NASA has announced final approval to demolish Shuttle-related structures on the 39B launch complex. Regardless of what actually ends up being used, NASA will definitely not need the fixed and mobile bits that helped get the Shuttle off the ground, so there's no reason to delay taking them down. I still haven't gotten over the loss of the LUTs, so, well, bring on the future!

String theory seems to finally have found a practical test. It's been making promises for years, but testing those promises required science so big it made the Large Hadron Collider look like a cheese wheel. No, it won't prove everyone's favorite multi-dimensional cosmology, but it could disprove it, and in science the latter is just as useful as the former.

In the, "well, why not?" category, we have a NASCAR reality show on BET. One of the fastest drivers in the world, Lewis Hamilton, is a black kid who grew up north of London, and Indycar has Danica and the quick rookie De Silvestro. It'd be great to see another big motorsports series broadening its horizons. Olivia is certainly much more interested in the aforementioned Indycar because there are girls driving in it.

And now, an orangutan babysitting lion cubs. Heh... I told you when Ellen's and Amber's heads explode with candy at the same time it'd make an impressive noise!

Ron gets a FABULOUS no-prize for bringing us car lashes. No, sorry, not the lashes that some leather-bound dominatrix dishes out. No, these are much... cuter. No, Ellen, you definitely definitely can't have them!

Video Goodness!

Chris W. gets a skinny flappy no-prize for bringing us the world's fastest helicopter. Yeah, yeah, it's no Airwolf. What is? And the fact you even get that reference means you're older than you think. And if you don't, well, get the hell off my lawn!

Ok, sometimes the quote makes the story: "I want it just like her but with bigger boobs". Article is SFW. Imagining a 50 year-old man with yet another real doll... well, yeah, that's not so safe for brain. Here, I have some mind bleach to spare.

Instapundit has a writeup and some extensive commentary on how Obama has gotten so bad people are starting to miss Bush. The last president I consider a complete disaster was Carter, and it took Democrats, what, twelve, fifteen years to rehabilitate him? Of course, back then it was the Republicans that got ushered into power after Democratic debacle. History has a funny way of repeating itself that way, eh?

And this comment tracks dead-on with discussions I've had with a few friends who proudly twirl along the left edge of the peanut gallery:

Every time Obama’s approval rating drops another point, [inattentive conservatives] infer validation that more and more people are seeing the light. It doesn’t occur to them that his poll number are (among other reasons) dropping because liberals are angry that Obama/Reid/Pelosi haven’t worked harder to advance the progressive agenda. Liberals disapprove of the fact that that Obama settled for Obamacare instead of embracing a true, single-payer system; because they watered down financial oversight instead of going for the corporate jugular; because they escalated the war in Afghanistan instead of forcing the new government to sink or swim on its own. The list could go on.

The Dems tossed out my side's dumb bastards in '08. It'll by my side's turn in November. I'm thinking the Tea Party just might ensure a more libertarian sort of conservative takes up residence, and if that happens I will be a very happy man indeed.

See you in November!

Ouch.

It seems that the Royal Navy is looking to pick the F-35C for its next-gen fighter platform. The reasoning behind the switch to the "big deck" variant of the Lightning II aren't completely clear, but problems with the STOVL F-35B, along with an increased ability to inter-operate with French carries seem to be playing a part.

A hoarder in Las Vegas went missing recently, only to be found imitating a Wizard of Oz witch in her own home. And that, children, is why things should occasionally be thrown away.

Scientists have announced the development of a new way of making non-volatile computer memory. By using nanowires made of silicon, the technique allows a density five times greater than current technology, at (presumably) a lower price. Solid state and it "remembers" even with the power off. A good thing!

There are photography archives, and then there are National Geographic photography archives. The pictures are dramatic, and usually the story behind how they were taken is, too.

It seems that, with very little fanfare, China has figured out how to rendezvous two satellites in orbit. This is nowhere near as easy as it would at first appear. Imagine two cars, going around a very large circle. The gas pedal is locked down, and the brake doesn't work very well. Now, figure out how to make one car just barely tap the other's bumper.

Now do it somewhere north of 10,000 mph.

And in the, "no, actually, we're not making it up" file we have a guy who's making whiskey from diabetic's urine. Ok, see, all I've ever said was I thought Scotch tasted like postage stamp glue. This stuff...

Looks like NASA's already becoming a primary customer of private space flight companies. I've come around to the opinion that the only sustainable road forward for the manned spaceflight part of NASA is to become more like the aeronautic part of NASA... do hard science that will benefit industry even, especially, when it's not clear if any of it will pan out. Don't tell private industry how to "carry the mail", just pay them to do it.

Proof positive rednecks don't just live in the US: man uses a whole can of bug spray trying to kill a spider, then uses a lighter to try and see if he succeeded. Looks like folks in the UK just don't see a lot of Mythbusters episodes, donchaknow?

They told me if I voted for John McCain, the very foundations of cause and effect would fail... and they were right! "By almost any metric, our practice of locking large numbers of people behind bars has proved at best ineffective and at worst a national disgrace ... even as crime has fallen, the sentences served by criminals have grown..."

Ok, so even if his progressive slip shows, the article itself is quite, well, interesting. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the incentives that might get set up if potential criminals know the worst they'll face is a tacky ankle bracelet. That said, I'm definitely in favor of a system that sounds an alarm whenever Joey Maniac comes within a hundred yards of the former girlfriend he was convicted of threatening to beat to death.