Posts in the "news" category - Chris Hardie

I always get excited when a new NASA mission comes around, and 3:51 PM EDT tomorrow is the scheduled launch of STS-114, Space Shuttle Discovery. It is of course a milestone for NASA to be launching its first shuttle since Columbia, but I find each launch to be pretty amazing in its own right. As a geek, I can appreciate (read: drool over) the incredible technological complexities that go into making it happen. As a science fiction fan and observer of human evolution, I can appreciate the role...

Hayden L. Sheaffer, the pilot who is being raked over the coals for his role in flying a Cessna 150 into restricted airspace over Washington D.C. earlier this month, which prompted the scrambling of jets and the evacuation of thousands, noted today that he did in fact try to contact the military on the radio channel they instructed him to use, but that he couldn't get through. In today's issues, the New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that Sheaffer was instructed...

This is the second year I've taken advantage of another great thing about the area, our local CSA (community supported agriculture) program through Boulder Belt Organics in Preble County, Ohio. Since I'm doing my own garden I'll probably just use it for a few months, but it's so nice to have locally and organically grown produce; and you can't beat that the "pick up point" for my share is at Mark's house one block away. One thing I especially like about CSAs in general is that the fees you pay to get the food...

Something fun to distract one on a rainy Wednesday: if I won the lottery, would I take the lump sump payment, or the installments over X years? The answer, of course, is "it depends". How old are you when you win, what's the annuity percentage on the installment plan, how much debt do you have, is there a "Best Buy" on the way home from the lottery claim center, etc. Oh, and I guess I'd have to play the lottery in the first place for this to matter much anyway. What would you do?

From the "you can't make this stuff up" department: A Delaware college student ate a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms and drove around in a pair of stolen cars before arriving, confused, on a mountain in northwest Connecticut, police said. Oh how I long for those crazy college days where one might wake up and say "I think I stole a car." Umm, no.

The U.S. State Department is issuing a warning cautioning Americans against traveling to Bahrain for fear of terrorist attacks, which means that once again my 4th of July plans for this weekend have been completely messed up. I guess they don't really understand that some people made plans a long time ago to visit various Persian Gulf nations, and that an advisory on the Friday before a big travel weekend just doesn't cut it. Dagnabbit!

It's "you can't make this stuff up" day here on the Internet. Today's highlights include Woman tries to pass fake $1 million dollar bill at a Wal-Mart and It's every other state that's confused about time changes, not Indiana. And we wonder why people on the U.S. East and West coasts consider everything in between to be a vast wasteland...

I should preface these thoughts by saying that I believe the current uproar over Napster, copyright issues, the music industry, and information theory is producing a public debate that is very healthy for our government, culture, and nation. It is forcing us to look in new ways at how we treat information, data, privacy, personal transactions, art, and money on a personal and public level. It is forcing several large and powerful corporate and government entities to think hard about their place in the digital...