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NASA has unveiled a flood of photos showing millions galaxies, stars and asteroids photographed by a prolific sky-mapping telescope that ended its mission earlier this year. For the first time, the space agency publicly released more than half of the 2.7 million images taken by its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope during its mission to map the entire sky. WISE launched in December 2009 and spent 14 months scanning the heavens in infrared light before shutting down this past February. The $320 million space telescope hunted for asteroids and comets, as well as more distant cosmic objects revealed by...

The Web has changed a lot since Marc Andreessen revolutionized the Internet with the introduction of his Netscape browser in the mid-1990s. That's why he's betting people are ready to try a different Web-surfing technique on a new browser called RockMelt. The browser, available for the first time Monday, is built on the premise that most online activity today revolves around socializing on Facebook, searching on Google, tweeting on Twitter and monitoring a handful of favorite websites. It tries to minimize the need to roam from one website to the next by corralling all vital information and favorite services in...

As Ford takes the wraps off the new 2011 Explorer today – with a stellar, multi-city “throwback” reveal combined with a social media offensive – it’s easy to see why they’re excited about it. The new Explorer is lighter, much better looking, safer, quieter, exhaustively equipped, technically sophisticated, dramatically more efficient and with light-years better driving dynamics thrown-in for good measure. In short, there is nothing about the 2011 version of the Explorer that bears any resemblance to the vehicle that came before it. The only thing the new vehicle shares with the old one is the name, which has...

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) web browser, now accounts for less than 60% of the market, down from 95% at its peak in 2003, according to new figures. Latest statistics, from measurement firm NetApplications, show that IE has 59.9% of the market, with Firefox gaining on it, with 24.5%.

US' own Hitler Youth- Daily Kos In todays NYT, there is an article about the boy scouts explorer program which takes scouts (boys and girls) between 14 and 18 and trains them in so called law enforcement activities.This proram now has over 35,000 members and semms to be concentrated in the border areas. My immediate reaction on reading the article was to think of the Hitler Youth movement in Germany of the thirties, and to this end I checked into Wiki and compared the two groups.

Swiss-based marine explorer and inventor Jacques Piccard, who was part of the deepest submarine dive in history, has died at his home aged 86. In 1960, Piccard and US co-pilot Don Walsh took a submersible developed by his father to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. They went 11km (seven miles) beneath the surface of the sea. Their discovery of living organisms at that depth led to a ban on the dumping of nuclear waste in ocean trenches. "By far the most interesting find was the fish that came floating by our porthole," Piccard said afterwards...."

Computer problems. I just assembled a new machine and I cant get the browsers to recognize the coloring for background and text in FireFox or explorer. Standby for sample screen capture

The last week of January contains a number of notable space anniversaries. This year, the most prominent one is the fiftieth anniversary of the first satellite launched by the United States, Explorer I, starting our own nation’s space age. Most of us don’t remember that time, half a century ago, but the nation had been shocked four months earlier when the Soviet Union was the first to launch an object into orbit. Most hadn’t even been aware that there was a space race, but suddenly we were losing it. This was compounded on December 6th, 1957 when, in an attempt...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday agreed to settle class-action lawsuits covering plaintiffs in four states who claimed its Explorer sport utility vehicles were prone to rollovers, the company and an attorney for the plaintiffs said. The settlement applies to about 1 million people in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, said Kevin P. Roddy, a New Jersey attorney and co-counsel for the SUV owners who brought the lawsuit. He said the settlement will be filed later Wednesday in Sacramento County Superior Court. It will allow vehicle owners to apply for $500 vouchers to buy new Explorers or $300...

