Science and Technology

A Pendulum In Space: Kids Learn It Ain't The Same

NASA has posted new videos of International Space Station astronauts doing experiments proposed by schoolkids, and it includes this easy-to-grasp one. Everyone knows how a pendulum acts on Earth. How about in zero gravity? Astronaut Cady Coleman -- who shows again why she made our list of Seven Wil ... More >>

My Five Most Indispensable Music Technologies

Previously the pinnacle of music technology...and pure awesomeness.​I started listening to music on vinyl way back in biblical times and things seemed just fine. CDs came along and made hauling around music somewhat easier and, once you got past the crispy clarity, the music sounded pretty dam ... More >>

Endeavour Crew Stabs Houston in Back (Sorta) Over Getting a Retired Shuttle

Mike Fincke: What can you expect from a Steeler fan?​Houston, still smarting over missing out on a retired space shuttle, now gets to hear NASA astronauts going on and on about how the decision was a great one. Members of the Endeavour crew were in Los Angeles recently to take part in the Cal ... More >>

5 Ways Apple Revolutionized the Music Industry

No other company has changed the music industry as much as Apple. For the better part of the last decade, the late Steve Jobs and his co-conspirators have empowered music consumers in ways no one would have ever imagined. The monstrous iTunes store made it possible for anybody to buy music without ... More >>

Three Ways Steve Jobs Made Technology Cool, Stylish and Accessible

This morning I was scheduled for a conference call with one of my clients and I knew I was running a few minutes late. My laptop was not with me and I didn't know the client's email address by heart. Fortunately, I had my iPhone. I opened it up, found a recent e-mail exchange between myself and my c ... More >>

NASA Taking Astronaut Applications: A Job With A Bright Future

This could be you​Tired of your dead-end job? Get into a profession that's guaranteed to be well-funded for the foreseeable future and beyond: manned space travel!! NASA is once again opening up the application process for astronaut jobs, even though, you know, there are no more shuttle missi ... More >>

IWatch Harris County App from the Sheriff's Department Poorly Designed

The IWatch welcome screen.​The best smartphone apps meant for functionality rather than entertainment fill a need, are easy to use and provide appropriate functionality for the task at hand. The Harris County Sheriff's Department IWatch Harris County app delivers about one-and-a-half of those ... More >>

The Heat, My God, the Heat: When Will Summer Finally End?

Raining down fire and brimstone instead of water.​Elaine Benes used to date David Puddy on the show Seinfeld. He claimed to be a Christian -- sporting a fish symbol on his car, tuning his radio to Christian stations and the like -- but encouraged his girlfriend to do sinful things on his behal ... More >>

Houston Texan Winston to Host Online Monday Night Football Show

Could Eric Winston's new online MNF simulcast be MST3K for sports fans?​Houston Texans offensive tackle Eric Winston is a funny and insightful guy who is a regular on local and national sports talk shows as well as a very good follow on Twitter. Tonight, he launches a Monday Night Football com ... More >>

What Google & Motorola's Marriage Means To The Music Industry

The Daily Beast​Google stunned the tech world last week when it tied the knot with Motorola for $12.5 billion. But it's the music business that should be raising its brows at the union. Like any typical suitor, Google weighed Motorola's considerably large assets in its decision to get in bed ... More >>

Restaurant Ejects Diner for Tweeting While Eating

Social media isn't always as friendly as it sounds.​Ever since Te House of Tea and its sister restaurant, the now-defunct Saute World Bistro, signed up for Twitter accounts in August 2008 -- the first two restaurants in Houston to do so -- it's become not only de rigeur but almost necessary f ... More >>

Invasion of Piracy

Illegal downloading costs the film industry billions of dollars per year. But does the legal strategy designed to recoup this lost bounty amount to extortion?

Why The Bloggerati Turned On The Watch The Throne Leaker

​Things just ain't the same for bloggers. A couple of events transpired in the last few weeks that may completely change the way most people view music bloggers. First, there was the incident where a writer from The Fader got kicked out of a media-only listening session for Jay-Z and Kanye Wes ... More >>

Astronaut Suicides: Funny, Tasteless or Both?

Photos by Neil DeCosta​The end of the space shuttle era affects everyone differently. One group of creatives from Portland, Oregon put together a Web site called Astronaut Suicides, which is pretty much as advertised -- a slide show of an astronaut, faceless behind his spacesuit, reading abou ... More >>

An Amateur Lands The Space Shuttle

Boyd MeierKym in the sim​Be sure to check out our pics from the Atlantis astronauts' homecoming at Johnson Space Center. You often hear the expression "a once in a lifetime experience," and while this may or may not always be true, for those lucky enough to participate in a NASA Tweet-up, not ... More >>

Shuttle Era Ends: A Look Back At Our Coverage

Mission patch FAIL​With what we fervently hope is a flawless landing, the last mission of the space shuttle ends this morning when Atlantis touches down in Florida. The final flight evoked a lot of memories, and we tried our best to spark some. In case you missed our varied posts on Atlantis ... More >>

Comment of the Day: If Twitter, Google and Social Media Were Around During the First Moon Walk

