Amateur astronomers have observed satellites and other space craft since the dawn of the Space Age. Video Astronomy is a rapidly growing segment of the amateur astronomy community and is yielding impressive results. Indeed, dedicated amateurs have even succeeded in obtaining high power telescopic images of the ISS and its predecessors with excellent resolution using home camera/video equipment and software.

When the Space Shuttle Columbia reentered the Earth's atmosphere during the STS-107 mission, amateurs astronomers were on hand to record its troubled flight. Photometric analyses of the better videos of the reentry were able to establish the timing of early spacecraft failure and provide data allowing for the calculation of sizes of some of the early debris pieces prior to the Columbia’s final breakup. This information helped to understand and confirm the early events leading to breakup. The STS-107 work is documented in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, volume 3, part 2, section 6.

Apparently, amateur video of Columbia breaking up was invaluable in the post mortem analysis. Here are some tips that they gave for shooting future reentries.

I'd also recommend looking at the section of the CAIB report linked
from here. The level of imaging science here is pretty amazing.

NASA - Space Shuttle Re-entry Video Procedures for Space Enthusiasts

A water main break near Fort Duquesne Boulevard forced police to barricade streets around Gateway Center in Downtown Pittsburgh today, and at least one building was evacuated.

And this isn't even the first time this has happened in the last few years!

Massive water break halts traffic, floods Downtown Pittsburgh

The American Beverage Association recommended yesterday that soda and other sweetened beverages be pulled from vending machines at elementary schools across the country, saying the industry needs to help fight the increasing rate of childhood obesity.

Coke doesn't want to look like Phillip Morris in 20 years. Talk about marketing a harmful, habit-forming product to children...

Trade group: Pull soda from elementary schools

Last time we saw The Legend of Zelda's Link in a proper console adventure was 2003's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. He was just a wee lad back then, barely taller than the shield he wore in the stellar Ocarina of Time. The elfin hero of Hyrule is coming back in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and this time he's all grown up.

However, it's apparently taking Link a little longer to mature than expected. In what could be the most disappointing delay to fans rabid for a sequel since Bungie's Halo 2 was knocked back a few seasons, Nintendo today announced that the Twilight Princess will miss its original ship date of 2005's holiday season.

Not much more to the story than this. I've come to believe that the quality of videogames (like any other software, really) is directly proportional to the amount of testing that they undergo and the degree of interaction between the testers and the rest of the development cycle. I've played many games in which it was glaringly apparent that the developers cut corners on testing to hit a ship date and the gameplay was resultingly poor.

On the other hand, there were a number of occassions in Wind Waker where I managed to do something really weird and the game did something reasonable. And it made me smile because I could tell that it had been well-tested. So I wholeheartedly support this delay.

New Zelda won't see Twilight 'til 2006 - GameCube News at GameSpot

A go-ahead was given last week by the U.S. Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) that clears the way for exchanges of technical information between Scaled Composites of Mojave, California and Virgin Galactic of the United Kingdom to build passenger-carrying suborbital spaceliners.

U.S. Okays Virgin Galactic Spaceship Plans

The Bush administration is expected to abandon a proposal to extend fuel economy regulations to include Hummer H2's and other huge sport utility vehicles, auto industry and other officials say.

Unfortunately for Detroit, the only place they're making money anymore is SUVs and big pickups... and Japan is starting to eat into that as well.

Fuel Rule Change for Big S.U.V.'s Seen as Unlikely

TiVo is looking at Internet TV, the digital recording company confirmed Friday, by testing a service that would let customers download TV shows on their set-top box from the Internet before the show is aired on TV.

About time...

TiVo Testing Internet TV

Now when will they sell me one that lets me roam between the AP in my apartment and the cell network?

ZyXEL P-2000W_v2 - VoIP Wi-Fi Phone

WHEN Congress comes back from its summer recess, one of the first things Senate Republicans will try to do, again, is kill the estate tax.

A major harm of repealing the estate tax that is not mentioned here
is the huge amount of money that will be sucked out of things like university endowments, etc, as a result. As it stands, folks "might as well" bequest money to these things because it'd be taxed away otherwise.

Death Tax? Double Tax? For Most, It's No Tax

In a pattern that has become familiar in the three years since Iran's once-secretive nuclear facilities became public, the United Nations nuclear agency expressed "serious concern" today about Tehran's nuclear program, but Iran responded that it would not curtail it.

Is it possible that Iran really isn't trying to make weapons or is this whole thing a farce? Its too bad that the US blew what little cred it had on Iraq which turned out to have none and now, politically, its going to be much harder for the US to try to make this stick. Which, I suppose, is the reason that we're standing behind the EU3 and saying, "yeah, what they said."

One idea that's been floating around the "new/better nukes" crowd
that appears in Wired on a pretty regular basis is to have a single global nuclear fuel supplier. A single operation under heavy
supervision on all sides would provide *everyone's* fuel and handle spent fuel afterwards. Anyone who's truly only interested in civilian power production should be amenable to such a plan, at least in principle.

U.N. Nuclear Regulators and Iran Spar Over Fuel Program