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Spacebook And NASA Social Media

As I bask in media attention for my Project Calliope, it's worth noting I'm not the only Antunes...

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Your Head is Jupiter (podcast)

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Alex "Sandy" AntunesRSS Feed of this column.

"The Sky By Day" looks at the science and the people in today's 9-5 pro astronomy world. Born in the heart of a dying star (as we were all), Alex draws from his research, writing, and game design... Read More »

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Just a quickie here. So I'm reading a comic book, Marvel's "Ultimate Galactus". In it, a godlike being named (in Kree... not Cree, but Kree) Gah Lak Tus is attacking the Earth, sending superpowered agents to destroy our only rocket by which humans might escape.

It's supposed to be present day, not the far future. Yet here's what they ask us to believe. There's an army of invisible custom-designed aliens including 'killforms', mutated clones, an alien Kree with a power suit that fits into a single armband, faster than light travel. The aliens destroy the NASA rocket. NASA says they can roll out the new one in minutes, if the heroes-- who can fly under their own power-- can just hold off the invisible superpowered aliens and their clone army long enough.

Ever wonder what the future of space tourism will be? This series of posters (from the same collection as last week's spaceport illo) in neo-retro style clearly presents your options.


This is totally not my field-- medicine-- but totally up my alley-- electronic gaming.  So here goes.  Doctors prescribed playing Nintendo games to cure a boy's blindness in one eye.  And it worked.

The boy had severe lazy eye syndrome in right eye (amblyopia, to be technical), which basically means that eye doesn't track at all.  Says his mother, "he could not identify our faces with his weak eye".

The cure?  "two hours a day playing Mario Kart on a Nintendo DS [... with] a patch over his good eye to make his lazy one work harder."


This interlude's theme is 'cynicism'.  Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal covers prehistoric skeptics:


and modern-day realism:



while Surviving the World looks deeply at the joy in academia:



and the use of substance abuse in science:


GPS will die, sending airplanes crashing and sinking boats.  Cell phones will fail, stranding travelers and resulting in people in remote areas dying due to exposure.  Worse of all, our TV may go out for a few hours.

These are some of the doomsday scenarios prophecied in the current "Chicken Little" coverage of space weather, as the sun ramps up towards Solar Maximum during the same decade that our society has become perilously dependent on advanced technology.

So where's the science?  The science is standing behind Chicken Little, simultaneously crying "pay attention to us" and "stop overselling us, you media hacks!"


Last night, while gym climbing with a science manager, I found he also did outdoor climbing, hiking, and yoga.  Yoga is a great exercise system.  Scientists need healthy bodies to match our super-healthy minds.  Yet a websearch on 'Yoga for Scientists' reveals nothing about how Yoga can help Scientists!  Well, except for "Yoga-- Naked Scientists Discussion Forum" (go ahead, I know you want to look).