Meet the First NASA Astronauts SpaceX Will Launch To Orbit

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are about to star in the biggest spaceflight event of the decade: launching on the inaugural flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. For years, they’ve anticipated this moment, picturing throngs of people lined up on Florida’s beaches to watch them ascend into the sky. Now,…

Are We on the Cusp of a Metaverse, the Next Version of the Internet?

The Washington Post describes it as “the next internet.” Wikipedia defines it as “a collective virtual shared space…including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the Internet.” But it was Neal Stephenson who named it “the metaverse” in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. Are we closer to seeing it happen? The Washington Post reports:
In the past month,…

America’s Hottest New Dating Sites: Business School Campuses

A growing proportion of women in M.B.A. programs has yielded greater gender parity in classes — and more business-school weddings. From a report: Liza Merolla and her husband, Justin Merolla, are among a growing number of couples who met through one of the world’s most expensive dating sites. They were students at the business school of Columbia University in New York…

Chinese New Year 2020 falls on January 25

Chinese New Year 2020 falls on January 25 in Asia (January 24 in the west), beginning the Year of the Rat. China’s public holiday will be January 24-30. In Beijing this week, Chinese health officials expressed concerns about a coronavirus now spreading during this heavy travel season in Asia. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/chinese-new-year-lunar-new-year…

Study Reveals Music’s Universal Patterns Across Societies Worldwide

From love songs to dance tunes to lullabies, music made in disparate cultures worldwide displays certain universal patterns, according to a study by researchers who suggest a commonality in the way human minds create music. From a report: The study focused on musical recordings and ethnographic records from 60 societies around the world including such diverse cultures as the Highland Scots…