I just stumbled across a blog called Women in Planetary Science. I like the tag line: "Women make up half the bodies in the solar system. Why not half the scientists?"

Supposedly the annual onset of Daylight Saving Time brings about an increase in heart attacks, more traffic accidents, more workplace accidents, yadda yadda yadda. So why the hell do we do this to ourselves every year? And earlier every year, too ( Read more... )

For aerospace engineer telerib and anyone else with an interest: http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/the-physics-of-space-battles/

While we're thanking our current and past military forces, let's also send thoughts of gratitude toward the folks at the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command and its Central Identification Laboratory at Hickam AFB in Honolulu.

These are the folks who are working to make sure that no one else gets added to the Tomb of the Unknowns and that any remains ( Read more... )

First, a couple of lolcats:


( Read more... )

You gotta love these two tweets, one right after the other:

# HubblePAO Atlantis is now 212,000 miles from Hubble.
14 minutes ago from web

# SSAtlantis 212,000 ft behind Hubble. Moving in slowly but surely.
14 minutes ago from twhirl

Oh-kay, ONE of these figures is off by a factor of 5,280....

Forgot to mention it earlier: Happy 50th Birthday, NASA!!!! Now, are you going to join AARP?? :-) :-)

Check out this "Telectroscope" public-art project ( Read more... )

John Archibald Wheeler has died at age 96. Many consider him the last of the physics giants of the 20th century. This was the guy who debated Einstein and Bohr, who was Ph.D. thesis adviser to Feynman (who died 20 years ago), and who coined the term "black hole." Oh, yeah, he was also a Unitarian Universalist who was married for 72 years until his ( Read more... )

Did you know that a nit is a unit of measurement?

One nit equals one candela per square meter. It is a measure of luminance.

I didn't know this, either, until I came across the term "mega-nits" and wondered, "Whut th'heck??"

So, if you start doing some nitpicking, ask yourself: Am I picking nits, or am I picking mega-nits???