) — who offers this helpful step-by-step guide to how we’re all completely screwed if (nay, when!) terrorists unleash E.M.P. hell. And you were worried about swine flu? (Hat… Read more »
One would think it’s a pretty safe assumption that, once you have bought something, it’s yours to keep, regardless of whether the place you bought it from stops selling it. If you buy e-books from Amazon for your Kindle, you should know that belief is wrong. When a publisher decided to stop providing digital editions of a pair of books… Read more »
Space Shuttle Endeavour launched an hour or so ago from Kennedy Space Center on its delayed STS-127 mission. This was the sixth launch attempt for this mission, the previous five tries having been scrubbed for a mixture of technical and weather reasons. At first sight, the launch looked flawless. However, as slow motion replays became available shortly after Endeavour entered… Read more »
When it comes to buying a computer today, you pretty much have two choices for the Operating System (OS): the heavyweight champ Microsoft’s Windows, or the scrappy underdog Apple’s MacOS X. (Some people will try and tell you there is a third option called Linux; ignore them. They are nerds and for the most part they are wrong.) Well, that… Read more »
Tonight’s directly-overhead flyover by the International Space Station was as spectacular as promised. That thing is really bright now! Unfortunately, my efforts to photograph it were somewhat less spectacular. My SLR’s shutter problem has now evolved into a focus problem — it can fill the frame again, but autofocus is completely busted — and my hasty efforts at manually focusing… Read more »
There is a veritable marathon of flyovers by the International Space Station — brighter than ever, thanks to new solar panels added earlier this year — happening over the continental United States during the next several days. Definitely worth checking out. For local flyby times and magnitudes (lower numbers are brighter), check out SpaceWeather.com’s Simple Satellite Tracker, or for more… Read more »
I have various additional introductory blog posts scheduled to go online throughout the day today, but in the mean time, blogworthy stuff is happening in the world — and the cosmos. Specifically: [This] morning, NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft will fly by the Moon only 9,000 km above the lunar surface. The purpose of the encounter is to put LCROSS in an… Read more »
