From Discover Magazine: Shining shoes for NASA | Bad Astronomy
FACT: NASA’s total budget is less than 1% of the Federal spending. Way less than 1%.
FACT: The proposed fiscal year 2013 budget out of the White House has huge cuts to NASA. Planetary sciences alone has $300 million slashed from it.
FACT: If this cut stays in the budget, NASA will have to pull back from some big and exciting planetary missions. It’s already made NASA back out of an agreement with the European Space Agency on two ambitious Mars probes.
FACT: This sucks. A lot. America leads the way in scientific planetary missions, and this cut will hurt that, significantly.
It’s unclear if Congress will reinstate that money. So what can we do?
My friend Alan Stern — head of the new Horizons Pluto probe already on its way to the tiny world — decided to try something radical: raise public awareness about all this by holding various “fund raisers” across the nation — bake sales and car washes! Yes, you read that right: planetary scientists will be washing cars and giving away cookies to help save NASA. It’s not really about raising …
from Discover Magazine
From Gizmodo: The Experimental French Aircraft That Wasn’t
Is it just me or does that aircraft look like a … chicken?! o.O
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The Coléoptère was a French experiment from the 1950s which aspired to make a vertical take off and landing aircraft a reality. It looks like something that was an iconic, indelible part of the Atomic Future. The only thing is that it was a complete failure. More »
from Gizmodo
From Kotaku: Square Enix Is Releasing A Brand New, Original, Old-School Final Fantasy Game [Video]
It’s called Final Fantasy Dimensions, and it will be out for iOS and Android this summer. Looks like Final Fantasy IV or Final Fantasy V, no? It’s not: it’s a nostalgia-themed original game with touchscreen controls and some seriously classic gameplay. It was also released in Japan two years ago under the name Final Fantasy Legends. (Not to be confused with Final Fantasy Legend, which is the U.S. version of something that isn’t a Final Fantasy game at all, but let’s not get into that right now.) More »
from Kotaku
From Kotaku: Report: One Thousand Workers Riot at Foxconn
From Autoblog: Report: Texas toll road to get 85 mph speed limit?
Oh, Montana, how we miss your speed-limitless ways of the mid-1990s. We were carefree and young then, driving a 10-year-old Chevrolet that in no way, shape, or form was designed to travel at its top speed for hours on end. But that didn’t stop us, we the “reasonable and prudent,” and neither did it stop our digital dashboard from just flashing “85” over and over and over again. We’ll never know how fast we were really going, but suffice it to say, we were traveling at the speed of youth.
Today, the search for fast, legal roads pretty much starts and ends in Germany, with Texas a distant second. But the one-time Republic may have just cut the distance between it and the Autobahn-wielding Germans by five miles per hour. A new toll road, part of State Highway 130, is under construction near Austin, the state’s notoriously traffic-clogged capitol, and it may have its speed set at 85 when it opens. The Texas Department of Transportation made the decision, according to the Fox News report, in the wake of the legislature passing a law in 2011 to raise the maximum limit from 80 to 85 mph on approved highways.
from Autoblog
From Autoblog: Report: Texting Mass teen found guilty of vehicular homicide
Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Videos
If for some reason you still don’t think that texting while driving is a bad idea, here’s a story for you. Aaron Deveau, age 17, was allegedly composing a text message when his car crossed the center line of a Massachusetts street, hitting a car head-on. In that car was Daniel Bowley, Jr. and his girlfriend, Luz Roman. Bowley Jr. suffered massive injuries in the crash, and after spending 18 days in a Boston hospital, died as a result of the injuries.
According to Boston.com, a Haverhill, Massachusetts judge sentenced Deveau to “concurrent sentences of two and a half years on a charge of motor vehicle homicide and two years for a charge of negligent operation of a motor vehicle causing serious injury while texting” earlier this week.
After noting Deveau’s age and lack of any criminal record, the judge later ordered the 17-year-old to serve one year in the Essex County House of Corrections, suspending the other sentences. Deveau was originally arrested in 2011, following the crash that took place in February of that year.
“If I could take it back, I would take it back. I just want to apologize to the family,” Deveau stated during the trial. During his testimony, Deveau reportedly claimed that he was not texting during the time of the crash and could not recall texting while driving.
Luz Roman (pictured above), who survived the crash, spoke out during the hearings, and spoke to Boston.com after the sentencing, which you can see in the video below. “This has been giving me a lot of pain, there are no words to describe,” Roman told Boston.com. Scroll downfor the rest of her commentary, as well as some thoughts from Bowley’s son.
from Autoblog