Weekend Links

From a book I happen to be reading at the moment:

[...S]ince the human desire for sweetness surpases even our desire for intoxication, the cleverest thing to do with a bushel of corn is to refine it into thirty-three pounds of high-fructose corn syrup.
That at least is what we're doing with about 530 million bushels of the annual corn harvest—turning it into 17.5 billion pounds of high-fructose corn syrup. Considering that the human animal did not taste this particular food until 1980, for HFCS to have become the leading source of sweetness in our diet stands as a notable acheivement on the part of the corn-refining industry [...]

—The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, pg. 103.

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And Now, The Links

• Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts – I've read of this before, but it deserves any extra publicity it can get.
• Managers give approval to continue Ares 1-X preps
• Ares 1-X rocket breezes through key readiness test
• Ares I-X on track for rollout – Constellation set lunar summit date
• Constellation reviews Crew Exploration Vehicle Aero-science Project Status
• Rocket company tests world's most powerful ion engine
• Blasted into space from a giant air gun – Routinely proposed. Never executed. (Though HARP was on the verge.) Will this time be different?
• Xombie Qualifies for Lunar Lander Prize
• No plume, but a firehose of data from NASA moon bombing
• Lunar smash produces surprise, disappointment
• Rest easy, Earthlings: Slim impact odds further reduced
• Myths about the U.S. Economic Model
• Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit
• Senators Vote to Renew Patriot Act Spy Powers
• Neutrinos could encode messages to submarines
• Navy Looks to Stop Enemy Ray Guns
• New Video: Laser Gunship Blowtorches Truck
• Missile Silo Fixer-Upper Now Swanky Bachelor Pad
• Apple abandons U.S. Chamber of Commerce over climate policy
• Why the 'peak oil' debate is irrelevant
• EPA Announces Plan to Review Six Controversial Chemicals
• Melting glaciers bring 1980s pollution revival
• Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive – It's about time. (In both senses.)
• Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles
• Microsoft’s Danger SideKick data loss casts dark on cloud computing
• DRAM study turns assumptions about errors upside down
• Memory-Chip Camera Sensors Are 100 Times Smaller Than CCDs
• Inside the Nobel Prize: How a CCD Works
• Big bang flashgun to snap atomic anatomy
• Wired Explains: How 3-D Television Works
• The Making of a Mind-Blowing Space Photo
• Observations: 17th-century Brueghel paintings trace the early, mysterious history of the telescope
• 35 Years of the World’s Best Microscope Photography
• Weather Geeks Champion New Armageddon-Worthy Cloud
• 7 Glow-in-the-Dark Mushroom Species Discovered
• Bird Cam Captures Albatross, Killer Whale Rendezvous
• Infrared Video: 500,000 Bats Emerge From Cave
• Flu in pregnancy leaves a mean legacy
• Pandemic Payoff from 1918: A Weaker H1N1 Flu Today
• Targeted therapies exploit tiny chinks in cancer's armour
• ‘DNA Transistor’ Could Revolutionize Genetic Testing
• Souped-up stem cells rescue damaged limbs
• Is Life Expectancy Reduced by a Traumatic Childhood?
• How Memories are Maintained Over Time
• Are you asleep? Exploring the mind's twilight zone
• You Snooze, You Lose--Weight
• Look into my eyes: The power of hypnosis
• Bering in Mind: The problem with psychopaths: a fearful face doesn't deter them
• Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed
• Birth of a Notion: Implicit Social Cognition and the "Birther" Movement
• Has the pill changed the rules of sexual attraction?
• Long-Awaited Research on a 4.4-Million-Year-Old Hominid Sheds New Light on Last Common Ancestor
• Volcanoes Wiped Out All Forests 250 Million Years Ago
• Primeval Villain Looks for a Return to Mayhem in Reborn Series
• Oct. 5, 1895: Cycling’s ‘Race of Truth’