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Sunday, July 31, 2011
What’s in a name? (The Newsroom)
Harper Seven. Bear Blue. Pilot Inspektor. We're all familiar with the oddball baby names that Hollywood celebs hang around their children's necks here in America, but apparently, New Zealand has had enough.
The country's baby name registrar has officially banned the name "Lucifer" after not one but THREE sets of parents tried to name their babies after the spawn of the devil.
So take note, Odd Baby Name Haters: There's actually a baby name that's more tragic than, say, "Jermajesty" out there.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Share your story: Gay marriage now legal in 6 states (The Newsroom)
Last month, New York became the sixth state to allow gay marriage. This Sunday marks the first day gays can legally wed and New York City officials were flooded by more than 1,700 wedding applications for just that day.
To deal with the overwhelming response, the city established a lottery that will choose 764 couples to be married Sunday; winners will be announced on Friday. On Monday, wedding ceremonies will be "first come, first served" at city clerk offices around the five boroughs.
For couples who don't win a spot in NYC should head north: The suburb of Greenburgh is offering wedding services at Town Hall, as well as special festivities to celebrate the historic day.
Are you getting married on Sunday? Do you live in a state that allows gay marriage and have already wed? Are you waiting for your state to legalize gay marriage? Then Yahoo! News and the Yahoo! Contributor Network want to hear your story: Sign up to the Yahoo! Contributor Network and tell us what gay marriage means to you.
What’s next for America’s aspiring astronauts? (The Newsroom)
Click image to view photos of space travel's past, present and future. (AFP)
The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis is seen with from the International Space Station. REUTERS/NASA TV/Handout(This report is the third and final in a Yahoo! News series on the shutdown of the space shuttle program.)
When Atlantis lands at Cape Canaveral on Thursday, back from the very last mission to the International Space Station, 20-year-old Amanda Premer will be getting ready to move to Houston. The fourth-year aerospace engineering major is headed to Johnson Space Center's Cooperative Education program, where she will be alternating her last semesters at Wichita State University with three "work tours" at the NASA site. She hopes to secure a full-time job with NASA.
"I want to be an astronaut," said Premer, who has spent the last four summers working at the Cosmosphere space camp in Hutchinson, Kan. "Even though NASA doesn't have anything lined up to follow the shuttle program, the world's always going to need astronauts. And I'd like to be one of them."
As NASA's 30-year space shuttle program draws to a close, the next generation of aspiring astronauts and talented aerospace engineers must rely on international vehicles to fly up to the ISS, and depend on private industry to create the next best rocket. They are entering a new, nebulous era of American spaceflight, but are fervent in their desire to carry the torch lit by their predecessors during the Apollo era.
"The shuttle is old. Amazing, but old," said Sara Gurnett, who is three semesters away from earning a degree in professional aeronautics from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., and also works summers as a counselor for the Cosmosphere. "So it's not disappointing to me that it's retiring."
She hopes to join the U.S. Navy's Officer Candidate School after graduation, and eventually become an astronaut pilot. "I want to one day be able to fly the most exotic thing out there," said Gurnett, who keeps her pilot license, along with her scuba certification, literally in her back pocket. "That used to be the space shuttle, but now, who knows what it'll be. … It'll probably be built by private industry."
President Obama thinks so too. Atlantis' crew deposited on the ISS an American flag that flew on the first shuttle mission, and when Obama spoke to the crew last week before it returned to Earth, he challenged the commercial space industry to "capture the flag."
Shortly afterward, California-based company SpaceX posted via Twitter: "SpaceX commencing flag capturing sequence…"
Founded by engineer-entrepreneur Elon Musk (of PayPal and Tesla fame), SpaceX made history in November when it became the first private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and guide it safely back to Earth. It plans to send that same spacecraft to the ISS by the end of this year. Fueling this effort will be the company's cadre of bright young engineers—the average age at SpaceX is early 30s.
