More Rings Are Found Around Planet Uranus

LOS ANGELES - Astronomers aided by the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two more rings encircling Uranus, the first additions to the planet's ring system in nearly two decades.

The faint, dusty rings orbit outside of Uranus' previously known rings, but within the orbits of its large moons, said Mark Showalter, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who made the discovery.

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Yahoo! plans to shoot Skype with Messenger

Internet media giant Yahoo! has fired the first salvo in a pricing war with Skype with plans to introduce a new internet voice service within days.

Yahoo! is releasing an upgrade to its popular Messenger text, voice and video communications software with the addition of a feature that's familiar to Skype's 68million worldwide users.

"Phone out" will let people make calls from computers to regular telephones while "Phone in" will let computer users receive telephone calls. The service mirror's Skype's equivalent service, named "Skype in" and "Skype out."

Yahoo! said it would undercut Skype's pricing plans for the telephone services, charging just 1¢per minute to people calling the US from countries such as Russia. It will charge 2¢ a minute to call 30 other countries, including Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea.

A Yahoo! spokeswoman said it would make the Yahoo! Messenger service available in 180countries, with downloads available from http://voice.yahoo.com/, although as of late on Friday the site was yet to go live.


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Google: Ten Golden Rules

Issues 2006 - At google, we think business guru Peter Drucker well understood how to manage the new breed of "knowledge workers." After all, Drucker invented the term in 1959. He says knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will "strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers' way." Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing "the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years."

At Google, we seek that advantage. The ongoing debate about whether big corporations are mismanaging knowledge workers is one we take very seriously, because those who don't get it right will be gone. We've drawn on good ideas we've seen elsewhere and come up with a few of our own. What follows are seven key principles we use to make knowledge workers most effective. As in most technology companies, many of our employees are engineers, so we will focus on that particular group, but many of the policies apply to all sorts of knowledge workers.

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Firefox is rekindled with faster, slicker revamp

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation hopes to up the heat on Microsoft after launching a faster, revamped version of its popular Firefox internet browser.

Firefox 1.5, which is available as a free download from www.Mozilla.com, will aim to build on the success of last year’s Firefox 1.0, which won a cult following among users who say the software is slicker and more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), the market leader.

Full article here

New entry in orbital launch business ready for first flight

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - A newly developed rocket designed to break into the orbital launch business with low-cost service waited on a Pacific atoll Friday to make its maiden flight.

The Falcon 1 had been scheduled for launch Friday from a pad on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands but the launch was bumped back to 1 p.m. PST Saturday because of preparations for a missile defense test launch, said El Segundo-based rocket builder SpaceX.

The rocket's payload is a satellite for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force Academy. FalconSat-2 will measure space plasma phenomena, which can impair space-based communications.

The Falcon 1 rocket is the first in what is intended to be a family of launch vehicles from SpaceX, the latest enterprise of Elon Musk, whose previous endeavors include PayPal, the online payment service now owned by eBay.

Read on...

Star scientist hatches cloning controversy

The last thing the controversial field of human cloning needed was another controversy.

But an ethical scandal has erupted around the world's leading cloning scientist that could mean a major setback for stem-cell research, medicine's most promising, yet polarizing subject.

South Korea's star scientist, Hwang Woo-suk, who successfully cloned the world's first human embryo in 2004, admitted yesterday that he had violated ethical standards while conducting his work.


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Top 10 Space Movies of All Time

Space.com has the list.

Ariane rocket launch breaks payload record

Europe's most powerful rocket blasted-off from Kourou in French Guiana on Wednesday night, carrying more than eight tonnes into orbit.

The Ariane 5 ECA launcher lifted off at 2346 GMT carrying two large telecommunications satellites. The launch was initially scheduled for 24 June 2005 but was postponed several times for technical reasons. Most recently, on 12 November, the launch was delayed following of an undisclosed technical problem with the launch platform.

The heavy-lift booster has only flown twice before. During its maiden flight in 2002 it veered off course and had to be destroyed remotely. So mission officials were eager to ensure the third flight was a success. The two telecommunications satellites it carried into space were its heaviest payload yet.


FA

European Space Agency Launches Venus Probe

DARMSTADT, Germany Nov 9, 2005 — A European spacecraft left Earth orbit Wednesday on a five-month, 220 million-mile journey to Venus, an exploratory mission that could help spur a new space race.

The European Space Agency said the unmanned Venus Express lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and mission control in Darmstadt activated the probe's instruments and immediately picked up a signal to hearty applause in the observation room.

