• Looking at this photo taken 4 days ago by the Cassini orbiter It strikes me just what a poor job NASA has done in making actual human space-flight compelling for the Earthbound. We have astronauts up there in the great black yonder at this very moment and yet I find myself more interested in the various other projects (Shooting the moon, Flying over the cloudy world, Out on the Horizon, STEREO, Bigelow’s inflatable habitat, etc.) undertaken from the ground. The only angle represented in the media during the recent trip to the ISS seems to be: “Will the astronauts blow-up?!” which frankly should be the least interesting angle of space-flight as far as I’m concerned. The danger is a given, the risks accepted by all involved. Is it just the media’s omnipresent suckitude or has NASA fumbled the P.R. ball? I should think that by now, in the year 2006, people would be gladly lining up for one-way missions without batting an eyelash, with the rest glued to their 24 hour space network rather than looped footage of falling foam.

• George rounds up a few Links on the recent “rulings” on the SNES Challenge.

• Check out Paul Davies Prayer Antenna (Via) the artists who also brought us, as you may recall, The Curious Furniture of Ned Troide.

• As artificial intelligence research celebrates its 50th birthday Marvin Minsky asks “what makes the minds of three-year-olds tick?” Meanwhile the Times UK touches on the idea of technology dividing us into digital natives and digital immigrants.

• Full pilot episode of Mike Mignola’s quirky The Amazing Screw-on Head.

• Seed offers a short video tour of the underground accelerator at CERN (previously searching for the god particle, finding art.)

• Lastly Monocrom points us toward two interesting nuggets at Nature- Should we flood the air with sulphur? and What shape is a pebble?