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'Send'

Will Schwalbe and David Shipley say they were so overwhelmed by the amount -- and muddled quality -- of the email they were getting...that they wrote a whole book about it. It's called "Send: Why People Email So Badly and...

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August 18, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (6)

Leroy

Leroy Sievers has died, and if you don't work in the confines of network news you may not recognize his name. But -- much more important -- if you're a cancer survivor, or if you have a loved one who...

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August 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (5)

Olympics: The Race Goes Not to the Swift....

The Olympics have been going since Friday and the closest thing they've had to a scandal is that the little girl at the opening ceremonies was lip-syncing. Nobody's been caught blood-doping or taking growth hormone. Everyone marvels how gangly Michael...

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August 13, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9)

The Solar System is a Mess

Mark Sykes says enough already -- the solar system ought to have 13 planets, and all this bickering over whether Pluto qualifies as one has been a bad thing. You'll recall the debate, dating back to 2006, over the definition...

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August 12, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (33)

Look Out Above

Every year at this time, the Earth passes through the orbit of a comet called Swift-Tuttle, and the result is a pleasant sky show called the Perseid Meteor Shower. Even though the comet is far away now -- out beyond...

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August 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (5)

100,000, or, Around the World in 6,684 Days

Monday morning at 7:42 a.m. EDT marked the turning of the odometer for the Hubble telescope. It's now orbited the earth 100,000 times. That would be 2.72 billion miles traveled (at about 17,500 miles an hour, at an altitude of...

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August 10, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (6)

Face to Face with a Polar Bear

The Wildlife Conservation Society reports it had to pull five scientists from their camp on the northern coast of Alaska "because of a new and unusual threat: a polar bear stuck on land due to climate change." The WCS says,...

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August 8, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (41)

The High Ambitions of Elon Musk

Elon Musk co-founded a modest little startup called PayPal in the 1990s, and sold it to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. It did not make him rich; he already was. He'd sold a software firm called Zip2 to Compaq...

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August 7, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9)

Who Owns the Arctic?

There is a gold rush, or something like it, in the cold wastes around the North Pole. They're getting warmer, or at least less icy, which has countries looking to stake their claims for the oil, natural gas and minerals...

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August 5, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (15)