The Europeans then received another signal a congratulatory note from the Pasadena, Calif.,-based Planetary Society, which had monitored the launch from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

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Leap second proposal means new time

I personally think GMT should be abolished and for good reason.

Greenwich Mean Time would become an irrelevance if proposals to redefine how time is measured are accepted...

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The brightest stars may owe their origin to black holes

Astronomers at the Chandra X-ray Observatory are agog with findings that may very well trash traditional theories and view the bleak and enigmatic black holes of the Milky Way as originators of new stars. While older theories have held that black holes are the galaxy's destructive forces, these scientists believe that the evidence lies in disks of gas inhabit the vicinity of the black holes to support the new ”star-spawning” theory.

The enigma that surrounds the black holes has spurred numerous science fiction space adventures with the shrunken star remnant's invisible but violent pull even dragging light out of shape into its mysterious vortex. The study that was conducted by the University of Leicester's Sergei Nayakshin and Max Planck Institute's Rashid Sunyaev dwelled into the possibility of black holes playing constructive roles in the galaxies. The spiral Milky Way that supports the earth's solar system on one of its several arms radiating from its core also contains a black hole at its center surrounded by a cluster of stars.

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The birth of TV gadgets

DO you find the MRT rides boring despite the hundreds of songs on your iPod? How would you like to watch Desperate Housewives on it to while away the time?

The updated version of the original iPod has a 6.35cm screen on which you can watch music videos and even TV programmes. --AP
Now you can, thanks to the new iPod video player launched by Apple Computer yesterday.

The tech giant has forged a deal with Walt Disney that will allow users to watch their favourite TV shows while on the move.

''It's a stunner and yes, it does video,'' said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs while unveiling the portable video player with a 6.35cm colour screen on which users can watch music videos, TV programmes and display photos as well.


Source

Cosmic cooperation

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia I wonder what the Russian spaceflight pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, one of the greatest futurist visionaries of the 20th century, would have made of the latest Chinese space mission. In 1903, at the dawn of wood-and-canvas aviation, Tsiolkovsky had already come up with the idea of a multistage rocket and calculated what speed would be needed to reach escape velocity and achieve Earth orbit. It was Tsiolkovsky who authored the famous utopian formulation "The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but humanity can't remain in its cradle forever" - probably the single most quoted sentence among advocates of human space exploration everywhere.

With two Chinese astronauts having blasted off early Wednesday and now in orbit of the Earth and with an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut currently crewing the International Space Station, it's worth reflecting on the fact that Tsiolkovsky didn't say that it was the Russians who would outgrow the terrestrial cradle, or the Americans, or any other nation for that matter. Rather he was concerned with the fate of the entire species. In any case, the maturation he was referring to presumably precluded such adolescent rivalries as superpower competition.

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China astronauts blast into space

China has successfully launched its second manned spacecraft, carrying two Chinese astronauts into orbit.

The lift-off, from Jiuquan in the Gobi desert, was shown live on state television and included views from a camera on the outside of the craft.

The mission is expected to see the Shenzhou VI orbit the Earth for five days, during which the astronauts will carry out experiments.

It comes almost exactly two years after China's first manned space flight.

In a sign of growing official confidence about the programme, the launch was announced in advance and broadcast in full on state television.

Full story and pictures

That famous equation and you

During the summer of 1905, while fulfilling his duties in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, Albert Einstein was fiddling with a tantalizing outcome of the special theory of relativity he'd published in June. His new insight, at once simple and startling, led him to wonder whether "the Lord might be laughing and leading me around by the nose."

But by September, confident in the result, Einstein wrote a three-page supplement to the June paper, publishing perhaps the most profound afterthought in the history of science. A hundred years ago this month, the final equation of his short article gave the world E=mc².

In the century since, E=mc² has become the most recognized icon of the modern scientific era. There is nothing you can do, not a move you can make, not a thought you can have, that doesn't tap directly into E=mc². It's an equation that tells of matter, energy and a remarkable bridge between them.

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Chris Foss

His science fiction book covers pioneered a much-imitated style featuring vast, colourful spaceships, machines and cities, often marked with mysterious symbols. Human figures are (almost) totally absent. These images are suggestive of science fiction in general rather than depictions of specific scenes from books, and therefore can be - and have been - used interchangeably on book covers.

See a gallery of his work

NASA Unveils Plans for Shuttle Replacement

NASA releases plans for a new spacecraft that would replace the space shuttle. The vehicle is part of a system that will be capable of putting astronauts on the moon by 2018, laying the groundwork for space travel to Mars. NASA says the new system is designed to be 10 times safer than the space shuttle.