"There's all this incredible energy happening in the private sector," said Garrett Reisman, a former astronaut who rode on Atlantis' penultimate trip to the ISS last year, but recently hung up his spacesuit to join SpaceX as a senior engineer. "We have a great mix of these senior guys and these young guys who are the best and the brightest."
One of those young guys is 26-year-old Matt McKeown , who sat in mission control during SpaceX's historic launch last year. A lead propulsion engineer, he gave the iconic "go/no-go" cues from the propulsion standpoint.
"It's definitely a challenge for us young engineers because we've never done this before," said McKeown, who joined SpaceX after earning a master's degree—and a 3.9 GPA—in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan in 2008. "But we know we have to make progress or we're not going to have jobs! That's a great motivator."
McKeown started building model rockets in elementary school, and he continued to build them throughout junior high and high school. In college, he set his sights a little higher and co-founded the Michigan Aeronautical Science Association, an organization specifically designed to construct space vehicles. He received a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which was founded by the six surviving astronauts of Project Mercury, NASA's first major undertaking. The foundation rewards college students who excel in the sciences.
"Ever since I was 5, I knew I wanted to be an engineer," said McKeown, who was inspired by shuttle technology. "Now I'm working on vehicles that will take manned spaceflight to the next level. … I hope that will inspire people."
Sara Gurnett believes that renewing public interest in space exploration is the key to continued funding and support.
"We have to get parents interested in space, and then they'll inspire their kids," she said. "Some kids see these things as faraway dreams and they don't feel like they're good enough. … But they could really do this one day!"
Aerospace engineer Doug Hofmann, 30, was inspired to pursue a career in space by his father, a retired Army lieutenant colonel with a strong interest in the space program. (In 1985, the elder Hofmann, then a seventh-grade teacher, was a finalist for the ill-fated Challenger mission.)
"I grew up wanting to be an astronaut," said Hofmann, who knew his best chances were to become an engineer or a military fighter pilot. "My dad told me I was more apt for research than the military."
From then on, Hofmann relentlessly pursued the space field and took every opportunity to get advice from former astronauts. Sally Ride, the first American woman to enter space, and one of Hofmann's professors at the University of California, San Diego, convinced him to go to Caltech for graduate school rather than MIT. He went on to earn both a master's and PhD in materials science.
Hofmann is now working in what he calls his dream job, designing new materials for spacecraft at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He hopes the job will bring him one step closer to becoming an astronaut (he currently has funding for research projects on the ISS).
In the meantime, he's trying to pass on the wonder and excitement for all things space to his 5-month-old son: "When I was in Washington, D.C., I got the autographs of three astronauts for my son. When he's older he'll appreciate them."
Though many view the end of the shuttle program as an end to American spaceflight, this new generation of aspiring astronauts, engineers and space enthusiasts are excited as ever for the future, and hope that they can leave their mark, much as their predecessors from Apollo and the shuttle missions did. Whether it's by hitching a ride on another country's vehicle or inaugurating a shiny new ride built by commercial industry, they will continue to explore the great unknown, and stake their flag to inspire the next generation.
More specifically, according to Gurnett: "Space travel to the moon, Mars and beyond: That's the legacy I want my generation to leave."
Holy receipt! (The Newsroom)
Jesus and the Virgin Mary have "appeared" on everything from grilled cheese to rocks.
But in his most recent appearance, Jesus is showing that even the son of the Big Man has economic issues on the brain: A South Carolina couple claims that the good lord Jesus appeared on a receipt from a recent trip to Wal-Mart.
Jacob Simmons and Gentry Lee Sutherland had just returned home from church (interesting connection, no?), and found what looked like the face of Christ BURNED into the receipt.
Maybe next time, he can make an appearance on the bazillion-dollar tab we've got running on Capitol Hill and save us from that.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
LIFE slideshow: John Glenn, unpublished photos (The Newsroom)
No person alive has been more closely associated, for so long, with America's triumphs in space during the late '50s and early '60s than Ohio native John Glenn. Here, on the occasion of his 90th birthday (July 18), LIFE.com presents unpublished photos of the first American to orbit the earth; the decorated Marine Corps veteran (WWII and Korea); and the earnest, novice politician, taken by LIFE photographers during one of the most thrilling, inspiring, nerve-wracking eras in the nation's history: the Space Race.
