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Roland Piquepaille writes “In ‘Shooting the moon,’ the San Diego Union-Tribune describes how and why physicists from UCSD are using lasers to send light pulses in direction of an array of reflectors installed on our moon in 1969 by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. One of the goals of these experiments is to check the validity of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Another one is to measure the distance between the Earth and moon with a precision of one millimeter by catching photons after their round trip to the moon. But it is amazing to realize how difficult it is to capture photons after such a trip. I also have up a summary, which contains additional details and pictures, if you just want to learn how difficult it is to capture photons back from the moon.”

Visit ESPN.com for the complete story.

Visit ESPN.com for the complete story.

Visit ESPN.com for the complete story.

Visit ESPN.com for the complete story.

rfreedman asks: “Most of the buzz on the web about software development tools, languages, and practices seems to concentrate on getting software developed as quickly as possible. Take, for example, the current huge hype about Ruby on Rails, and how it allows the creation of a CRUD web-database application x-times more quickly than every other environment. It seems to me that this concentration on initial construction of software ignores the issue of total cost of ownership. Most people who develop software also have to maintain it, and have to support changes to it over long periods of time. As has been discussed many times over the years, maintenance is the most expensive part of the software development life-cycle. I think that the software development community would be better served by discussions of how to build more robust, flexible, and maintainable software (thereby driving down TCO), than by the endless discussions that we currently see about how to build it quickly. What do you think?”

ERIC LICHTBLAU: A secret court would decide if a warrantless eavesdropping program is a legitimate use of the president’s power. [New York Times]

His knee wasn’t quite right. But Paul Shirley explains why he possibly risks injury playing for the Wolves in the Vegas Summer League.

AP - A woman who called 911 to get "the cutest cop I’ve seen" sent back to her home got a date all right - a court date. [Yahoo! News]

AP - Oscar winners James Cameron and Paul Haggis had definite ideas about how they wanted to play themselves on "Entourage."

German startup Who-R-You is a dead simple social network. It also may turn out to be one of the most straightforward online dating sites (although that it not its stated use).
Go to the site, tell it your email address and add a picture of yourself. Confirm your email. Done.
Visitors to the site can browse […]

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