Audio program

NASA sets target of 2018 for next moon landing

WASHINGTON Combining an old concept, existing equipment and new ideas, NASA has given shape to President George W. Bush's promise to send humans back to the moon by the end of the next decade.

Michael Griffin, NASA's administrator, spelled out a $104 billion plan that he said would send astronauts to the moon by 2018, serve as a steppingstone to Mars and beyond, and stay within NASA's existing budget.

At present, the United States is the only nation with an active, date-specific moon program. China entertains a moon landing and exploration as long-term objectives of its space program.

India's space program is focused on satellites and earth imaging. It recently joined the Galileo project, a European endeavor to compete, via a network of satellites, with the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS.

Japan has an extensive space program, but it's ambitions relating to the moon are limited to unmanned probes.

Griffin's announcement Monday laid out a timetable and a budget, putting flesh on the bones of a proposal that Bush announced on Jan. 14, 2004, as he was campaigning for re-election. NASA's glossy new plan will replace the aging shuttles with a new generation of space vehicles meant to rekindle the America's exploratory fires.

But while Americans eagerly accepted President John F. Kennedy's challenge in 1961 to put men on the Moon, Bush's plan to return people there and then voyage onward to Mars is generating skepticism about its feasibility.

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In pictures: Return to the Moon

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Enthusiast uses Google to reveal Roman ruins

Google Earth programme leads to remains of ancient villa.

Using satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth, an Italian computer programmer has stumbled upon the remains of an ancient villa. Luca Mori was studying maps of the region around his town of Sorbolo, near Parma, when he noticed a prominent, oval, shaded form more than 500 metres long. It was the meander of an ancient river, visible because former watercourses absorb different amounts of moisture from the air than their surroundings do.

His eye was caught by unusual 'rectangular shadows' nearby. Curious, he analysed the image further, and concluded that the lines must represent a buried structure of human origin. Eventually, he traced out what looked like the inner courtyards of a villa.

Mori, who describes the finding on his blog, Quellí Della Bassa, contacted archaeologists, including experts at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. They confirmed the find. At first it was thought to be a Bronze Age village, but an inspection of the site turned up ceramic pieces that indicated it was a Roman villa.

"Mori's research is interesting in its approach," says Manuela Catarsi Dall'Aglio, an archaeologist at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. He says the find may be similar to a villa the museum is currently excavating at Cannetolo di Fontanellato, which was found during the construction of a high-speed rail network. "Only a scientific, archeological dig will tell," he adds.

The local authorities will have to approve any archaeological digs before they can take place.

Source Nature

Beltway vs. Blogosphere

Democrats are struggling to reconcile the differences between party leaders in D.C. and independent activists on the Net.

Sept. 14, 2005 - If I am hearing Simon Rosenberg right (and he is worth listening to), a nasty civil war is brewing within the Democratic Party, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton—the party’s presumptive 2008 nominee—needs to avoid getting caught in the middle of it.

“It’s not a fight between liberals and conservatives,” Rosenberg told me the other day. “It’s between our ‘governing class’ here and activists everywhere else.”

In other words, it’s the Beltway versus the Blogosphere.

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Google finds blog search

Google Inc. on Wednesday began testing a search service for Web logs. "Blog Search will help our users explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves," the company said at www.google.com/blogsearch.

Google's database includes only stories posted on blogs by publishers who have alerted monitoring services. It does not include traditional news Web sites, weather or stock quotes. Blog searches can be saved and will be updated automatically when a pertinent item is received.

"The 800-pound gorilla just entered the blogosphere," said Charlene Li, principal analyst with Forrester Research (FORR: news, chart, profile) . She added that Google's experience at understanding how to present search results with relevance (putting the most important entries higher up) will be "the secret sauce to Google's blog-search success."

Li suggests that other blog search services, like Technorati or Feedster, could be in for some tough times not just with Google in the game, but with expected offerings of blog search from major portals. "Their arrival will tighten the noose even more on smaller players," she wrote on her own blog.

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'Father of Internet' returns to roots with new Google job

Adding to its all-star roster of engineering talent, Google has hired Vinton Cerf, often referred to as the ``father of the Internet.''

Cerf, who was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Bill Clinton in 1997, joins Google from MCI, where he is senior vice president of technology strategy.

Cerf's role at Google is unclear. But Google executives said they expect ``great things'' from the Internet pioneer.

``It's true Vint has broad interests, and exactly what he'll do, we'll see,'' said Bill Coughran, a vice president of engineering at Google.

Cerf, 62, will join Google in early October, along with his chief of staff from MCI. He'll work from his McLean, Va., home. But Coughran said he expected Cerf to make frequent visits to Google's Mountain View headquarters.

