According to Space.com, NASA is funding engineering physics undergrad Daniella Della-Giustina's proposed research into using asteroids and perhaps comets to shield spacecraft from harmful solar radiation during trips to and from Mars. Astronauts could either burrow into the asteroid or simply hide themselves behind it. What help this would be with interstellar radiation, such as cosmic rays, isn't addressed in Space.com's article.

Dashboard Widgets is a web site dedicated to tracking Mac OS X's "Dashboard" widget environment, including news announcements about Dashboard, a repository of completed widgets, and forums where you can talk about finding, developing and troubleshooting the tiny applications.

Daylight Savings Time has ended in Pennsylvania and once again the sun crawls into the sky at the ungodly hour of 6:29 a.m., with its accursed forerunners arriving in the dawn twilight at 6:15 or even earlier. It strikes terror into the hearts of vampires and parents everywhere, sending the former fleeing to their dark and hidden coffins and the later stumbling out of bed as their kids demand that they rise with the sun's first rays.

They say that ancient people worshiped the Winter Solstice because it marked the longest day of the year, and the coming triumph of the Sun over the Darkness. I think not. I think it was the one time of the year they could be sure their kids would sleep past 7 a.m.

Do we need another version of Call of Cthulhu? Pelgrane Press thinks so:

Pelgrane Press has announced that they will be producing an adaptation of Chaosium's seminal roleplaying game, Call of Cthulhu. The new game, as yet untitled, will be written by Kenneth Hite (Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, GURPS, Star Trek) and based on an all-new game system called GUMSHOE written by Robin D Laws (Dying Earth, Feng Shui.)

Simon Rogers added "We are all great fans of Lovecraft, and of Chaosium's work. The new game will be compatible with existing adventures, and will include a hybrid option combining the two systems. The GUMSHOE rule set revolutionizes investigative scenarios by ensuring that players are never deprived of the crucial clues they need to move the story forward, and Ken has erudition combined with a gamer's soul which should lead to a great game." The game will be written and playtested in 2006 for release in 2007.

Soda is a staple at almost any gaming table, and ours is no exception. What follows is a list of every soda we've ever drunk during gaming.

The productivity web site The Rirarian Project debunks a bunch of first aid myths, including using margarine or butter to cool a burn, pulling out a bee stinger, using peroxide to washout a wound and sucking venom from a snakebite.

They may not win anything else, but Libertarian candidates earned top web standard and accessibility honors from CNET in their recent poll of 1,000 political web sites.

Of approximately 1,000 campaign Web sites surveyed two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, only 35 passed the validation tests created by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. Seven of those were created by Libertarian candidates, some of whom have degrees in computer or electrical engineering or count themselves as free-software aficionados. (Republicans came in a close second.)

Ok, that wasn't the real headline, but it should be, since "Poll: Most feel civil liberties not harmed by war on terror" really doesn't do enough to drive home the point. The poll says 39 percent feel the government has gone too far in restricting civil liberties (which is a nice block of potential votes) but "34 percent said they believe the administration has been about right on the restrictions" and most frustratingly, 25% of the sheeple surveyed responded that "the administration has not gone far enough."

If you maintain a Firefox extension (aka a Firefox toolbar) and need update it to be compatible with Firefox 2.0, check out this document on the Firefox Developers site. It's a fairly straightforward process (if you have a fairly straightforward toolbar; all I had to do for the one I maintain at work was up the browser version number is allowed to run it).

SCI FI Wire is reporting that Heroes has been picked up for a full season by NBC. Apparently it's doing well with the 18-49 adult demographic, and managed to snag 13.5 million viewers. That's not enough to put it in the top 20 for any given week's viewing, but it's enough to keep the struggling NBC happy.