Tim Greaton's Blog

Thanks for stopping by again :-)

So we've already talked about three new paperback releases: The Santa Shop (Samaritans Conspiracy book 1), Red Gloves (Samaritans Conspiracy, book 2), and The Santa Shop, Anniversary Edition (expanded by 40%, including the extended ending written for Hallmark Studios.
 Under-Heaven final print version is also in process and will be coming to paperback within the next 6 to 8 weeks.
 
The Zachary Pill fantasy series is also working its way toward print release: Of Monsters and Magic
 With Dragon Fear 
and Against the Troll will all be available in paperback within the next couple of months.

Zachary Pill, The Dragon at Station End (the entire trilogy) will be released in hardback right around the same time. 
 What about brand new releases? The final two episodes to Her Yearning for Blood will be available soon.       Also, book 4 in the Zachary Pill series is also working its way toward a Spring/Summer release.
Finally, I mentioned a soon-to-film movie. Unfortunately, I am not able to release details except to say it is a found footage project from a production company based out of Boston and New York. A well-known Hollywood actor/renown singer is funding the project. I came in as a story/script advisor and ultimately came to rewrite large swaths of the script. My son has been asked to join the filming crew, and we're all very excited to see it move toward completion and ultimate release.
 

Thanks, everyone, for your readership, friendship, and just general support.

2013 was a year of catching up for me. I had 18 months of project obligations and only about 12 months to get them all done. I also found myself riding an interesting wave of collaborative efforts, all of which are still working their way through the production pipeline.  I'm pleased to say that the workload was handled and I'm still standing. The great news is that I now get to enjoy a 2014 filled with new products and releases. Here's a brief update...

 
The Santa Shop has a brand new look and some text updates. It's also now available in a spectacular new paperback for only $7.99, which is a huge improvement over the $13.95 price tag set by the first publisher and later by Focus House Publishing.



Red Gloves, the second book in the Samaritans Conspiracy series, is also now available in paperback. The list price is just $9.99 but I heard Amazon and maybe some others are discounting it even lower.


The Santa Shop Anniversary edition will also be released in paperback this month. It's expanded by 40% and includes the extended ending I wrote for Hallmark Studios.

I have quite a bit more news to pass on, but the clock suggests that will have to wait till tomorrow. If I didn't mention, a new movie (filming begins next month) is also among my updates for you.

What do you say we talk again tomorrow? :-)
 

2013 was a sad year for me because I lost two friends. Fortunately, both were writers and left a legacy of books that will ensure they will never be forgotten, or so I keep trying to convince myself. Since this post is not intended as a memorial, I will mention only events not names today. I have to admit, just thinking about those events still leaves me with goose bumps.

In 2012, I received a call from a New York author, let's call him Sam Samson. He asked if I would be willing to help him flesh out a supernatural idea he had been toying with. The project sounded fascinating, so I said yes. We called our untitled collaboration Ghost Story.

For many months, emails flew back and forth and our story slowly came into focus. We had fully developed what felt like a unique premise and had written up to the third chapter about an imprisoned man with a supernatural illness when I suddenly couldn't get my friend to respond to either phone calls or emails. After several days, I became concerned and searched for some contact, any contact.

Unfortunately, after a few days, I learned my friend and cowriter had died of a massive heart attack that took him permanently and instantly away. He will be missed.

Six months had passed when one morning I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emails in my box. I immediately assumed I had been struck by a spam bot, but as I perused the names and subject lines, I realized that these were real messages. Why had everyone tried to reach me multiple times during the night?

As I was stewing on this puzzle, an email flashed in the preview box at the bottom of my screen. Sam Samson was emailing me about GHOST STORY.

Eyes wide, I tried to understand. I had read Sam's obituary. I had personally spoken with his daughter after the funeral!

Fingers trembling, I clicked on Sam's message.

"How are you making out with your rewrites?" he asked.

How do you explain to a dead friend that you abandoned his story out of...I don't know, confusion? Respect? Anger at losing him?

This was crazy! I was debating how to answer a dead man. I knew that ghosts didn't exist, no more than my neighbor could speak with aliens over his ham radio. Someone was playing a sick joke.

Refusing to play along, I deleted the message. Nevertheless, I felt as though my entire world had been tilted about ninety degrees to the right and retreated to the porch to feed the fifty or so ducks that typically hang around in the brook beside my house.

Slowly, I calmed down enough to realize that some computer glitch must have occurred. Obviously, Sam's email had been stuck in a digital file somewhere, and had only recently been discovered, not unlike one of those decades-old postal letters we hear about on the news from time to time.

