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Just sharing a larger version of this, my personal favorite photo-illustration. It took a couple weeks of work, fitting in time whenever I could, so i don’t have an accurate hour count. Most of the major elements were purchased from istockphoto.com. I like the appeal of the the city in the opening credits; it’s completely busy from ground to air. I usually try not to make things so cluttered or without a clear subject… this had a collage feel in the end and I think it helped capture that ongoing busyness of the cartoon city.

Source ~ Dylan Marvin’s Blog

NASA chief Charles Bolden told senators Wednesday that sending astronauts to Mars is still the ultimate goal for U.S. human spaceflight, as he defended the agency’s new space plan against criticism in a heated budget hearing.

NASA chief Charles Bolden told senators Wednesday that sending astronauts to Mars is still the ultimate goal for U.S. human spaceflight, as he defended the agency’s new space plan against criticism in a heated budget hearing.

“Mars is what I believe to be the ultimate destination for human exploration in our solar system”, Bolden told the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee.

But NASA will likely not have the technology to send astronauts to Mars for at least the next 10 years, he said.

“There are too many capabilities that we don’t have in our kit bag”, Bolden said.

That’s where the NASA’s 2011 budget request comes in, Bolden said. It sets the stage for future manned spaceflights to the moon, asteroids and Mars, by focusing on the technologies needed to explore beyond low-Earth orbit faster, he added.

Full Story ~ Fox News

I am thoroughly enjoying Windows 7 at the moment but do find this video quite funny. Wolves! Love it!

A UC Berkeley physicist and a Nobel prize-winning colleague now in President Obama’s Cabinet report they have confirmed one of Albert Einstein’s most revolutionary theories 10,000 times more accurately than ever before.

Einstein’s theory of general relativity has already been tested and confirmed to a degree as a true picture of reality by scores of experimenters, ever since he proposed it to the world nearly a century ago.

In the immediate decades after the theory’s publication, legend had it that only 12 people in the world could understand it, although physicists have long revered it.

Even today, relativity remains an arcane subject for most of us, but it does have relevance to all science and even to everyday life – for meticulous timekeepers, for space explorers, for astronomers studying black holes and even for anyone driving a car with a Global Positioning System device navigating around the Bay Area’s tricky freeway mazes.

One basic prediction from Einstein’s theory is that the tug of gravity makes clocks slow down.

Full Story ~ SFGate

There’s a new killer on the loose – boredom.

A new analysis to be published in the International Journal of Epidemiology in April warns of a possible link between boredom and an early death.

After analyzing questionnaires, researchers Annie Britton and Martin Shipley of University College London concluded that boredom could be a symptom of other risky behavior.

The Associated Press reports that the researchers examined surveys, completed between 1985 and 1988, of 7,500 London civil servants between the ages of 35 and 55. They found that those who were bored at work during the previous month were two and a half times more likely to die of a heart problem than those who were interested in their jobs.

While boredom alone wouldn’t kill you, it could lead to unhealthy habits like smoking, drinking and drug consumption.

“The state of boredom is almost certainly a proxy for other risk factors,” write Britton and Shipley. “It is likely that those who were bored were also in poor health.”

Full Story ~ NYDailyNews

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A little Thursday evening lagniappe for all you Twilight fans. The Twilight Saga: New Moon movie is due in theaters on November 20th of this year. Here’s a little taste to wet your sanguine appetites.

Posting video of Ares DM1 5-segment booster test just because it’s really cool and something we will see in use in the future. If video doesn’t show up just refresh page.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Sacramento County teenager is bragging about a big accomplishment.

She logged more than 300,000 text messages in one month.

“My friends said, ‘Text your little thumbs off’,” Crystal Wiski said.

“Thank God for free texting,” added her mother, Jacki Wiski.

Jacki Wiski said she just bought the iPhone for her daughter a month ago.

“I get cramps,” Crystal Wiski said of her habit.

Needless to say, it didn’t take long for her to get used to it.

Her mother is amazed by the number of texts.

“Oh my God, that’s unbelievable,” Jacki Wiski said. “She must text while she’s sleeping.”

“I am popular. I can’t help it,” Crystal Wiski added.

To put 303,000 text messages into perspective: that’s more than 10,000 text messages a day, 421 messages an hour and seven texts a minute.

Full Story/Source

Yikes. Hey mom, how’s the family time? Just curious.