There haven't been any manned missions to the Moon in 40 years. We can send dozens of robotic missions to Mars for the cost of a single manned one, making it sustainable.

The American public doesn't give a shit about robotic missions to Mars. Curiosity's complicated landing, yes the public was tuned in because it was drama and the whole jet-powered crane thing was pretty frackin cool. Then most just got on with our lives, the same way Americans stopped caring about the Apollo missions. The public perked their collective ears up again when NASA made a blunder with that "one for the record books" comment and all kinds of people I know were suddenly gushing about the possibility of Life On Mars.

Putting people on Mars and starting a colony, well that's something people can be excited about and identify with. But it's a long-term goal. A shorter-term and ongoing goal that people are invariably excited about is finding life on another planet. The problem is, we keep sending robots to search for long-dead life, not current life. Let's get robots out to Europa and Titan and explore the seas, to Martian caves, and polar regions. Let's make finding existing extraterrestrial life a priority. Because if NASA strives for scientific discoveries that the public cares about, the public is more likely to demand NASA be funded adequately. This kind of thinking might not sit well with planetary geologists who want more rock-hunting missions, but NASA has to play a PR role as much as it focuses on hard science. Making a Twitter account is not enough. Inspiring the public must be part of the primary mission, if for no other reason than self-preservation.

Broken relative to what? Those bills tend to be pretty popular, I doubt 23/100 Americans would vote against it if it were put to a referendum.

The U.S. Senate exists -- in addition to giving small states equal power to larger states -- to provide more measured and wise deliberation of issues facing the country, in contrast to the House more aligned with the will of the people. That the Senate would again approve legislation so counter to the ideals of liberty which the United States was founded upon, speaks to a failure of the system. That the House, Senate, and Supreme Court would choose spying on the people they serve instead of upholding a central tenet of the United States signals a brokenness in the system.

For the record, that Gallup poll is flawed. The language they use is charged -- "terrorist", "George Bush passed after 9/11". Instead of just asking, "Do you think your government should be able to wiretap your communications with no judicial approval or oversight?" I think the results would've been quite different. Or maybe I'm wrong, and people are even more complacent than I imagined.

Here's the vote of each Senator on this bill. Only 23 voted Nay, only 3 of those Nays were Republicans, and 4 Senators didn't even show up to vote. And President Obama is quite ready to sign it into law.

This country is broken.

How do we know the little rover bugger wasn't filled with them?! Maybe it is already too late!

Curiosity's SAM instrument inadvertently contained Florida air in its Tunable Laser Spectrometer, which you might remember caused an early false positive of methane when NASA first tried to sample the Martian air. This Florida air was subsequently evacuated into Mars' atmosphere. But I'm not sure anyone knows what was in that air, and no reporters queried NASA about this contamination.

Well, in the early growth years it wasn't the immediate strategy.

It was ALWAYS the strategy for Facebook. It's the strategy for *any* social service that doesn't charge the user base. If someone is running a free, for-profit service and don't plan to monetize the user base, then they are an idiot and the investors who gave him or her money to burn are idiots too. I think Zuckerberg is scum of the earth, but he's certainly not an idiot. His plan was always to sell his users like cattle.

And for the record, the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who fund these services are equal parts scum. They've made "free" normal, expected, for a whole generation. They all know what the end-game is: whoring out users' privacy and creating invasive profiles of you and your family for fun and profit (which the government will gain access to as they desire).

There certainly have been excesses in the recording industry's past, but these days the record industry -- record labels, recording studios, and most importantly music artists -- are just struggling to survive. This is not to say that the RIAA is an organization many people in the industry want, but there has been very real damage caused by a generation of people who grew up thinking copying music without paying for it is totally acceptable, or even worse, their "right" as the Pirate Party seems to believe.

You are incorrect that "nobody needs" record labels. They do many jobs that artists are not necessarily good at, especially promotion. There's also marketing, album design, physical copy distribution, legal representation. These things not only require some inherent talent or ability, but often require upfront money and lots of time. Some artists can successfully not only work on new material and organize tours, but also do all these other necessary things. But that is the rare minority. Artists that were already established prior to torrents are still doing alright, but new artists? Very difficult. The bands you see playing on Saturday Night Live? Most of them are not making money, many still have day jobs.