I ignored the whiskey in the kitchen cabinet and returned to my office to find dozens of more spam emails had come in. I skipped right past them, however, because my eyes were glued to a second email from Sam!

I opened his email and felt heat rise to my cheeks.

"Tim, I don't think we should let our readers know the protagonist is dead. Maybe he shouldn't realize he's dead either."

"That's it!" I exclaimed, slamming my finger on the delete key.

I jumped up from my seat and grabbed the phone. I'm not sure if I imagined the local police or state troopers would have a Ghost Busters division, but my fingers hovered over the 9-1-1 keys, ready to dial.

As I stood there, my eyes flicked between the computer screen and the phone. Computer, phone. Phone, computer. At any moment, I expected Sam to send yet another message from beyond. Though more emails poured in, neither his name nor the subject line Ghost Story appeared.

I probably remained in that position for only a few seconds to a minute, but it seemed like forever. Suddenly, everything I had ever believed, everything I had ever known, was being challenged. Was the existence of ghosts possible? And, if so, what else had I been missing? Vampires? The Easter Bunny? The validity of online Bachelor's degrees?

Then, as though being struck by a cold spray of seawater, I jolted out of my sluggish thoughts. Slowly the panic receded as a suspicion began to grow: for some reason, all of my emails from months ago were coming back. Sam having been dead and the subject line Ghost Story may have been--no, were--spooky coincidences, but the more I thought about it the more certain I became that these were old messages being fed back onto my screen.

Ultimately, a call to my mail hosting company confirmed my theory. A recent change in service had caused the system to resend old emails. There seemed to be no solution except to erase the old messages as they came in, being careful not to erase any new ones mixed in.

And so that's what I did. For the rest of the day, every half-hour or so, I erased hundreds of duplicated emails. That also meant seeing Sam Samson: Ghost Story, Sam Samson: Ghost Story repeat itself over and over again.

As I look back, I am ashamed of how gullible I had been. I am also surprised by how strongly, in retrospect, that I wish it had been true. It's not that I want or need to know that ghosts exist, though that would be fabulous to learn--from a distance--its just that I miss my friend, and communicating with even a residual part of him might soothe the wound I'm certain will be with me to my last days.

Here's wishing all the spirits in this world, alive and otherwise, a wonderful 2014!  

Techtrepreneurs have done it again...and in a huge way. Space-X's grasshopper reusable test rocket took its eighth and last test flight on Monday, October 7th.



So what's so amazing about a rocket flying upward? After all, rocket scientists have been successfully launching tubes for decades.

The accomplishment is in the words "reusable" and "eighth." Until now, commercial rockets have been considered disposable. After all, without wings and bereft of fuel, what else can a multi-ton, ten-story tall vehicle do but fall back to earth?

Elon Musk, CEO of both Space-X and Tesla Motors, has committed himself and his fortune to changing all of that. As he explains, for mankind to successfully become a multi-planetary species, we must first learn how to access space safely and affordably.

Before Elon and Space-X stepped into what had largely been a government arena back in 2002, space-bound rockets cost approximately sixty million dollars each and were expected to completely burn up or land charred and useless in the ocean upon reentry to our atmosphere.

Imagine if every time we took a flight from the United States to Europe that we had to destroy the plane. Just how far along do you imagine intercontinental air travel would have gotten?

So, Space-X has been working diligently to build a reusable rocket...and they are almost there. The Grasshopper rocket soared 2,500 feet--a full half mile--into the air on Monday, October 7th, and successfully returned to its launch pad. Simultaneously, Space-X has been doing in-space re-ignition tests on their Falcon rockets, and Elon Musk has recently stated that his company now has all the basics needed to launch a rocket into space and return it safely to earth for reuse.

Now some would say that the space shuttles were already reusable...but not really. It took months, years sometimes, to renovate a returned space shuttle, and those repairs ran up bills of literally hundreds of millions of dollars. It was actually costing NASA more to reuse a space shuttle than it would have to simply send our astronauts up in freshly minted rocket ships.

No, what Space-X is talking about is new and breathtakingly revolutionary. They are potentially months away from launching the first fully reusable rocket ship into space, which means that for the first time mankind will be able to reach orbit for slightly more than the cost of fuel ($200,000) instead of the astronomical replacement cost of a complete ship.

Another company, Bigelow Space, has an entire collection of inflatable, orbital buildings ready for launch, and Space-X has contracts to take several of them skyward within the next few years. Since Bigelow Space is owned by a hotel chain billionaire, it's easy to understand how a George Jetson-style luncheon is not far from reality.
 

