It started as one of those “why isn’t anyone doing this?” questions, which should be a red flag right there. As soon as I asked it, the answer was twisted into, “Yeah, Chris, why don’t you do that?” So I did what I usually do in that situtation: “Why don’t we do it, you and you and you and… don’t run away now! You.” I roped in people from both the BarCamp side and the SD Space side, so we have more than enough experience to actually make SpaceUp happen.

Oh, but it means calling people! And putting myself out there! And asking people for money! And other scary things! So adrenaline is stomping on my nervous system and SpaceUp thoughts are constantly running through my brain just in case I’m Doing It Wrong.

And it might fail.

…but I’m not going to think about that right now. There’s plenty to do, and action is the best way I have to keep stray thoughts at bay. Oh, and you can pledge a few bucks to support an event with the potential to be awesome, and get a patch or a t-shirt to remember it by.

* Okay, I started blathering about SpaceUp to some of you a while ago. Today I stop holding back!

I mean, seriously, just because they lack endoskeletons and have more appendages than you do is no reason to get all squeamish.

Here, we’ll start you off slowly with some really, really important bugs: native honeybees and bumble bees (one of my favorites). And they’ve got all these cool books and guidelines.

(for some reason the linky doesn’t seem to work, so here’s the address just in case: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OrLSbDbEJno)

• switching to a nicer site theme based on Peaceful Rush
• upgrading to WordPress 2.2 (with extra goodness)
• adding contributor pages (like this early example)

…but not necessarily in that order.  I’ll post another update when some or all of it is finished and ready to be praised.

Nuthatches appear to have learned to understand a foreign language – chickadee. It’s not unusual for one animal to react to the alarm call of another, but nuthatches seem to go beyond that – interpreting the type of alarm and what sort of predator poses a threat.

[via TeresaCentric]

On the latest flight, the second stage did not achieve its full speed, again because of an early shut down of the engine, this time because the vehicle began an unexpected roll.

Mr Musk said he thought this problem should be easy to fix once flight engineers had analysed the data.

“The launch was not perfect, but certainly pretty good,” he added.

“Given that the primary objectives were demonstrating responsive launch and gathering test data in advance of our first operational satellite launch later this year, the outcome was great.”

I personally see this as a huge success, because they were able to launch, reach space, and test their operational capacity.  Besides all that, they were able to make fundamental improvements to their launch platform in a single year, while still targeting that $7-million-per-launch figure.  Congratulations, SpaceX, and we can’t wait for the next stages!

Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced an initiative that would put a whole new twist on traditional unions between men and women: It would require heterosexual couples to have children within three years or else have their marriages annulled.

I can’t wait to see what comes of this.  No matter how it goes, they’ve introduced their ideas into the discussion.  Yay, subversion!