I was one of seven Astronauts who stood up in today's EPW senate hearing to deliver an unmistakable message to our senators: "What can the US do in 10 years?" our first banner asked. "Put a man on the moon (check); cut co2 40% (dotted-line-check)" answered our second.

I wish that advocates for conceal carry laws would have the intellectual honesty to look at all the data, not just the studies that support their point of view. Maybe the media should look at some of this research as well, so that a reasonable and well informed debate on this issue could finally occur.

As we can see from this map from the Transportation Department, there is within the Obama administration a vision (and it's one that's broadly echoed by mass-transit advocates in Congress and elsewhere) of regional high-speed metro-systems (Pacific Northwest, California, Texas, Chicago/Midwest, New Orleans, the Raleigh Triangle, and the Northeast Corridor) that will eventually expand into a single, national high speed rail network.

When I read that an impact had been spotted on Jupiter, I figured it was somewhere other than the equator, which would be a bulls-eye. Even Shoemaker-Levy, a huge comet broken into a string of pieces, slammed like a series of machine gun bullets into Jupiter near its south pole. But this one was bigger. That black hole in the side of Jupiter is nearly as big as our whole planet. And nobody saw it coming.

Yesterday delivered a small piece of good news on the budget front. As reported by the Washington Post: The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation's premier fighter-jet program, embracing by a 58 to 40 margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that more F-22s are not needed for the nation's defense and would be a costly drag on the Pentagon's budget in an era of small wars and counterinsurgency efforts.

Perhaps the biggest ongoing argument over the Gaza offensive that Israel launched at the start of this year has been willingness of Israel to allow injured Gazans to get treatment. Those who support Israel all know the line by heart; Israel has been happy to let injured civilians pass through the border into Israel and receive treatment in its hospitals. This misses two rather important facts.

Several months ago, Sharon Begley of Newsweek magazine wrote a quick article describing the inaccurate predictions and comments of online and cable political pundits. Begley discusses the reason why so many "experts" are wrong so often and cites research by Phillip Tetlock of Standford University. Being "right" has everything to do with whether the expert is a hedgehog or a fox.

As a self-employed person running a business out of my home, I've
been looking for a way to get faxes at any time without adding the
expense of another phone line.

British banks are talking more and more about introducing charges for basic accounts, even where the account holder is in credit. They justify this on two grounds: first, that Britain is practically unique in having any form of free banking; and second, that they have to do this to pay for the cost of running the banks. I'd like to point out a few other facts.

A new study concludes that elevated levels of phosphorus are necessary for adequate growth of some types of cancers. This rise in phosphorus, the team hypothesizes, is due to heightened requirements of protein synthesis needed during accelerated cell growth.

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