ESA is planning a new rover expedition to the Red Planet, with a potential launch date of 2011. Read the full story.

Fortune.com has a column up called "We're a Nation Helpless to Save Ourselves" railing against America's rampant consumerism, which author Geoffrey Colvin claims is leading us to ever higher levels of personal debt, which in turn will bring about crushing collapse when it all finally catches up with us.

Based on this review, which calls the movie amusing, but not inspired, I think I'll end up seeing this one on DVD. Read the full story.

Four men play a Nintendo DS while skydiving after having played their PSPs in trains and cars moving around LA. It's all aimed at finding the limits of the new handheld's wireless capabilities. Read the full story.

The space agency fires back after a New York Times story claims that NASA is lessening its risk standards in an effort to get the shuttle back into space. Read the full story.

Good news everyone! The Earth isn't going to hell in an environmental hand basket after all! Read the full story.

An amusing short story about dealing with a different kind of climate change. Read the full story.

The woman had claimed she'd found a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili. The big question now is ... where did she get the finger from? Read the full story.

Students from around the world are competing against one another with creations built using LEGOS' robot construction kit. Read the full story.

While surfing for information about styling tables using CSS, I came across "css vs. tables", on which one very anti-CSS layout web designer argues in favor of using tables to control page layout.

I'm sympathetic to his argument ... up to a point. When I re-designed Nuketown last year, I went to a CSS-only layout and I regret it; while the design works for the most part, there's really no way to make sure all three columns are automatically the same length (as is the case with tables). I have to resort to hacks, which is pretty damn annoying for a standard that's supposed to be the cure-all for developer blues. Next time around, I'll be going back to tables.