June 2008 Archives

It's official: the Phoenix Lander has discovered ice on Mars. A few days ago, the lander exposed some bright white chunks of material while retrieving a soil sample. These spots have since disappeared over the following days, suggesting they've melted. An additional trench found a hard layer at the same depth as the original ice.

The spacecraft team has been dealing with some data storage issues as well and will be pushing a software patch soon.

The Canadian Senate wants to make spanking your children illegal and a Quebec judge quashes a dad's grounding of his 12-year-old daughter.

The Smithsonian has a Flickr page as part of the Flickr Commons program. So far there are 6 sets, Portraits of Scientists and Inventors, Portraits of Artists, American Celebrations, Smithsonian Folklife Festival, People and the Post and Smithsonian's First Photographer, featuring the work of Thomas William Smillie.

Tetris has changed over the years. The latest game mechanics are well-documented and allow for techniques more complicated than those of us used to earlier iterations could possibly imagine. And of course, you can have it any way you want it.