For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it...

On November 4, a solution was discovered—in a videogame. That’s the day Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox 360, a $150 add-on that allows players to direct the action in a game simply by moving their bodies. Most of the world focused on the controller-free interface, but roboticists saw something else entirely: an affordable, lightweight camera that could capture 3-D images in real time.

Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics | Magazine

Your planet has a moon!
Only one, but you only need one.
It was the first evidence to your forefathers that there were other worlds.
And its constitution is such that it bears the scars of every meteor hit in it's history.
Its so pock marked that children compare it to cheese!
And it has displayed those pock marks to you every night, for thousands of years.
Like a big neon freeway billboard tracing across the sky.
And the message couldn't be clearer.
Get the fuck off that rock,
or you are going to get hit by one of these meteors that has scarred my face,
and you are all going to die!

Oh, but where should we go?
What should we do?

It turns out that there is an answer, right there in front of your face!
The next planet over!
How more obvious could this be?
It could have been a gas giant or some place with oceans of acid but no...
Its reasonable.
OK, it ain't the Palace Hotel, but its fucking reasonable!
Its a fixer upper.
Come on!
You've got to learn SOMETHING here.
You can't have everything handed to you on a silver platter.

The next step is right in front of your face.
Take the next step!

There are others.
You'll be able to see them once you get a little higher.

Eventually we're going to get a bit more subtle about this but at this stage you seem to be pretty bad about catching the drift.

Just watch it.

YouTube - ‪My Drunk Kitchen Ep. 4: Not Easy, Bake Oven‬‏

This thing was cool.

YouTube - ‪Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)‬‏

"The challenge of space is not in building the space systems, it is in building the space team," Kranz told CBS News in an email exchange. "With the termination of shuttle operations the NASA and contractor work force that took a decade to build and mature is being destroyed.

Several NASA commentators are saying there are serious problems here because we're going to loose the community of people that surround human space flight and the collective expertise that they represent. They are laying everyone off.

Launch Director Mike Leinbach:

"Throughout the history of the manned spaceflight program, we've always had another program to transition into -- from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo, Apollo Soyuz Test Program to Skylab, and then to shuttle -- we always had something to transition into. And we had that (with Constellation) and it got canceled and now we don't have anything, and I'm embarrassed that we don't."

They have no idea when or where these people will be needed to do this kind of work again.

"the difference between a dream and a goal is a schedule"

Spaceflight Now | STS-135 Shuttle Report | U.S. must rely upon the Russians for access to space

A bill before Congress threatens to stifle technical innovation coming from small business.

The house signed off on this. It is extremely bad for independent innovators. It will seriously damage American competitiveness.

Blog: A Bill Inventors Cannot Afford

Banking crises are followed by credit crises by 2-3 years. It is getting close to that time. We need 3-3.5% GDP growth in the US to really make a dent in jobs. We are not going to get it. There is nothing we can do other than Muddle Through as best we can. Prepare accordingly.

Some things in here that aren't quite right but a lot that seems correct. The jobs data is really bad - the roller coaster is about to go down again.

What Happened to the Jobs? | The Big Picture

If home prices fall another 10 to 25%, that "wouldn't surprise me at all," Robert Shiller told Reuters Insider today.

Shiller says that the recovery is at risk right now, and a further rise in unemployment would hint that another recession was imminent.

This was a month ago.

HOLY COW: Robert Shiller Could Easily See Another 25% Drop In Home Prices

Make no mistake, the middle class has been ruined: Its wealth has been decimated, its income isn’t even keeping pace with inflation, and its faith in the American economy has been shattered.

Homeowners lost 55% of their housing wealth — more than $7 trillion — when the bubble burst.

Most middle-class families didn’t have much wealth to begin with — about $100,000. For the 22 million families right in the middle of the income distribution (those making between $39,000 and $62,000 before taxes), about 90% of their assets was in the house. Now half of their wealth is gone and it will never come back as long as they live.

How the bubble destroyed the middle class - MarketWatch

I didn't pay any attention to this case until the outrage over the verdict. I'm annoyed with the media's general rush to convict anyone accused of a crime (there should be no such thing as a "perp walk"), their lack of respect for the presumption of innocence, and the ridiculous mob of people who are outraged that the jury reached its verdict after "only" 11 hours of deliberation when they reached their verdict based on TV punditry.

Somewhere along the way, the American viewing public mistook the Casey Anthony trial for an episode of "American Idol." If the audience had been allowed to vote, she'd be on her way to Florida's death row.

This is precisely how people want justice to be done - a mad game show with dial in voting and a guillotine.

People pay a lot of lip service to our Constitution on the Fourth of July but they don't seem to have much respect for it the other 364 days of the year.

Casey Anthony verdict; fallout - chicagotribune.com