Cody Taylor

If Obama’s presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else — fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism — then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors.

ROME – One for the road? No thanks, says Rome.The Italian capital is limiting alcohol sales in neighbourhoods famous for their nightlife to tamp down on loud, all-night partying. Under new rules that took effect Friday, no alcohol “to go” can be sold in bars, restaurants, supermarkets or other outlets after 9 p.m.

On March 4, 1901, a lone cameraman in the employ of Thomas A. Edison was dispatched to capture the swearing in of William McKinley. To posterity he delivered a total of 44 seconds of grainy footage showing a white-haired man on the Capitol steps solemnly, if indistinctly, raising his right hand.

Flight 1549’s captain, first officer and three flight attendants issued a joint statement on Monday saying they want the media to “respect their desire to refrain from participating in interviews until further notices” while the National Transportation Safety Board investigates the accident.

bowman9991 writes “If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back? If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible? Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture? You wouldn’t expect a mainstream television show to tackle such philosophically loaded questions, certainly not a show based on cheesy science fiction from the ’70s, but if you’ve watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape. The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again. SFFMedia illustrates how Battlestar Galactica exposes the moral dilemmas, outrages, and questionable believes of the present as effectively (but more entertainingly) than any documentary or news program. It’s not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military’s use of interrogation techniques in Bush’s War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as ‘the enemy,’ the crackdown on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq.”

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brink2012 writes “Planum Boreum, Mar’s north polar cap contains water ice “of a very high degree of purity,” according to an international study. Using radar data from the SHARAD (SHAllow RADar) instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), French researchers say the data point to 95 percent purity in the polar ice cap. The north polar cap is a dome of layered, icy materials, similar to the large ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, consisting of layered deposits, with mostly ice and a small amount of dust. Combined, the north and south polar ice caps are believed to hold the equivalent of two to three million cubic kilometers (0.47-0.72 million cu. miles) of ice, making it roughly 100 times more than the total volume of North America’s Great Lakes, which is 22,684 cu. kms (5,439 miles). The study was done by researchers at France’s National Institute of Sciences of the Universe (Insu), using the Italian built SHARAD radar sounder on the US built MRO. SHARAD looks for liquid or frozen water in the first few hundreds of feet (up to 1 kilometer) of Mars’ crust by using subsurface sounding. It can detect liquid water and profile ice. Mars southern polar cap was once thought to be carbon dioxide ice, but ESA’s Mars Express confirmed that it is composed of a mixture of water and carbon dioxide. The study on Mars north polar cap appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Placing his left hand on the Bible used by Abraham Lincoln for his first term in 1861, Obama took the oath of office at noon as millions packed the windswept Capitol to be an eyewitness to history.

There’s also hope and change in the land of the brick: Behold the Presidential inauguration of Barack Obama in Lego bricks, complete with every single character that will be at the Capitol, including Lego Oprah.