Hank Walker/TIME & LIFE Pictures
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Second Act: Swimmer Diana Nyad (The Newsroom)
Open water swimmer Diana Nyad is back in Key West, Florida, continuing her quest to be the first person to make a 103-mile swim from Havana, Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. A Yahoo! News team recently accompanied Nyad on a grueling 9-hour training swim, shooting an episode of the award-winning show Second Act from aboard her escort vessel. Nyad, who is 61 and swims around 1.5 miles an hour, is waiting for favorable water temperatures and ocean wind speeds to attempt the 60-hour crossing. Hurricanes and delays with Cuban visas prevented her from trying the swim last summer. Click here to see the video.
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Share your story: Join the Yahoo! Contributor Network (The Newsroom)
Would you like to share your personal insights or stories from your community with Yahoo! News readers? Join the Yahoo! Contributor Network, a platform that allows writers, photographers and videographers to share their knowledge and passion with millions of people worldwide — and earn money doing it.
Yahoo! News has many content providers, but we want to make sure that you have an opportunity to tell your story as well. What newsworthy events are happening in your state? How is your family affected by the recession or the latest piece of legislation? What's your take on the biggest stories of the day? These are the kinds of insights we want you to share through the Yahoo! Contributor Network.
Here are stories we've featured from readers and contributors like you:
Your memories of major events: Eyewitness to space shuttle history
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Friday, July 8, 2011
Tats for grades (The Newsroom)
For parents and teachers, it can be an uphill battle to get kids to do well in school. First it was cash for grades, now its ... tats for grades?
That's what one San Francisco teacher promised his students if they improved their performance: a tattoo. Not for them, but for him. Stanley Richards, a science teacher at City Arts and Technology High School, vowed he would get a tattoo of their vice principal if students raised the school's academic performance score by 50 points.
And not just any tattoo: Mr. Vice Principal would be portrayed as a sumo wrestler, holding a medallion of test scores and slaying a dragon. (Hope Mr. Richards has the number of a good tattoo-removal doctor.)
The students hit the books, and true to his word, Mr. R showed up on the last day of class with the vice principal's mug on his calf.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Yolks on you (The Newsroom)
OK, maybe not on you, but the yolks were definitely on one Charlotte Matthews. The British cake decorator cracked a record 29 double yolks ... in row. The British Egg Information Service says the odds of cracking just one double yolk are one in 1,000.
The odds of getting 29 in a row, however, are one "in 1,000 to the power of 29 - or one followed by 87 zeros."
(Personally, I'd like to know what the odds are that there is actually an entity called the "British Egg Information Service.")
Princess Diana at 50: How her legacy lives on (The Newsroom)
If Princess Diana were still alive, Friday, July 1, would be her 50th birthday. Many are speculating what she would be like today — how she would look, where she would live, who she would have married. The magazine Newsweek even created a computer-generated image of her next to Kate Middleton for a controversial cover. But amid all the speculation, few people doubt one thing: She would be proud of her sons, who are carrying on a trait that arguably made her so famous — empathy.
Her older son, Prince William, and his new wife will be in Canada on the day Diana would have turned 50, and they head to Los Angeles on July 8. Bob Sullivan, managing editor of LIFE Books and author and editor of the new book "Diana at 50," notes that William's appeal and charity work are largely because of his mother.
"He clearly has inherited her preternatural gift for empathy," he says. "Wills is more his mother's son than his father's, and that would please her, of course."
More beloved than the family that put her on the global stage, Diana had a personality that paved the way for her sons to live very different lives than their father did. In many ways, her empathy and modernity transformed the British royal family.
"They really didn't know what hit them," Sullivan says. "It wasn't that she changed them and they wanted to be changed. It's that she shocked them."
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