​We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them. So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even. This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involv ... More >>

Atlantis Wake-Up Music So Far: Ranking The Good, The Bad & The Ugly On The Last Shuttle Trip

What's with all the damn Coldplay?​NASA, always on the lookout for good publicity, has made a cottage industry out of the wake-up music it uses to rouse crews orbiting the earth. They recruit artists to record messages that are played after the song, because the first thing you want to hear ... More >>

15 Unfamous But Great Space Shuttle Photos

Even if it's not today, at some point Atlantis will lift off and eventually finish the last of the space shuttle missions. There are plenty of famous, even iconic, NASA photographs of the program; we pulled some highlights of lesser-known ones. 15. Almost a rocket ship This makes the shuttle look ... More >>

Shuttle Atlantis' Souvenir Load: 22,000 Flags, 10,000 Patches, A Very Small Painting And More

Atlantis: Last chance for souvenirs​If you're making the last-ever trip on the space shuttle, you want to make it count. And if the list put together by collectSPACE.com is any indication, this last flight is taking along enough souvenirs to outfit a small army. Almost all the items are put ... More >>

Shuttle Atlantis: Its 10 Weirdest Mission Patches

In May, as it prepared to take off, we offered a list of the five coolest mission patches of the shuttle Endeavour. We wish we could do the same for the Atlantis, scheduled tentatively to go up on the last shuttle mission Friday, but it appears the ship did not provide as much inspiration as the En ... More >>

Cover Story: Austin Fires Back

Feelings have been hurt​So I'd gotten up at 5 a.m. and spent the day at NASA's Mission Control, where along with about fifty other writers, talking heads and camera crews from Houston, New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, I'd been granted unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the final full- ... More >>

In Run-Up to Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch, NASA Allows Rare Peek Behind Mission Control Curtain

Photos by Troy Fields​Check out our pictures of the final round of space shuttle simulation training at NASA's Mission Control. Space. If you are anything like me, you've probably started to take it for granted. Save for disasters like the Columbia explosion in 2003, the country as a whole no ... More >>

Hot Stuff: Will The Texas Heat Melt Your Vinyl LPs?

Note: All temperatures in the following article are given in degrees Fahrenheit. Here is a helpful Celsius conversion calculator. ​You might not have noticed it lately, but outdoors, rays of this thing called "sunshine" are hitting the Earth like the planet didn't bring the Sun a sandwich wh ... More >>

Annise Parker Wins National Award for Making Houston Greener

Getting some (wind-powered) props.​What with all the electric cars and the green municipal buildings, Houston is maybe starting to ditch its reputation for being one of the more polluted cities in the country. Of course, there's still a boatload of pollution, but at least the city government i ... More >>

Tasting Notes: This Week in Wine Blogs

Know a Houston-based blog we should be paying particular attention to? Leave the address in the comments section below. Vintage Texas: Top Texas wine blogger Russ Kane may be based in Houston, but, man, this dude gets around. His blog is always our No. 1 go-to resource for wine events happening aro ... More >>

Cover Story: Air Hockey Reigns Supreme (With Video)

As the space shuttle program winds down, people will be reflecting on all the contributions to society NASA has made. Among them: Air hockey. The game was developed by NASA contractors, and it remains huge, especially in the Houston area. Our cover story this week, "Hover Boards," examines the ph ... More >>

The 10 Coolest Shuttle Atlantis Pictures

Next month will bring the final space shuttle mission ever, and the vehicle that will take that last ride will be the Atlantis. The Atlantis has taken 32 trips to space so far, and like every shuttle, stunning photographs have been part of the deal. Here are 10 of Atlantis' best. 10. Leaving that ... More >>

ZZ Top Debuts New Song... In Space

​The first bit of music from ZZ Top's long-awaited, long-delayed, semi-mythical forthcoming album has leaked... but not anywhere on Earth. Astronaut and friend of ZZ Michael Fossum, currently headed to the International Space Station on a Russian spacecraft, is carrying a copy of "Flyin' High ... More >>

Hurricane Season 2011: The Predictions

Hurricane Ike's track from all the way out in the Atlantic to the Texas coast.​Hurricane season is upon us. Just like Christmas, but with high winds and death from above instead of toys and egg nog, it creeps up on us quicker than we expect and, before we know it, we're knee deep in a disaster ... More >>

App of the Week: MySocialMania

It doesn't get much easier than this.​App: MySocialMania Platforms: iPhone Web site: Apple Link Cost: $0.99 Mania seems to be an appropriate word when discussing the crazed use of social media by millions worldwide. From Twitter to Facebook to Flickr to MySpace (God help us), millions of ... More >>

Shuttle Endeavour in Hi-Def: Its Final Liftoff

NASA has released hi-def video of the shuttle Endeavour's final liftoff, from cameras mounted at various points on the outside of the vehicle. Your tax dollars at work! Enjoy.

