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hese experiments are designed to give agencies a better idea of how humans would interact and cope during a long space journey. The volunteer research subjects start their virtual journey to Phobos on October 1, in a ground-based habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Their home for the 45 days will be a small habitat called the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA - with collected data informing the design of future missions to the Red Planet, expected to happen in the 2030s. HERA is a two-story, four-port cylindrical habitat unit with a total of 636 sq....

A former San Francisco attorney serving a life sentence in the dog-mauling death of a Saint Mary’s College lacrosse coach nearly two decades ago will remain in prison for at least another three years. . . . Her husband Robert Noel served four years for involuntary manslaughter. He was not home at the time of the attack. The Bay Area Reporter reported Noel died in June on his 77th birthday.

President Obama never was shy about using his phone and pen to achieve what he could not get from Congress on regulatory matters. But documents revealed last week show the Obama administration may have been willing to get around congressional decisions on spending by using a slush fund of sorts funded by the profits of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two government-sponsored home loan giants. Fannie and Freddie are federally chartered enterprises which buy mortgage loans from banks and bundle them into securities that are sold to investors, thus freeing up capital so that banks can make more home...

In a recent meeting of the Board of Education in the city of Artichoke, Alabama, it was decided to ban the reading of Homer's Illiad and Odyssey in the classroom. The grounds given for the exclusion of these towering masterpieces of ancient literature is that reading them in a public school violated the first amendment's guarantee of the separation of church and state. Wallace Nobrainer, the attorney for the Artichoke school system, explained that "the Homeric texts are obviously designed to promote the polytheistic view of the Greeks," and hence they should be looked upon in the same light as...

The Subprime home mortgage collapse...a Primer. It's ALL about the CRA of 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 - This required banks to offer credit throughout their entire market area for “underserved” populations and small businesses. The CRA gave incentives to help low income borrowers become “home owners”. Liberals call this group “low income borrowers”. Conservatives call them a RISK!The CRA was passed by the Carter administration. In 1995 the Clinton administration authorized subprime loans under the CRA. Democrats added these provisions for the securitization of subprime loans and then ENFORCED the lending to high risk individuals. By 2000,...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is making waves with a planned amendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act being introduced in time for the next school year. Reid's amendment holds select educational funds hostage for US colleges and universities that do not meet a set of criteria meant to bolster the war on file-sharing on college campuses. This is the legislative carrot-and-stick move that many colleges have feared would arise. The amendment would essentially put US colleges in the business of aggressively policing copyright on their network in order to stay off of a "blacklist" that would be comprised...

Roman theatre goddesses unearthed in Crete 30/09/2005 - 3:10:36 PM The life-sized marble statues of two ancient Greek goddesses have emerged during excavations of a 5,000-year-old town on the island of Crete, archaeologists said today. The works, representing the goddesses Athena and Hera, date to between the 2nd and 4th centuries – a period of Roman rule in Greece – and originally decorated the Roman theatre in the town of Gortyn, archaeologist Anna Micheli from the Italian School of Archaeology told The Associated Press. “They are in very good condition,” she said, adding that the statue of Athena, goddess of...

<p>Thanks to "Warriors for Truth" and jmstein7, I think we have the perfect Hillary analogy...the Greek Goddess Hera.</p> <p>Writers represented Hera as constantly being jealous of Zeus's various amorous affairs. She punished her rivals and their children, among both goddesses and mortals, with implacable fury. She placed two serpents in the cradle of Heracles; she had Io guarded by a hundred-eyed giant; she drove the foster-parents of Dionysus mad, and tried to prevent the birth of Apollo and Artemis. Even Zeus usually could not stand up to her. Sometimes when he got angry, he chained her to the mountain of Olympus by fastening anvils to her feet. However, most of the time Zeus resorted to stratagems: he either hid his illegitimate children, or he changed them into animals.</p>