The Washington Post had a nice article about engineers on the Spirit Mars Rover project and the anxiety of waiting to see if their inventions will work on the red planet.

An article in the Washington Post this morning talks about the problems that a number of communities in the Washington, DC area are having with large warehouse retailers. The crux of the problem is that the large buildings are ugly and ill-suited for reuse. Even when another warehouse retailer decides …

An article from the Washington Post describes a WHO report on nutrition (Report 916, PDF format) and comments by the current US administration that indicate disagreement with the ideas put forth therein. In particular, administration and industry officials don't like the idea of cutting sugar-related junk food advertising to children …

Continuing on a theme discussed while Mike and I were winding our way across the beautiful (but hardly untouched) landscape of New Zealand, an article from Stuff.Co.NZ reports that a new report from the Parlimentary Commissioner for the Environment in NZ has found that Kiwis are polluting at …

Have you ever wanted iCal to email you about an event a week in advance and beep at you 15 minutes before it happens? Well, wait no further. It turns out that the software allows multiple alarms for the same event. After setting up the first alarm, just click on …

According to a press release by NASA, the Mars Rover Spirit moved off of its comfortable landing pad yesterday to the tune of Who Let The Dogs Out (by the Baha Men). The first movements were successful and generated a bunch of cool new photos that can be seen by …

Sounds stupid or silly, I know, but according to an article in the Washington Post, a gentleman living in the DC area was denied health care coverage because he was taking the prescription drug Propecia to fight his male pattern baldness. The insurance company in question was Kaiser Permanente and …

Most DC residents seem pretty happy about the restrictive gun laws in the District, however there have always been those who question the constitutionality of the laws. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled that the laws can stay in force. That's not a big surprise. However, the …

Those of us in DC (and surrounding areas) know that the area in front of the White House has been closed off for a number of years. According to an article from the Washington Post this AM, the stretch of road is in for an intensive nine-month remodeling which will …

An article from Wired about a prototype home built by Andersen and Time Warner in Park City, Utah that has some amazing windows. Some of them are speakers, others are computer displays, but almost all of them can change from transparent to opaque at the click of a mouse.

An article from Apple's site describes using Maestro (a program used by NASA scientists) to look at raw data from Mars. Here's the basics of what you need to know to look at the data from a Mac or PC. The Apple article describes doing it for a Mac and …

The announcement last week that Hewlett-Packard would be aligning themselves with Apple in the approach to digital music was met by strong support in the Apple community and strong condemnation by both Microsoft and Dell. The press comments from these two companies spoke of "standards" and "choice", so what could …

We can all breath a sigh of relief now that BBC News reports that the British scientific Advisory Group on Non-Ionizing Radiation has declared that they don't think cell phones cause health problems. The report doesn't change the official position on cellular phones (the Brits have warned from the beginning …

OK, I'll admit it, I already own three Scott eVest jackets (not all purchased), the ones with all of the pockets and the space for the PAN (Personal Area Network), but this one will be another on the purchase list if it really comes out. Scott, in conjunction with ICP …

For those unfamiliar with the nickname, Tog (Bruce Tognazzini) is one of the original Macintosh UI designers and is still considered to be one of the finest authorities on UI design available today. After long avoiding posting an official review on OS X, he has finally done so in this …

I had no idea what to expect when we went in to see Big Fish. The film is the latest work by acclaimed, but eccentric, director Tim Burton (of Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and Nightmare Before Christmas fame). But, is it any good? I certainly thought so, but it wasn't what …

The capsule summary is that this film is at least as good as its reviews say. I had heard about Calendar Girls a few weeks back and Carol and I decided to go see it during the week in order to get a break and brighten things up. Brighten things …

In a sign that digital cameras and disposable cameras are the mainstay of their sales in the "west", Kodak has announced that they will stop selling reloadable film cameras in the US. They are also going to stop producing APS cameras for sale elsewhere. The release notes that they will …

The so-far-successful Mars rover, Spirit, has been given its marching orders and is set to move out, according to a press release from NASA. Don't forget to check out the cool pictures at the official site.

While reading an article from Wired today, it dawned on me that not only do cell phone ring tones bring in $3.5B of the $32B in music sales every year, but that portion dwarfs the sales of online music through all avenues. So much for people being interested in …