Category: Media

From CNN:

“Onlookers held their breath as the manned SpaceShipOne performed unexpected but spectacular acrobatics on its way into space, the first step toward winning the Ansari X Prize on Wednesday.”

I think this is the most significant space flight since the US landed on the moon…at least as significant as the Shuttle program. The first private spaceflight in history should go up there with the Wright Brothers, the Apollo missions, the Concord and the US Shuttle program as a milestone in aeronautics.

This is a HUGE month for space…Richard Branson announced that Virgin Atlantic was going to try to be Virgin Galactic and offer spaceflight, and Xeni of BoingBoing went weightless with the first commercial company licensed to operate zero-g flights in the US.

I’ll just say, as someone who visited NASA at the age of 9 or 10 and has been a sci-fi freak his entire life, this stuff is incredibly exciting. Space tourism = sign me up. I’m looking at the cost of the zero-g flights ($2950) and going “that’s not too bad…” 🙂

…the Ten Worst Black Metal Photos of All Time.

My personal fav:

From BoingBoing, a story about an economics professor here at UNC that’s come to the conclusion that (*gasp, shock*) illegal downloading of music doesn’t actually affect album sales.

A quote from the paper: “Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale…high selling albums actually benefit from file sharing. ”

Allow me to translate the gist of the paper to non-academic speak for those not at a University:

“Screw you, RIAA, you bunch of money grubbing litigious jerkwads.”