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Common Errors in English

Drug traffickers in a Rio slum opened fire on a helicopter carrying a Santa to a children's party, apparently mistaking it for a police helicopter, police said Tuesday.

Jingle-bang! Santa's chopper shot up over slum

Watching Elon Musk at work is an exercise in controlling your urge to buy a man a drink. Make that several drinks. Musk is 36 years old, wicked smart, worth several hundred million dollars, and built like a tight end--thickset through the middle and well over 6 feet tall. Yet he never looks quite comfortable. Sitting in front of the oversize computer screen on his desk, he rolls back and forth in his chair, slouches and unslouches, rubs his temples, raps his fingers, and plays with his wedding ring. When he sighs, which he does frequently, his chest heaves, and his eyes widen, like someone confronted with news of his own death. He generally speaks in complete, precise sentences, rarely telling a joke or even cracking a smile.

Inc's ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR: ELON MUSK

Sorry for the long delay in posting. For the last few months, optional activities such as website updates have gone on the back burner while we finished the regeneratively cooled Merlin 1C engine, got the Falcon 9 first stage integrated, proof tested and fired, signed up our first GTO (geostationary transfer orbit) customer - Avanti Communications Group, and took our COTS system past the big CDR milestone. With all that taken care of, here comes another huge update:

Wow ... SpaceX is on track!

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Updates

OFTEN, it is the smallest of gestures that deliver the most powerful messages. I was reminded of this last month when I settled into the driver’s seat of the FCX Clarity, a sedan powered by fuel cells that Honda will begin leasing to a handful of private customers next summer. Fresh from a briefing that detailed the car’s NASA-grade complexity, I wondered what procedures might be required to start the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen and bring the power supply to life.

Cars - Reviews - Honda FCX Clarity - Fuel Cell - Test Drive - New York Times

If the mortgage crisis and housing bubble have taught us one thing, it should be to watch out for the unintended consequences of greed. Unfortunately, our nation's legislators and political appointees haven't learned that lesson. Recent plans for housing and mortgage bailouts generally run from dumb to dumber. Today, The Wall Street Journal reported on yet another scheme, reportedly being spearheaded by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It's an idea so naively populist and antimarket that you would think it came from Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, if not for its cringe-inducing, Beltway-wonk moniker: the Hope Now Alliance.

Paulson's Plan to Punish the Public

Many a mother has said, with a sigh, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”

The answer, for cockroaches at least, may well be yes. Researchers using robotic roaches were able to persuade real cockroaches to do things that their instincts told them were not the best idea.

Brilliant!

Led by Robots, Roaches Abandon Instincts - New York Times

The latest version, SimCity Societies, which launches on Thursday, allows you to play out the climate experiment, designing cities that either expand or limit their greenhouse-gas contribution and environmental footprint.

Be an Eco Sinner or Saint in the New SimCity - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world's first high-definition image taking of an Earth-rise* by the lunar explorer "KAGUYA" (SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km on October 18, 2007 (Japan Standard Time. Following times and dates are all JST.)

Kaguya (Selene) Images of Earth-Rise Over the Moon | SpaceRef - Space News as it Happens

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice - New York Times