While at MCI for the past 11 years, much of Cerf's focus has been on public policy issues. In an interview, Cerf said he has hungered to return to developing applications.

``What I wanted was to turn my attention to a much higher level of applications, and Google offered me that,'' Cerf said.

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The Growing influence of Liberal Blogs

MyDD just finished a study on blog traffic during the Hurricane and, interestingly, when looking at the 100 most trafficked blogs and netroots sites, the liberal sites had traffic increases of 34% while the conservatives had traffic increases of only 8%.

One factoid I particularly liked:

All six of these blogs (Dailykos, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, Eschaton, Crooks and Liars and Americablog) now have more traffic than Instapundit, which remains the highest trafficked conservative blog

See Blogs and Comments

Changes in Saturn Rings Baffle Scientists

LOS ANGELES -- New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn's trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo's time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years.

Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn's innermost ring _ the D ring _ have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn.


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Chimp genetic code opens human frontiers

Scientists unleashed a torrent of studies comparing the genetic coding for humans and chimpanzees on Wednesday, reporting that 96 percent of our DNA sequences are identical. Even more intriguingly, the other 4 percent appears to contain clues to how we became different from our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, they said.

"We're really looking at an individual evolutionary event, and this is spectacular," said University of Washington geneticist Robert Waterston, senior author of a study in the journal Nature presenting the draft of the chimpanzee genome.

The achievement should lead to discoveries with implications for human health, including new approaches to treating age-old diseases, said Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.


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New on TV: The Multiple-Channel Screen

When pro football starts in September, fans who sign up for the "SuperFan" game package offered by satellite operator DirecTV Group Inc. will get a new feature: a channel on which they'll be able to watch eight games on one screen.


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Chavez calls for democracy at work

This is one of two big aluminium plants in the south-eastern city of Puerto Ordaz, where most of Venezuela's basic industries are concentrated.

It is also the test bed for a new experiment in co-management, which President Hugo Chavez says is a key step towards a "socialism of the twenty-first century".

Alcides Rivero, who works here as a maintenance electrician, says co-management means that for the first time in this company's 37 years of existence, the workforce has control.

"It's us, the workers", he says, "who decide on questions of production and technology, and it's us who elect who will be our managers."

Full article from BBC

Science and Technology in Decline?

In his weekly opinion column, Harold Evans considers rising concern in the US over the Bush administration's hostility to science.

I used to get mad at the way it was left to America to bring to full fruition fine achievements by Britain's scientists, inventors and engineers. Take Alexander Fleming's penicillin, Frank Whittle's jet engine, Alan Turing's computer and Robert Watson Watt's radar.

All these breakthroughs found their fullest exploitation in the United States. Indeed, they all contributed to America's pre-eminence in science-based manufacturing and services.

Think of the personal computer and wonder drugs, of the jumbo jetliner, video games and the pacemaker, the laser that counts your groceries and the laser, or the global positioning satellite, that tells you to turn left at the roundabout.

That is why there is furious bewilderment here in the universities and the higher levels of business at the chilly indifference - not to say hostility - of the Bush White House to science. Continue reading.

A forum posting on the same topic

Like Concorde, Space Shuttle Was Ahead of its Time

With the obvious impending demise of the Space Shuttle program, NASA is faced with the same problem as the owners of 'broken down old cars: pay for repairs or get rid of it immediately.' In this op-ed from Le Monde, a look at the global ramifications of Discovery's latest flight.

One day, perhaps, the space shuttle will be tenable. In the distant future, technological progress will permit manned space vessels to break free of the Earth and return with the occupants without much concern or effort, as it is in science fiction movies.

In the mean time, problems persist, as demonstrated by the return flight of Discovery from July 26 to August 9. And these problems can be dangerous, with passengers placed in a vehicle the components of which are likely to be damaged during launch. Despite all the improvements made over the two-and-half years since the disintegration of Columbia and the death of its seven crew members, a few chunks of insulation broke off [during liftoff], threatening the integrity of Discovery’s heat shield.

Full article translated from French with photos

The Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds (2004, Full title: The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations) is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.

For Reference

Running On Fumes: A Journey To The End Of Empire

"We Americans should feel a sense of jubilation regarding the coming end of an era where oil and its attendant imperialist politics have come to define the lives of multiple generations. Maybe as our dependence on oil recedes, our human thirst for the water of life will return."

August 20, 2005
By Phil Rockstroh

What is Blade Runner?

