Jailed Pussy Rioter ordered released (video)

TheWorld.org; Wisdom Quarterly

(LINK)

  

German supporters (Marcus Brandt/AFP/DPA)

The punk collective of female freedom-fighters, "Pussy Riot," went too far insulting Russian dictator Putin, performing in a Russian Orthodox church to shine light on the lack of separation of church and state.

  

They performed their anti-Putin song in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral and got arrested, not for playing so much as for posting an inflammatory video about playing. Two of the members remain in jail.

  

TheWorld.org wants to share the MUSIC of the band over the din of the movement the collective inspires around the world. Their first notable tune was “Loosen up the Paving Stones” about the Arab Spring: “Egyptian air is good for the lungs,” they sing. Like the Occupy Movement they are calling for a “Tahrir Square on Red Square.” LISTEN

• PHOTOS: Artifacts of life on Mars

• Russia remains divided on the Pussy Riot case
• Pussy Riot jailed members get a two-year jail sentence
• Mixed feelings in Russia over Pussy Riot trial
• CARTOON SLIDESHOW: Pussy Riot sentenced

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Seven Minutes of Terror (Mars)

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

America, intent on keeping complex multicellular life on Mars a secret, will land on the red planet tonight. Far from inhospitable, the fallen planet and what remains of its culture are inviting. But the shortest distance to its surface is driving to El Segundo where a nondescript building holds a portal in the form of an elevator -- but that is above top secret. JPL (the Jet Propulsion Lab) in Pasadena has an expensive distraction in its Mars "Curiosity" rover project. Pasadena's KPCC/SCPR.org is all over the story. Rather than showing archeological features or the strange and dangerous creatures (as mimicked in "John Carter"), the scientists will be careful to land this rover in yet another desolate area, a meteoric indentation in a desert.

Car-sized Mars rover "Curiosity" roaming deep crater (space.com)

It will -- if it can keep from burning up during the "seven minutes of terror" as it passes through the atmosphere -- look for water, nutrients, and maybe even traces of cellular life. Will its mission be sacrificed to discredit NASA/JPL's efforts to get us to Mars? Or will it be allowed to "succeed" and reveal the remnants of a soupy primordial sea now all brine and microfossils with a subterranean water store? Tune in tonight at 10:00 pm (PST) to find out!

   

Imagine landing a probe in the Sahara then telling the Venutians, "See, Earth is mostly sand." What's a Venutian to think in the face of photographic evidence? Just so, what are earthlings to think of Mars? (AFP)

   
Scientists look to martian rocks for history of life 

Joe Palca and Jessica Stoller-Conrad (NPR)

A rover poised for a Mars landing late Sunday night will explore higher and farther than any before. It's loaded down with experiments designed to test the rocks and atmosphere of Mars. Question 1: Was there ever life there?

Red planet, green thumb: NASA scientist engineers garden

Cosmic cab: NASA awards $1.1B to Space Taxi program

• Who will rule the business of space? Humans...or robots?
• Mars pop culture check: 6 things we need to know
• NASA's Mars mission challenges JPL employees
• Bookman David Kipen: California invented Mars
• Mars 101: What we know of our celestial neighbor

KPCC reporters have been talking to Southland scientists and engineers and counting down the days until NASA's most ambitious rover yet -- Curiosity -- prepares to land on the Martian surface. Follow the series online

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New views from Mars (photos)

This is a full-circle scene combining 817 images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

  

The US space agency NASA is calling it the "next best thing to being" on the Red Planet (AFP).

 

Color adjusted and distorted in the same way, this undated image provided by NASA shows Mars Rover Opportunity catching its own late-afternoon shadow in a view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars. 

 

The rover used a panoramic camera between about 4:30 and 5:00 pm local Mars time to record images taken through different filters and combined into this mosaic view. Most of the component images were recorded during the 2,888th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars, which corresponds to March 9, 2012 on Earth.

  

The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see [and obscure its stunning similarity to the Earth's surface], such as the dark sandy ripples and dunes on the crater's distant floor. Opportunity has been studying the western rim of Endeavour Crater since arriving there in August 2011 (AP/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University).

• More photos

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