DaleB sent me a link to this analysis of President Obama’s new NASA budget, with the comment:

One the one hand, the move to evolve from the “…technologies we’ve developed in the ’50’s and “60’s” is good. But I cannot get over the feeling that this is a big step back or at least off to the side, with no real intention to move forward.

Opinions in the article are kind of all over the map, with predictions of “the death march for the future of U.S. human spaceflight” sallied against the belief that, “What this potentially gives us is a real space program, not a faux space program.” What do you think? Is this the end of the U.S. space program, or the beginning of an exciting new chapter?

YouTube member TheFakingHoaxer specializes in realistic-looking hoax videos of events like the space shuttle encountering UFOs or ghost sightings in the woods. You can see the whole collection of videos on his YouTube channel.

(via BoingBoing)

The original.

(via I Have Seen the Whole of the Internet)

Yes, I read Quantum Physics. But only for the particles.
– JerryThomas

You all said I was crazy to save all these soy sauce packets. How’s your post-apocalyptic squirrel? Oh, what’s that? NEEDS A LITTLE SALT?
– dysolution

My daughter asked me how long it would take to walk around the moon. Totally absurd. Absurd that I grew out of awesome question-asking.
– luckyshirt

Arkham’s Razor: A theory which suggests that the simplest explanation tends to lead to Cthulhu.
– wilw

Restored my iPhone and forgot to back up my Birdhouse. It was as if a million stupid Alderaan jokes suddenly cried out and were silenced.
– Moltz

We used to measure temperature using topless witches. Stupid scientists ruin everything.
– dysolution

It seems like carotene has been in beta forever. Release a stable version, carrots!
– davegorum

Love is like Oxygen. It’s fairly soluble in water. Drown bitch!
– MODAT

If you give a man a fish, and he makes lemonade, you have found a weirdo.
– JerryThomas

The ChicagoNow A&E blog has a slideshow of movie aliens along with the actors who played them. It’s a bit heavy on Avatar characters, and I kind of question the inclusion of E.T. (since an actor only “played” the alien in a couple of scenes when it had to scurry across the floor), but it’s kind of neat to see the people behind the makeup.

Incidentally, Peter Mayhew appears to be trying to merge with his onscreen persona.

(via The Presurfer)

Samuel Arbesman was recently re-reading Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, in which Sagan alludes to “some sort of cosmic Grand Central Station.” That inspired him to create the Milky Way Transit Authority map, laying out the arms of our galaxy in the format of a transit map. It’s just lovely, and so elegant in its simplicity.

You can view a larger version and download a PDF of the map at Arbesman’s site.

(via TYWKIWDBI)

It’s this kind of news that makes me believe a Quark reboot is only a matter of time.

Gene Roddenberry’s son Rod has struck a deal with Imagine Television to develop a series based on The Questor Tapes.

“The Questor Tapes” was originally conceived as a television series pilot about an android with incomplete memory tapes who searches for his creator and his purpose. The pilot ultimately aired as a 1974 television movie.

“My father always felt that Questor was the one that got away,” said Rod Roddenberry. “He believed that the show had the potential to be bigger than Star Trek.”

I’m having a little trouble buying that last bit, but I expect the huge success of the recent Star Trek reboot is what’s rekindled interest in the Questor franchise.

(via The Website at the End of the Universe)

Lore Sjöberg (of Slumbering Lungfish and Brunching Shuttlecocks fame) recently saw My Neighbor Totoro for the first time and claims that the movie put this in his head.

I don’t necessarily want to explore the thought process that led from one to the other, but I have to admit that I’m terribly fond of this version.

Here’s a link to the full image, where you can also download a version suitable for desktop wallpaper.

(From xkcd, natch)