Curiosity – Mars Science Laboratory rover

NASA Announcement

NASA is inviting eligible education institutions, museums and other organizations to examine and request space program artifacts online. The items represent significant human spaceflight technologies, processes and accomplishments from NASA’s past and present space exploration programs. more> http://is.gd/L0q2ad

SPACE WATCH
NASA – Taken during mobility testing on June 3, 2011, this image is of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Preparations continue for shipping the rover to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in June and for its fall 2011 launch. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

related>

• New Mars rover arrives at Florida launch site, Irene Klotz, Reuters

Snake oil, puff balls, and the need for a real jobs plan

By Robert Reich – Doesn’t the White House get it? The President has to have a bold jobs plan, with specifics. Why not exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for the next year? Why not a new WPA for the long-term unemployed, and a Civilian Conservation Corps for the legions of young jobless Americans? Why not allow people to declare bankruptcy on their primary residences, and thereby reorganize their mortgage debt?

Or a hundred other ways to boost demand. The puff balls being offered by the CEOs on the President’s jobs and competitiveness council are hardly a substitute. These CEOs won’t suggest hard-ball ideas to boost demand. Why should they? Their companies rely less and less on consumers in the United States – and, for that matter, on American workers. more> http://is.gd/TKKUWK

related>

• What is a real “jobs plan?” LinkedIn Discussion
• The White House and Jeff Immelt on Jobs: Compelling, Infuriating or Simply Irrelevant? Zachary Karabell, TIME
• Jeffrey Immelt’s Remedy for Unemployment Is the Wrong Cure for the Wrong Disease, Alain Sherter, BNET

New Study Confirms U.S. Military is Preparing for the End of Oil

By Tina Casey – Officials up and down the chain of command at DoD have been forthcoming about the need for the U.S. military to transition out of oil and into safer and more readily available forms of energy. They don’t mean just ditching foreign-sourced oil in favor of more domestic offshore drilling, tar sands extraction, or exploitation of oil fields in wilderness conservation areas. They mean oil, period. more> http://is.gd/WMdEz3

related>

• The military and renewable energy, JunkScience Sidebar

Innovation Road for Europe: superhighway or dead-end?

Blogactiv – The World Economic Forum meeting in Vienna this week (5/8/11) will be grappling with the challenging problem of European innovation. The evidence is suggesting that rather than leading the world, Europe is worryingly backsliding. Worse, of course, is the public rhetoric is not backed up by actual real-world action by governments, who persist in the old ways. This has produced the current complex mix of disincentives for risk-takers with governments fearful of the disruptive impact of innovation on European preferences (ranging from employment to lifestyle), coupled with frequently ineffective and unreformed public sector organisations. This has been admirably addressed, too, in the WEF report on the future of government. more> http://is.gd/rhu4LK

Net Neutrality Creates a ‘Net Cartel’

By Abraham Hamadeh – While net neutrality supporters frame the rules as necessary to keep the internet free, the reality is quite the opposite, with the FCC claiming sweeping new powers to regulate the internet. The FCC rules allow the government to open investigations on how Internet server providers manage their networks and also have a hands-on approach in dealing with the Internet market. Net neutrality claims to be protecting Internet users from abusive corporations, but it is a mere disguise to help the big Internet providers grab a piece of the market and suppress future competition. more> http://is.gd/Lem9DG