Archaeologists continue debate, search for battle site lost for centuries in Alabama It's out there. Somewhere underneath cat claw briars or mud flats or even modern subdivision tracts, there are shards of Spanish metal, burned clay and a palisaded wall waiting to be found, answering one of the South's famous mysteries: Where is Mauvilla? Historians gleaning descriptions from written accounts of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's expedition across the South say the earliest and bloodiest battle between Europeans and Indians happened at Mauvilla, a fortified village that researchers spell a variety of other ways, including Mabila and Mavila. It sat...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Supreme Court ordered a state appeals court Monday to review a decision giving $82.6 million to a woman who was paralyzed after her Ford Explorer rolled over. The justices want a California appeals court to determine if its ruling is in line with the Supreme Court decision overturning a $79.5 million punitive damages award in a tobacco case earlier this year. The court said then that a jury may punish a defendant only for the harm done to the person who is suing, not to others whose cases were not before it ....Ford's legal team, led...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Everest conqueror and Antarctic explorer Sir Edmund Hillary has returned to the frozen continent — at age 87 — for what he believes will be his last time. Hillary joined New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and other dignitaries who flew to Antarctica for the 50th anniversary of the Scott Base, which the adventurer helped build in 1957. "This is probably the last opportunity that I will get to visit the wintery south," Hillary said Friday, the day after he arrived. Hillary helped lead a team to the South Pole in 1955. He was the first...

LONDON - Knowing he was days from death on a tragic trek back from the South Pole in 1912, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his wife that "we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through." However, he assured Kathleen Scott, he faced his end without regret. "How much better it has been than lounging in comfort at home," Scott wrote in the letter, recovered the year after he and his companions died of cold and starvation. Scott's courage in facing his doom — following the bitter disappointment of losing the race to the...

NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars 12.06.06    More Images:     + Groundwater May Be Responsible     + New Craters     + Fresh Crater in Arabia Terra NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years. " These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington. Image right: A new gully deposit in a crater in the Centauri Montes...

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- The parents of a teenager who died in the crash of a 1995 Ford Explorer Sport have won a $15 million verdict in their federal lawsuit against the automaker. A spokeswoman for Ford said Tuesday the company will appeal the verdict. A federal jury returned the verdict against Ford Motor Co. Monday in a product-liability lawsuit that claimed the vehicle's roof was not strong enough. Tyler Moody, 18, was killed Jan. 7, 2003, when he lost control of the sport utility vehicle while he was passing another vehicle in a no passing zone on a curve,...

Who really sailed the ocean blue in 1492?Spanish scholars are on a mission to demystify Christopher Columbus's life, long shrouded in a veil of mythic heroism. By Lisa Abend and Geoff Pingree | Correspondents of The Christian Science Monitor MADRID – Genovese nobleman or Catalan pirate? Adventurous explorer or greedy tyrant? What if the Italian gentleman who discovered America was in fact a brutal torturer and slave owner? And what if he wasn't even Italian? Schoolchildren may learn about a daring hero who proved the Earth wasn't flat, but because his biography is pocked with holes, Christopher Columbus is a...

"Dad, why does America celebrate Columbus Day?" "Well, Billy, in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from Europe to America and founded the very first settlement in the New World. His arrival marks the beginning of America as we know it." "But didn't he discover America by accident, dad?" "Columbus believed the Earth was a sphere. He thought he could reach the Far East by setting off on a westward course. Though he stumbled upon what is now the Bahamas by accident, he was still a great explorer and a great man, Billy." "A great man, dad, or a racist oppressor?" "Pardon...

Microsoft gave its Windows Vista browser a new name on Friday, officially dubbing it Internet Explorer 7+ as a way to set it off from the edition for Windows XP. In an entry on the IE team's blog, group product manager Tony Chor said that the new moniker would denote the Vista-only features in that OS's browser -- protected mode, parental controls, and better network diagnostics -- all of which are missing from the Windows XP version. The two IE editions share the same code base, and except for the three Vista-specific features, are identical. Beta 2 of both...

Kenya orders Italian to stop ruining historic site Posted Mon, 22 May 2006 Nairobi - Kenyan authorities have moved quickly to protect one of the country's historical sites along the Indian Ocean coast by ordering a foreign investor from Italy to immediately stop developing a piece of land where an ancient ruin with historical values stands. The piece of land holds the ruins of an ancient mosque where a prominent Chinese sailor, Zheng Hess, prayed when he visited the historical town of Malindi in 1415.The ruins of Khatiba mosque lie less than a kilometre from the Indian Ocean shores in...

General Motors has won the first round of a consumer lawsuit that could set a precedent for other automakers in similar suits pending in several states. A U.S. District Court judge in Dallas has dismissed a suit in which the owner of a 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe alleged that GM had been negligent in using tempered glass in its side windows rather than laminated glass.