Oh, and "supporting them by going to concerts"? -- ha ha! Bands very rarely get a take from the door these days. Many places they have to PAY money to the club to play (for instance, I'd guess over 80% of the venues in Los Angeles are pay-to-play). Sure, if you buy a t-shirt from them or a CD, that's great. But when you tally up tour costs (club fees, gas, lodging, food) and the merch they sell, most bands barely make even. To some degree this was always the case with indie bands, but at least they got some money out of album sales if their record label cut them a good deal. Nowadays with file sharing even that income is gone. Maybe if they're really lucky they can sell out and get their song on a commercial or tv show.

So who do all of you file sharing proponents think you're 'sticking it to' exactly? Sure, there are a few major labels backing the RIAA who are still greedy and still treat the artists like shit. But most of you aren't listening to those bands/labels anyway.

And Kickstarter? KS typically only works if you're already an established artist, unless you have the talent/resources to make a clever video that goes viral. Promotion is not easy, it's very time-consuming, and most music artists aren't good at the dog-and-pony show. They're good at making music.

TL;DR -- Don't try to justify your selfishness with "zomg evil cocaine-snorting criminals". Don't vilify the whole recording industry because of the RIAA. You're hurting the artists you supposedly care about and listen to all day. Most of all, buy their music. Support indie record labels. Support your local, independent record stores. Support artist-focused online shops like Bandcamp.

NORAD statement

"Initial indications are that the missile deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit."

Of course, WHAT they put into orbit is open to speculation.

Well, it's not a 'tank' by definition either because it's not a tracked vehicle. It's more of an APC. The designers admit that its armor will only stop small arms fire. But for certain situations -- avoiding sniper fire, transporting wounded in a battle area, flushing out infantry -- it has its use. The Libyan freedom fighters were building similar armored vehicles. Necessity is the mother of invention.

And that Grumman actually distinguished themselves quite well during the mission.

And during World War II Grumman produced some badass Navy fighters, the rugged F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat, which made quick work of the Japanese Zeros despite being less maneuverable.

The land was pretty valuable to the native Americans on whom the United States government committed genocide.

The edge of the solar system is supposed to be the oort cloud at about 1 light-year away

We're not talking about reaching the edge of the Solar system, we are talking about our first foray into interstellar space. And interstellar space starts beyond the heliopause, not the Oort Cloud. That's why Voyager's cosmic ray measurements have been so important.

On a side note, it looks as if Voyager 2 may be reaching the edge of the part of the heliosphere it is traveling through. The high-energy particles (which are coming from the Sun) have been steadily decreasing the past few months.

When speaking to the general audience of NPR and other media sources, making a statement that findings are, "One for the history books" is irresponsible if it is *not* something that most of the populace would find earth-shaking. I think even most of us thought this was an exceptionally-important finding, such as the presence of organic compounds.

The levels of science classification by the general public are as follows:
1) blah blah blah blah
2) wtf, science is weird. what's on TV?
3) when will that be on my iPhone?
4) one for the history books? OMG ALIENS

The Wii U is not necessarily for the CoD people, but Nintendo execs have made many oblique statements (of course those are about the only kind of statements they make) that they need to capture the attention of the "core gamer" again, and that the Wii U is the answer to that problem.

As more and more casual gamers move to mobile apps for their fix, it is rather important to Nintendo's bottom line to do this. If the Wii U is seen as another outdated-on-arrival piece of hardware, I think it will not receive a great reception outside of Nintendo diehards.

Except that weather is a complex thing, and there would not be an even blanket of precipitation in all areas of the world. What the models point to is more extremes – some areas with severe flooding and storms, and other areas more like deserts. California is not slated to get a wetter climate out of climate change.

The BBC article goes into more detail:

Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is acidic, mostly frozen and possesses the highest nitrous oxide levels of any natural water body on Earth.

The abundance of different chemical compounds present in the lake led the researchers to conclude that chemical reactions were taking place between the brine and the underlying iron-rich sediments, producing the nitrous oxide and molecular hydrogen.
[...]
"It's plausible that a life-supporting energy source exists solely from the chemical reaction between anoxic salt water and the rock," said co-author Dr Christian Fritsen, also from the DRI.

So this is not just a deep freeze; this is an extremely hostile environment for life, even by our current understanding of extremophiles.

And this is why we need to be sending missions to the under-ice oceans of Europa or the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan, not yet another rock-hunting mission.