Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled for launch tomorrow at 3:49 PM EDT, though there is a 60% chance that the weather may force a delay.
Update: the Saturday launch was scrubbed and rescheduled for today, and today it has been rescheduled for Tuesday at 2:38 PM EDT. There is a 40% chance of the weather [...]

I was pleasantly surprised today to receive email from NASA regarding my FOIA request. They sent me PDF files of recent editions (November 2005) of the manuals I requested on the HAL/S programming languages and compilers, which are used for the Space Shuttle software. Since these manuals are in the public domain, I [...]

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) provides real-time images of brain activity, and has the potential to be a “super lie detector”, but is at a very early stage of development and it is quite premature to use it for that purpose.
The ACLU has filed a FOIA request to find out whether and how FMRI is [...]

The Nashua Telegraph reports that Michael Gannon of Nashua, New Hamshire was arrested because the video security system he installed in his home recorded an incident in which the police confronted him. They’ve charged him with two felony violations of the state’s wiretap and eavesdropping law.
So it’s OK for the local convenience store to [...]

Seen in an article in LWN:
The early years of the 21st century were [...]
Wow, not only is it really the 21st century now, but we’re far enough into it that we can legitimately refer to “the early years of the 21st century” in the past tense.
OK, maybe I’m the only person amazed by this.  I [...]

I bought a factory-refurbished Epson Stylus R300 printer a while back primarily because it is able to print directly onto CDs and DVDs, which is much nicer than using paper labels or a Sharpie. Up until now I’ve been using the supplied Windows software to do that (using my computer at work, I don’t [...]

The Guardian reports that Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes estimate the cost to the US of the “war on terror” will be between one and two trillion dollars. Although there is almost no indication that the war on terror has saved any lives (and documented evidence that it [...]

Reuters reports that NASA is pushing forward with their plan to lauch Discovery on July 1st, despite NASA’s top safety officer and lead engineer both opposing the flight. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin points out that if the Shuttle is damaged during launch, the astronauts can use the ISS as a haven.
Obviously I don’t have [...]

This Slashdot story mentions that climate scientists are responding to Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth by pointing out that there is actually NO conclusive scientific evidence for global warming. What caught my eye is that the Slashdot crowd has tagged the story with “FUD” and “flamebait”.
In other words, on a scientific issue the [...]

An acquaintance asked me to construct a special location tracker for divers.  It worked like an innertial navigation system.  I went on a dive with one of the customers for the device, and explained why GPS wasn’t usable underwater and how the device worked using linear and angular accelerometers and a ring laser gyroscope.  It [...]