Blade Runner is the best and one of the most influential Science Fiction films ever made. Based on the excellent book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", by Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott created Blade Runner as a stunning view of the dark near-future. Although seen as disturbingly bleak when it was first released, as time has moved on, it can now be seen as increasingly prophetic of the way the world is changing.

Deckard is a retired Blade Runner - a hunter of 'Replicants', (androids of the future created by the Tyrell Corporation to be "more human than human"). Replicants were declared illegal on Earth, but a group of the most advanced, the Nexus-6 Replicants, have hijacked a shuttle and returned from off-world. Deckard is forced back from retirement and it is his job to terminate them.

What do these Replicants want? Simple - they want "More Life". They have been limited with a four year lifespan. They are created as slave labour, but all they want is to live like humans. Led by the charismatic and very intelligent Roy Batty, they seek to confront their 'maker', Eldon Tyrell, head of one of the most powerful corporations on Earth.

In the action that sprawls across a fantastic, futuristic cityscape of Los Angeles, 2019, we follow the dehumanised Blade Runner as he chases down the renegade Replicants. Things are complicated with the addition of a new Replicant created by Tyrell as an 'experiment'. The new addition, Rachael, has been gifted with memories and believes she is human, before she discovers what she really is.

Blade Runner is visually stunning, with a cityscape that has been much copied, but never bettered, even after 20 years. The atmosphere is beautifully enhanced by the music of Vangelis. The actors are brilliant and many have gone on to successful careers. Ultimately, the movie leaves us asking those most fundamental philosophical questions, "What does it mean to be human" and "Who am I".


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Wake up and smell the TV

Virtual reality television to be a commercial reality in 15 years

Japan plans to make futuristic television a commercial reality by 2020 as part of a broad national project.

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Imagine watching a football match on a TV that not only shows the players in three dimensions but also lets you experience the smells of the stadium and maybe even pat a goalscorer on the back.

Japan plans to make this futuristic television a commercial reality by 2020 as part of a broad national project that will bring together researchers from the government, technology companies and academia.

The targeted "virtual reality" television would allow people to view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor.

"Can you imagine hovering over your TV to watch Japan versus Brazil in the finals of the World Cup as if you are really there?" asked Yoshiaki Takeuchi, director of research and development at Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Full story

EuroAmericans.net

EuroAmericans.net highlights the European immigrant experience and serves as a starting point for Americans to explore their European heritage. The links on the following pages will connect you to resources on arts, culture, history, language, news and current events. EuroAmericans.net is also a provider of statistics on European immigrant groups living in America that are not readily available elsewhere.

What makes the United States unique is that almost all of our citizens are immigrants, or the descendents of immigrants. By highlighting the contributions of European immigrants to our country, visitors should come away with an enlightened perspective on immigration, including those arriving in America today, often representing Asian and Latin American countries.

Browse the site

Blog Box

Bells Are Ringing

Who could have predicted that one grieving mother would rouse the national media from its summer slumber, that the president's handlers would wake to mounting opposition and actually lower expectations for his Iraq folly, or that gas pump-sucking SUV-Americans would wake up one day and realize that the goal of oil men is actually to make lots and lots of money? The telltale signs of America finally waking up were front and center this week, and bloggers took note.

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Pope desires 'new wave of faith'

Pope Benedict XVI has said he hopes his forthcoming trip to his homeland Germany will give "new impulse" to the Roman Catholic Church in Europe.

He said the idea that Christianity is a burden with its many rules and prohibitions was a misconception.

Full article

Joseph Nocera: Why the odds are stacked against the little guy

....

Human beings simply aren't hard-wired to be good investors. Think about it: how many of us, really, have the fortitude to pare back our winners and buy more of our losers? Most of us do just the opposite. Heck, so do most mutual fund managers, which is why they can't beat the market either.

There is a reason we as a culture have accorded hero-like status to great investors like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch. For all the cultural reinforcement we get that investing is something anybody ought to be able to master, we know in our bones it's not true. Buffett and Lynch are like great athletes, who have the skill and the emotional makeup to do something well that the rest of us can only dream about.

....

Full article

Face Facts: The Space Shuttle is 'Obsolete'

Despite its best efforts and all of its denials of the fact, NASA is unable to make flying the shuttle feasible. The author of this op-ed piece from French Newspaper Le Figaro is hopeful, however, that the program's demise will see a reinvigorated commitment to a manned mission to Mars, and some additional income for the European Space Program.

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Welcome to the News and Info Blog!

Topics on the day's news will be posted for discussion. This blog is the sister site of newsandinfo.org for discussion and comments on current events. Visit often and please contribute your thoughts, insights, and comments. This opening post is an open thread for anyone who would like to say hello and chat a bit.