Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race [Scientific American]

In a world where a woman, Dr. Shannon Lucid, holds the record for longest spaceflight for an American, this book is a good reminder of how far we've come......and how far we haven't.

One story resurfaces every few years: the tale of the Mercury 13--13 women whom NASA recruited for the space program, then ditched with nary a launch or an explanation. Or so the story goes. According to Promised the Moon, the fine new book by Stephanie Nolen, a foreign correspondent for Canada's Globe and Mail, the whole truth went deeper.

For its astronauts the U.S. space agency recruited only military test pilots--male test pilots, of course. They flew higher and faster than anyone. But Randolph Lovelace II, chairman of NASA's Life Sciences Committee, theorized that women might make better astronauts. An average woman would be shorter and weigh less than the average man. She would breathe less oxygen and allow less fuel to be carried for those maneuvering rockets. She'd even eat less. Every ounce counted.

1:42:48 PM    

Spidering Hacks. The latest book in the O'Reilly Hacks series, "Spidering Hacks," (written by Kevin "Morbus Iff" Hemenway and Tara "ResearchBuzz" Calishain) is out. It's the site-scraper's bible, with 100 tips and tricks for sucking in data from the Web.

Spidering Hacks takes you to the next level in Internet data retrieval--beyond search engines--by showing you how to create spiders and bots to retrieve information from your favorite sites and data sources. You'll no longer feel constrained by the way host sites think you want to see their data presented--you'll learn how to scrape and repurpose raw data so you can view in a way that's meaningful to you.

Written for developers, researchers, technical assistants, librarians, and power users, Spidering Hacks provides expert tips on spidering and scraping methodologies. You'll begin with a crash course in spidering concepts, tools (Perl, LWP, out-of-the-box utilities), and ethics (how to know when you've gone too far: what's acceptable and unacceptable). Next, you'll collect media files and data from databases. Then you'll learn how to interpret and understand the data, repurpose it for use in other applications, and even build authorized interfaces to integrate the data into your own content.

LInk

(via Ben Hammersley) [Boing Boing Blog]

12:43:04 PM     leave/read comments []

Top 10 Bushisms

Top 10 Bushisms The Stupidest Things President George W. Bush Has Ever Said

10) "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." -LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

9) "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." -Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000

8) "I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here." -Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

7) "I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." -Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 2001

6) "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." -George W. Bush, Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

5) "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right." -Rome, July 22, 2001

4) "I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure." -AP interview, Jan. 18, 2001

3) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." -Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

2) "They misunderestimated me." -Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

1) "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" -Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

Makes me all creepy-tingly.

12:16:42 PM     leave/read comments []