Hallelujah -- looks like I'll have time to do some of those things I've been putting off this year:
Along with the economy, the Earth itself is slowing down, requiring timekeepers to add an extra second to their atomic clocks to keep in sync with Earth's slightly slowing rotation. So an extra second will be tacked on to Dec. 31 after 6:59:59 p.m. and before 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Remember that "Twilight Zone" episode in which nobody realizes until too late that "To Serve Man" is a cookbook? Well, when Keanu Reeves says he is "a friend of the Earth" in the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," that doesn't mean what people think it does, either, and it shows just one of the two ways the re-makers have screwed up a classic movie.
Do stories such as this give you a little shiver of dread?
If you're like most people you carry your cell phone practically everywhere. However, many Nextel customers were disconnected this morning as technical difficulties disrupted service.
Issues with a local tower created hours of service problems. One Terre Haute Nextel provider received hundreds of complaint calls because of the high number of phones lacking service.
I don't believe this for a minute:
Almost half of college-aged individuals had a psychiatric disorder in the past year.
In case you don't already have enough to worry about:
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - People in a vast seismic zone in the southern and midwestern United States would face catastrophic damage if a major earthquake struck there and should ensure that builders keep that risk in mind, a government report said on Thursday.
As NASA prepares to double the number of astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, nothing may do more for crew bonding than a machine being launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on Friday.
It's a water-recycling device that will process the crew's urine for communal consumption.
Don't even ask about the Soylent Brown.
Never mind the economy, politics, all that Earthbound stuff. This is exciting:
Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away — three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star.
Here's one of those lists that are fun to argue about: What are the 25 most important innovations in human history? No. 1 is hard to argue with:
spoken language -- true semantic, syntactic, phonetic language. This idea allowed humans to transmit information about the world from one person to another. It underlies all cooperation, the economy, and clan relationships. Spoken language is the most important innovation we have ever come up with.
It took 400 scientists to come up with this overstated version of "stop and smell the roses"?
Simple activities such as gardening or mending a bicycle can protect mental health and help people to lead more fulfilled and productive lives, a panel of scientists has found.
Mankind's very survival depends on the future exploration of space, said NASA chief Michael Griffin in an interview with AFP marking the 50th anniversary of the US space agency.
This journey, said the veteran physicist and aerospace engineer, is full of unknowns and has only just begun.
