Senator to cellular carriers: UR TXTS R 2 XPENSIV - Ars Technica

If you have begun seeing a chiropractor to help deal with heftier SMS bills over the past couple years, US Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) feels your pain. This chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee has called out the four largest US wireless carriers in a letter, asking them to explain the steep, bewildering increase of text messaging charges.

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Pink Floyd member Richard Wright dies age 65 :'( - AP

Richard Wright, a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died Monday. He was 65.

Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason in college and joined their early band, Sigma 6. Along with the late Syd Barrett, the four formed Pink Floyd in 1965.

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He used his fame to give away his fortune. - Dahlia Lithwick

The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp opened in Connecticut in 1988 to provide a summer camping experience -- fishing, tie-dye, ghost stories, s'mores -- for seriously ill children. By 1989, when I started working there as a counselor, virtually everyone on staff would tell some version of the same story: Paul Newman, who had founded the camp when it became clear his little salad-dressing lark was accidentally going to earn him millions, stops by for one of his not-infrequent visits. He plops down at a table in the dining hall next to some kid with leukemia, or HIV, or sickle cell anemia, and starts to eat lunch. One version of the story has the kid look from the picture of Newman on the Newman's Own lemonade carton to Newman himself, then back to the carton and back to Newman again before asking, "Are you lost?" Another version: The kid looks steadily at him and demands, "Are you really Paul Human?"

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Paul Newman Taught Me How to Clean Fish - Karen Ocamb

It's strange how someone's death can trigger the oddest of memories. When I heard that Paul Newman died, I suddenly flashed to the moment he walked into the house where I was babysitting and said, "Come on, kid - let's clean these fish."

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Ad Astra Mr. Newman - Jayne Lyn Stahl

On a day when many will have much to say about a man who few understood, or took the time to understand -- it is in this country where we celebrate celebrity, and divest celebrities of their humanity -- that humanity is, after all, the only thing that matters.

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Green Energy: Cost-Efficient Process Expected To Turn Algae Into Fuel -- AP

Set amid cornfields and cow pastures in eastern Holland is a shallow pool that is rapidly turning green with algae, harvested for animal feed, skin treatments, biodegradable plastics -- and with increasing interest, biofuel.

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SpaceX Did It -- Falcon 1 Made it to Space -- Wired

SpaceX has made history. Its privately developed rocket has made it into space.
After three failed launches, the company founded by Elon Musk worked all of the bugs out of their Falcon 1 launch vehicles.
The entire spectacle was broadcast live from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific. Cameras mounted on the spacecraft showed our planet shrinking in the distance and the empty first stage engine falling back to Earth.

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Carbon Trading Won't Save Aviation and Shipping -- Wired

Carbon trading schemes won't solve the aviation and shipping industries' problem of soaring carbon emissions, a British climate scientist says, and the cuts needed to address global climate change are so deep that both sectors must limit their growth.

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On Bailout, Candidates Were Surely Themselves -- NY Times

It was classic John McCain and classic Barack Obama who grappled with the $700 billion bailout plan over the last week: Mr. McCain was by turns action-oriented and impulsive as he dive-bombed targets, while Mr. Obama was measured and cerebral and inclined to work the phones behind the scenes.

... Aides and political allies to both men agreed Sunday that perhaps no episode thus far in the campaign better demonstrated how they would approach managing problems as president. Their instincts, temperaments, and leadership traits were in the spotlight in Washington, as well as their limitations and foibles -- characteristics that also showed through stylistically in Friday night's debate.

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Artist Builds Temple of Science -- Wired

At a time when the gulf between religion and science is growing ever greater, an artist has erected a temple for scientific worship. Jonathon Keats, designer of the petri dish God, built The Atheon to get people thinking about what a scientific religion (or religious science?) would look and feel like.

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