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Google Earth Shows More Chinese Submarines

Back in July, Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists created something of a stir when he reported the sighting of a new Chinese nuclear-missile submarine, known as a Jin-class SSBN (Type 094). Now he writes, China has at...

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October 15, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (23)

Everybody Has an Angle

"That giant bang you heard last week was the sound of Sean Hannity's head exploding," writes Jeff Giles, a freelance film reviewer, on Rotten Tomatoes today. Everybody has an opinion about Al Gore and the Nobel Peace Prize, and if...

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October 15, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (47)

Notes From a Life

"Once again, President Bush has been dragged slowly, kicking and screaming, toward the correct position." That's Al Gore, going after one of his best-known adversaries--but it's not the one you'd think. He's talking about the first President Bush, in a...

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October 12, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

The Flight of Monarchs

This time of year--through means still mysterious to scientists--Monarch Butterflies seem to take note that the sun is no longer as high in the sky as it was through the summer. That's their cue to pick up and start their...

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October 10, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (17)

Cleaning the Air and Clearing the Docket

A reality of environmental protection is that a great deal of it is forced on companies by laws or regulations, and, at least on the federal level, the vast majority of them end up in court. Usually for years. The...

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October 9, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (7)

Stem Cells Win a Nobel

Good morning from a plane. The Nobel Prize for medicine often goes to researchers most of us have never heard of, for work that seems only passingly related to anything in our lives. Every now and than, though, it makes...

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October 8, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (5)

Sputnik and the American Edge

The headline, if you scan the various stories written for this fiftieth anniversary of the space age, seems to be that we no longer live in the space age. We've moved on...to the information age, the war on terror, the...

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October 4, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (10)

An Earth in the Making

424 light-years away, in a double-star system known as HD 113766, the Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted what astronomers say is a huge belt of dust and debris. They know enough from studying other stars to expect that what they're...

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October 3, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (22)

Carbon Tax

The Canadian province of Quebec, as far as we know, has become the first government of size in North America to impose a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and everyone there is still wondering what it...

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October 2, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (56)

Steve Fossett: Four Weeks On

Never say never, but Steve Fossett's trail seems very, very cold. He took off from a Nevada airstrip four weeks ago today. Searchers, made hopeful by the radar trails revealed last week by the Air Force, spent the weekend looking...

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October 1, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (13)