American astronaut Sunita Williams will run 26.2 miles on a treadmill on Patriots’ Day (April 16th for those of you outside of Massachusetts) while runners on the ground will compete in the 111th Boston Marathon, according this New Scientist article: She says she is doing it to motivate children to be fit. “I encourage kids [...]
I found this article on the word evolution last month, and today I finally tracked one of the researchers down for the phone interview below (for release on the Museum’s podcast tomorrow). The paper is about the use of the “E-Word” in scientific articles and popular news stories. I found the topic very interesting, and [...]
Last night, a private launch vehicle from SpaceX Corporation made it most of the way to orbit. According to their website: Falcon flew far beyond the “edge” of space, typically thought of as around 60 miles. Our altitude was approximately 200 miles, which is just 50 miles below the International Space Station. The second stage [...]
Everyone knows about the Boston Duck Tours, but there’s a new outfit in set to start tours from Charlestown soon: Super Duck Tours. I saw this one this morning at the intersection of Causeway and North Washington Streets, headed over the Charlestown Bridge. According to an article about the amphibious tours in Maine, these Ducks [...]
I usually read my news online (Reuters and AP wire stories via Yahoo! News), where it seems that speed is valued above quality. Stories are truncated, the same facts are given at both the beginning and the end of articles, and the pictures rarely relate well to the text. I’ve gotten used to these thrown-together [...]
The AP reported yesterday that 400 R2-D2 mailboxes would be deployed around the country to promote the launch of a Star Wars commemorative stamp on March 28. Well, I came to work this morning and found this new mailbox outside the building. When I went to the website printed on the side, I found a [...]
From Wired News Seven months after a conclave of scientists downgraded the distant heavenly body to a “dwarf planet,” a state representative in New Mexico aims to give the snubbed world back some of its respect. State lawmakers will vote Tuesday on a bill that proposes “as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night [...]
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, Associated Press Writer: Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday…. “That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he [...]
Here’s a letter to the Physics Today from a guy who is way too into time: As a collector of vintage and modern atomic clocks, I discovered it was possible, using gear found at home, to convert our family minivan into a mobile high-precision time laboratory… He ends the letter like this: It was the [...]
It was cloudy here, so I didn’t get to see the eclipse. I never questioned that it would happen, though it appears that the Associated Press did:
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