Hollywood legend Charlton Heston dead at 84 - CNN.com

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Actor Charlton Heston died at Beverly Hills home at the age of 84 Saturday, his family said.
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Heston was suffering the late stages of Alzheimer's Disease.

Heston, known for portrayals of larger than life figure including Moses and Ben Hur, was suffering the late stages of Alzheimer's Disease.

Heston's wife of 64 years, Lydia, was by his side at the time of his death, according to the family statement.

[From Hollywood legend Charlton Heston dead at 84 - CNN.com]

The god damn dirty apes never got to take away his guns, no matter how hard they tried.

Heston is one of my favorite actors of all time (both Omega Man and Soylent Green are in permanent rotation in my household). Good Night, Funny Guy.

Author Arthur C. Clarke dead at 90

(CNN) -- Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and raised the idea of communications satellites in the 1940s, has died at age 90, an associate said.

Visionary author Arthur C. Clarke had fans around the world.

Clarke had been wheelchair-bound for several years with complications stemming from a youthful bout with polio and had suffered from back trouble recently, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

He died early Wednesday at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, Chase said.

[From Author Arthur C. Clarke dies - CNN.com]

Goodnight, funny guy.
While at this very moment hordes of douchebag blogger types are furiously scouring Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database for trivial bits of his career to fluff THEIR blog entries/obituaries, I will instead relish the fact that I have actually seen 2001/2010 over a dozen times, read the whole 2K series and many of his greatest short stories.
My favorite was of course The Sentinel, which is the basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey (note to said douchebag bloggers: 2001 was a novelization of the script). I also have the dubious honor of having had my very vintage copy of the 2001 novella stolen from me by an ex employer. It is sad because I know he did not even bother to read it, it is either in a dark closet or it was dumped into the trash years ago.

Air Force's stealth fighters making final flights - CNN.com

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- The world's first attack aircraft to employ stealth technology is slipping quietly into history.
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Technicians service an F-117 stealth fighter after it arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, on Monday.

The inky black, angular, radar-evading F-117, which spent 27 years in the Air Force arsenal secretly patrolling hostile skies from Serbia to Iraq, will be put in mothballs next month in Nevada.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which manages the F-117 program, will have an informal, private retirement ceremony Tuesday with military leaders, base employees and representatives from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The last F-117s scheduled to fly will leave Holloman on April 21, stop in Palmdale, California, for another retirement ceremony, then arrive on April 22 at their final destination: Tonopah Test Range Airfield in Nevada, where the jet made its first flight in 1981.

[From Air Force's stealth fighters making final flights - CNN.com]

Good night, funny guy. The coolest thing about the F-117 was that it was kept in secret so well that we spent years flying simulator games about the plane, and the shape was completely wrong (plus our games called it the F-119 or F-19).
At least they did not try to cover their asses about this being a money decision, which will let them route even more money to the F-22 and F-35 programs. It's actually amazing that the plane is already 27 years old.

The Third Reich's Diabolical Orbiting Superweapon

Throughout the Second World War, the town of Hillersleben, Germany was home to one of the Third Reich's most crucial weapons research centers. At a sprawling facility nestled in the forested hills, a contingent of 150 engineers and physicists developed and evaluated all manner of experimental weapons, a substantial number of which were ultimately adopted by the Nazi war machine.

When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the scientists at Hillersleben were forced to abandon an assortment of death-bringing innovations at various stages of completion. Among these were a rocket-assisted artillery shell which had 50% more range than standard artillery, a 600mm mortar which fired one-ton self-propelled projectiles for up to three and a half miles, a modified Tiger tank which could fire a 760-pound rockets up to six miles, and a chain-like projectile made up of small, linked rockets with a range of 100 miles. But the military masterminds' most sinister ambitions were embodied in their behemoth Sonnengewehr, or "Sun Gun" project– an orbital weapon intended to exact fiery punishment upon the enemies of the Third Reich, forever establishing their dominance over the genetically inferior Untermenschen of the Earth.

[From Damn Interesting » The Third Reich's Diabolical Orbiting Superweapon]

I have a confession to make: the main reason I linked to this article is because the title kicks too much ass. Sure, it ended up being an extremely interesting read, but I was sold on it just by reading the title.
The other cool thing about the article is a tiny bit of information that has eluded me for ages. Over the years I kept hearing about using space mirrors to generate electricity on the ground. For some reason I was too stupid to figure out that all it means is to concentrate sun light on a collector used to generate steam. D'oh.