Open Letter to President Obama Regarding Space Policy
"Too many men and women have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to achieve America's preeminence in space, only to see that effort needlessly thrown away. We urge you to demonstrate the vision and determination necessary to keep our nation at the forefront of human space exploration with ambitious goals and the proper resources to see them through. This is not the time to abandon the promise of the space frontier for a lack of will or an unwillingness to pay the price."
Keith's note: One of the oddest things I have learned in the past week or two is that Mike Griffin has been telling people that the 9th floor at NASA HQ has been purposefully leaking things to me for posting on NASA Watch so as to advance their cause. If that is the case, then they are not having much success, are they Mike? Just have a look at what I have been posting - and then think about what I was posting long before this crowd arrived to clean up the mess you left behind. I really don't need anyone to do my thinking for me. The next time you think about circulating a rumor like this, start using the logic lobe of that mega brain of yours to do a sanity check before you engage your speech center.
“It has been observed at least since the time of Aristotle that people cannot tickle themselves, but the reason remains elusive. Two sorts of explanations have been suggested. The interpersonal explanation suggests that tickling is fundamentally interpersonal and thus requires another person as the source of the touch. The reflex explanation suggests that tickle simply requires an element of unpredictability or uncontrollability and is more like a reflex or some other stereotyped motor pattern. To test these explanations, we manipulated the perceived source of tickling. Thirty-five subjects were tickled twice–once by the experimenter, and once, they believed, by an automated machine. The reflex view predicts that our “tickle machine” should be as effective as a person in producing laughter, whereas the interpersonal view predicts significantly attenuated responses. Supporting the reflex view, subjects smiled, laughed, and wiggled just as often in response to the machine as to the experimenter. Self-reports of ticklishness were also virtually identical in the two conditions. Ticklish laughter evidently does not require that the stimulation be attributed to another person, as interpersonal accounts imply.”
Are the racial stereotypes that each of us holds rooted in social fear? That’s the question behind a 
With the scourge of Internet addiction growing ever more fearsome, a Boston-based company has designed a clever way to entice such addicts to once again join the outside world. The trick is allowing them to keep their eyes firmly glued to the screens of their iPhones.