We are constantly barraged with sarcastic and ironic memes that point a finger directly at "the other guy." I sincerely try to limit that sort of thing, simply because I'm as flawed, if not more flawed, as everyone else.

The truth is that many people fall into the trap of using veiled or outright insults as a way to fight back against the "I'm ignorant and proud of it" crowd. I learned long ago, however, that using my superior size or occasionally superior intellect to skewer anyone was not only wrong but counter-productive.

There is no easier way to be remembered than to injure a body or ego. For instance, try to recall the three people you hate the most: chances are they come almost immediately to mind, bright and clear on the movie screen inside your head.

Every time you drop an insult, even those that seem minor or negligible to you, you are likely reserving a position on someone else's internal screen. Fifty years from now, you might still be there with the viewer gritting his or her teeth at the memory.

All of that said, in an encouraging not disparaging way, I would like to discuss a plague on social media. I'm, of course, referring to voices that proclaim nonsensical facts while simultaneously failing (or refusing) to absorb any additional, clarifying, or opposing information.

Throughout our lives, we have all met people who seem too embarrassed to ask questions. Some, I think, imagine that intelligent people read books all night or naturally brew knowledge in their sleep.

To this ill-informed group, asking questions is tantamount to admitting stupidity. The rest of us, however, know that just the opposite is true: inquisitive and ultimately knowledgeable minds are constantly asking questions and paying attention to the answers.

There are others who seem perfectly willing to ask, but then misunderstand or completely discombobulate what they hear. These are the folks who proclaim crazy, crazy things, like "once every thousand years the moon touches Mount Everest" or "dolphins are smarter than people and have an advanced city underwater called Atlantis."

Okay, maybe those aren't exact quotes, but I think you get the point. These folks might be well-intentioned and sincere but would definitely benefit from more listening and less talking.

Finally, there is another group. These are the folks who liberally misstate facts...and then go to the ends of the earth to defend them.

I have a friend who is much like this, sincere but not always right. She is often heard giving advice and making seemingly astute and almost secret observations.

I recently heard her announce that a local fashion store was going out of business (she knew this because she works in corporate finance and saw how the clothing stock was being steadily weeded down). Given that hundreds of cars surrounded that particular store every day, I found it hard to believe.

With no malice intended, I called the store manager and outright asked if they were closing. He laughed and said the reduced stock happened every year simply because they were waiting for new designer shipments while simultaneously placing clothing on sale to make room.

So what did my friend do when I told her? She accused me of being vindictive and intentionally trying to prove her wrong.

Not once during her angry retort did she ever acknowledge that the information had been false, nor do I think it was a point of concern in her mind. Though she's wonderful in so many other ways, her need to always be right and "in the know" often keeps people from appreciating her many other amazing attributes.

I should also mention another friend. He and I worked together when we were both in our mid-twenties (more than two decades ago). Tom was a great guy but had been totally absorbed by sports rather than scholastics in school.

On several occasions Tom mentioned that he had a great time the previous weekend and that he and his friends had been "belligerent" together. Tom, to his credit was often trying to expand his vocabulary, so the first few times I heard the comment, I chose not to embarrass him.

Probably the fourth or fifth time he misused the term, however, I made sure we were alone and gently pointed out his error. I'm a pretty big guy, 5' 10", lots of years in the gym, but Tom was even bigger, over six feet with a solid, athletic build.

Tom got angry, furious really. Though we were good friends, it seemed that at any moment a serious battle was about to break loose...but then something odd happened: Tom's eyes watered at the corners.

Anyone who knows me understands that I simply have no desire to upset anyone else. Life is challenging enough without adding to other people's woes. I would have preferred a fight to hurting Tom's feelings.

Tom then wiped his eyes and thanked me. He explained that he often felt embarrassed when around educated peers and that he was certain he had improperly used the word "belligerent" a hundred times in the previous month. In his mind, dozens of other people had allowed him to make a fool of himself.

If there was ever a fool among his friends, Tom wasn't the one. Today he is a well-spoken and successful business owner.

Though this post has gotten a little unruly, I simply wanted to encourage everyone to listen and learn as best you can. Ask when you're not sure of something, and take feedback with appreciation and attention.

If you have friends, family, making obvious misstatements, share the facts with them in private. We should strive to never hurt anyone's feelings, but sometimes silence can be more cruel.

I, for one, would find the social media landscape much more fun if it wasn't so filled with disinformation and bickering.

What do you think?

