What percentage of your ancestors were men?

No, it’s not 50 percent, as I’ll explain shortly.

Great lecture

Is There Anything Good About Men? And Other Tricky Questions

An interesting way of watching to focus of history change.

US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud - Chirag Mehta : chir.ag

] The new Delta IV Heavy Launch Vehicle is the largest
] rocket ever to be launched by the US Air Force. The Delta
] IV Heavy is capable of launching over 23,000 kilograms
] into low Earth orbit.

Ooh, big rocket animations.

Funny, they don't quite list what the USAF needed 23 megagrams of payload for.

APOD: 2005 January 26 - First Launch of the Delta IV Heavy

] Dogs rendered paraplegic by severe spinal cord injuries
] regained significant neurological function after
] treatment with a polymer called polyethylene glycol, or
] PEG, say researchers at Purdue University in Indiana, US.

Article: Spine-damaged canines made to heal�| New Scientist

] Randy Voland, project engineer at the Langley Research
] Center in Hampton, Va., another NASA site, said
] preliminary data indicated the X-43A was traveling at
] Mach 9.7, or 9.7 times the speed of sound, when it
] separated from its booster rocket at 111,000 feet about
] 90 seconds after launch. At that point, he said, the
] plane sustained its speed at Mach 9.6, or about 6,600
] miles an hour, during its 10-second engine burn.
]
] "It looked really, really good," Mr. Voland said of the
] flight. "In fact, it looked like one of our simulations."

The New York Times : Science : NASA Jet Sets Record for Speed

] Researchers have discovered that there are two distinct
] lineages of modern lice, one of which presumably evolved
] on the scalps of another human species before making the
] jump to our own.

news @ nature.com - Early man left trail of licebreaking science news headlines

] The British entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Branson
] announced Monday he has signed a deal with U.S. company
] Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV) to put paying travelers
] into space.

I think we all saw this coming. If it plays out, the $10M is peanuts, as all the X-Prize competitors have said.

Technology News: Science: Richard Branson Plans Commercial Space Flights

] The Japanese Institute of Space Astronautical Science
] tested two solar sail deployments launched aboard an
] S-310 rocket on 9 August. It is the first time a solar
] sail deployment has ever been tested in space.

So simple, and yet, so complicated

Article: First space test for solar sailing�| New Scientist

] "Scaled Composites is going to win," Carmack says
] matter-of-factly, referring to a competing team that has
] already launched a craft to the edge of space and will
] officially compete for the prize in September.
] "But we still had been holding out,"

Article: Double calamity for X Prize contenders�| New Scientist

] Congress is moving to force a shift to "open access," a
] form of free-to-consumer publishing, for scientific
] papers. The move angers commercial publishers, who see
] their livelihoods threatened, and scares scientific
] societies, who are afraid they will face revenue losses
] or new costs they cannot afford. Even librarians, who
] pushed for the move, are cautious, because they are
] concerned for the health of the scientific societies.

United Press International: PoliSci: House acts on research access