Hurricane Predictions: Feds Say to Hunker Down

Rita, when it was coming for us.​The time to predict hurricane season has arrived, and -- as with Texans season previews -- what's predicted doesn't always tend to be what happens. So get your grain of salt ready. (On the other hand, severe weather has been the norm elsewhere in the U.S. rece ... More >>

Space Shuttle Endeavour: Its Five Coolest Mission Patches

Monday, barring yet another delay, the space shuttle Endeavour will take off on its 25th and final mission. Each mission gets its own patch, of course, designed with input from the crew. The five coolest mission patches Endeavour has had: 5. STS-49, May 1992 Endeavour's inaugural flight paid tribu ... More >>

2012: Mayan Prophecies

Amazon Crash Hits Reddit, Others: Social Media Armageddon

Now get some work done.​The spinning of the earth has nearly come to a standstill thanks to major server problems with Amazon.com's Web Services, a cloud-computing platform used by dozens of very popular social networking sites. "The cloud," for you luddites, means stuff that's saved in the ... More >>

Space Shuttle Blues: County Commissioner Calls for a Congressional Investigation

Answers are demanded, even though they're obvious.​You know what the Space Shuttle fiasco needs? Congress getting involved. At least that's the thinking of Harris County Commissioner Jack Morman. He's introducing a resolution at next week's meeting demanding Congress investigate "Nasa's deci ... More >>

Space Shuttles: Ten Ways Los Angeles and New York Can Show Theirs Off, Dammit

Bi-wing airplanes...pfft. Try this on for size, Kong.​This week, we learned that Houston, essentially the birthplace of the space shuttle program, will not be given one of the four remaining shuttles. Two of the four cities receiving them are both deserving and appropriate: Washington D.C. (fo ... More >>

Jethro Tull in Space: No Aqualung, Though

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic spaceflight, current space station astronaut and noted flute player Cady Coleman joined in an earth-orbit duet with Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson.

Is Blog Love Overvalued?

​It's funny watching new artists stumble over themselves trying to score coverage on popular blogs. Take the fast rising L.A. crew Odd Future, for example. Group captain Tyler, The Creator is almost as famous for his musical ingenuity as he is for his feud with revered rap blogs Nah Right and ... More >>

App of the Week: Alfred

A quick search using Alfred yielded really helpful results.​App: Alfred Platforms: Mac OSX Web site: Alfredapp.com Cost: Free (Power Pack add-on for about $20) Normally, this space is reserved for apps for the phone and the occasional Web site. This week, we're going to talk directly to M ... More >>

Gabrielle Giffords: No Media Appearances If She Goes to Husband's Shuttle Launch

Expected to go to Florida for shuttle launch.​Staffers for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, recuperating here after her Tucson shooting, say she still plans to attend the April 29 launch of her husband's space shuttle mission. But if she does, there will be no press interviews or public stat ... More >>

Photographers Reeling After German April Fools' Day

www.re35.netDigital photography had apparently been turned on its head last week.​Looks like the Germans have us beat in soccer, old-school communism and April Fools' Day gags. On April 1, Rogge & Pott, a Hamburg, Germany-based design company, unveiled a jump-up-and-down-with-excitement produ ... More >>

Why We Can't Be Friends on Facebook

Why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends.....​Something interesting happened when social media started bearing down on us a few years back. We began to yearn for friends, and not the kind that you can call up on a Tuesday night for a bull session at the bar, or someone to watch your pu ... More >>

Astronaut Plays Jethro Tull Flute In Space

Rocks Off has been trying to come up with a "space rock" joke all day, but we can't, so we'll just say this is pretty cool. Today we got an email from Austin nonprofit Dart Music International with a link to the above video, which premiered during SXSW. It's astronaut (and musician) Cady Coleman ... More >>

The Ultimate Musical Space Shuttle Crew

​The first man to ever leave the Earth and venture into space was a Russian cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin, who, if he hadn't died at the young age of 34 in a plane crash he would be 77 years old today. Garagrin was launched into space on April 12, 1961, and orbited once around the planet in 108 ... More >>

Retired Space Shuttles: Will Houston Get Shut Out?

A space shuttle on display​Discovery has landed safely, ending its last mission of a long and fruitful career. It's expected to spend its retirement at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum branch in Virginia. Two other space shuttles are retiring this year -- the Endeavour and Atlantis -- and 2 ... More >>

Space Cowboys: Big Head Todd Serenades Shuttle Crew

​If someone woke Rocks Off up at 2:30 in the morning with a Big Head Todd & the Monsters song, even the band themselves, we might have a few choice words for them. But we suppose it's a little different when you're 220 miles above the Earth. That's what happened earlier today (way earlier tod ... More >>

Discovery 's Last Take-Off: Some Wild Views

NASA has put together an impressive montage of the last take-off of the space shuttle Discovery, using a wide range of cameras on the launch pad and the vehicle. There's about five minutes or so of preflight stuff here, so fast-forward if you prefer.

Sexting: Parents to be Punished for Their Kids' Naughtiness if Bill Passes

Sexting: The love song of the modern J. Alfred Prufrock​If you're the parent of a tween/teen who's dumb enough to sext, you've got enough problems. You don't need to add to them by being forced to attend a class on the whole thing. But according to a bill announced today by state Attorney Gen ... More >>