Until about noon today, there was a manhunt going on right near our property in Virginia. All the schools in Floyd County VA were canceled for today, roadblocks were set up all around the area, people told to keep their homes and cars locked, etc.
Those crazy folks over at I Make Things are sending a balloon into space! (Well, to very high altitude). This is a group of volunteers who are building a multi-camera payload that will generate panoramic photo every 7 seconds as weather balloon ascends until the balloon pops. They are doing everything right, following all FAA flight rules including radar reflector, flight rules, etc. Very cool.
You should all go out and check out Google Mars. You can’t use this new map data with Google Earth yet but that too is on the way. Cool!
It is beginning to look bad for the Great White North according to this article.
“The Arctic ice shelf has melted for the fourth straight year to its smallest area in a century.”
For a top-down view of the problem, check out this data from Nasa for summer melting as well as winter data. Maybe the northwest passage will be found after all!