Photo compliment of Robot Island toy store, www.robotisland.com
I am closing in on my 49th birthday, and I have to say it's a milestone that I never would have imagined hitting when I was a young child. Things were not particularly easy back then and, for reasons that certainly don't matter as pertains to today's blog, I grew up probably a little too serious and somber.

What was the result of that? Simply put, I stepped into adulthood with relief and dove immediately into work and building a life.

I don't regret those years, and I have a wonderful family and comfortable life today because of it. But recently I decided that it was time to smile a little more often.

How, you ask?

That's the trick. It's not the same for any of us.

I know one thing, however: pretending to smile at things because others think you should is not likely the answer. Though there may be something to 'faking it until it's real,' I'd much rather see your smiles come from the heart.

A few minutes after this post, I will walk out of my office, onto a 60-foot porch, and see a hundred ducks waiting for breakfast. I'll smile the whole time I feed them and gaze out onto the brook and pond that sits just fifty feet from my steps.

My three cats and dog also break through any muted moods. Of course, my wife, children, family, and friends all illicit their share of smiles...but today I want to encourage you to fan your happy flames in ways that do not depend on relationships.

Why, you ask again?  It's simply because your joy, your happiness should be generated internally, which in turn will allow you to share it with the important people around you.

I'll give you a for instance: I recently started a robot and space toy collection. Lost in Space, Star Trek and dozens of other toys now take up more than half the shelves in my office. They exist for no other reason than every time my eyes pass that way, I smile.

I also keep old episodes of Casper the Ghost ready on Netflix. I have Richie Rich comics on the shelf above my computer, and I'm not afraid to break out old robot movie and TV shows from the 1950s and 60s. You should do everything in your power to rekindle that childhood joy that easily flickers and goes out if we aren't too careful.

I know it sounds awful in such stark terms, but we are all on an inevitable road to death. And we deserve to enjoy as many hours of fun and humor as possible before that final shovelful of earth is thrown on our grave.

You'll notice that I never once talked about how much you should spend on vacations, expensive watches, new cars, etc.... Sure, those things can be wonderful but it's not my goal to fill your life with financial and other stresses that can come from spending gobs of money.

I'd much rather see you buy Barbie dolls, GI Joe action figures, or even old hubcaps. You might pop over to your nearest shelter and get yourself a rabbit, cat, dog or any other pet that will generate endless hours of smiles.
 If vacations are a stretch for you right now, take a walk down a woods trail, drive to a nearby beach, spend a few minutes staring at a mountain view. Fill your house with inspiring photos and art work (which you can find at garage sales and flea markets for very little cost). The important thing is that we all strive to be as internally cheerful as possible. Do that, and you'll provide a gift to those around you as well. Thanks for popping by, and thanks for the smile :-)

 The reviews are starting to creep in and it seems to be a universal opinion that Ashton did a yeoman's job in his attempted portrayal of the man who literally changed the face of our tech and entertainment worlds. Unfortunately, however, Ashton's (and, more likely, the filmmakers') attempt fell short. This author has not yet seen the movie but this blog is not intended to focus on the film so much as to discuss exactly what magical ingredient is it that Jobs possessed, and what is it that left such a void after his passing. Does anyone know? Maybe we could first touch on Steve Jobs the person. Contrary to many of the things we have all heard, Steve Jobs was neither a villain nor a saint, and his personal life was littered with as many failed relationships as it is was filled with life-long, loyal friendships.  Regarding his first child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs who was born in 1978, Jobs denied being her father for two years while Chrisann Brennan, a Bay Area painter, raised their infant daughter on welfare.  A paternity test ultimately proved that Jobs was not sterile, as he had claimed throughout the legal battle, and that he was Lisa's biological father.  After his death, Lisa Brennan-Jobs described her father, Steve, as the glue that held their family together. Obviously, this means that any past transgressions have been forgiven, which rings true given that she was invited (and accepted) to live with him and her three siblings when she was a teenager. In 1991, Jobs married Laurene Powell, who birthed their son Reed six months later. In 1995 and 1998, respectively, Erin and Eve became Steve's third and fourth children. Steve's entire family, including his sister Mona (whom he never knew until they were adults because he was given up for adoption before she was born) remember the family workaholic with great respect, fondness, and love.  In short, Steve was a good husband, father, and brother but, nevertheless, simply a man. Neither better nor worse than others. So that leaves us still wondering: What was it about Steve Jobs that will be discussed, studied, and eulogized for decades and centuries to come? What exactly made this otherwise normal man rise to the level of icon and, dare we say, legend? We live in a world filled with skeptics that have heard too many sales pitches and seen too many false advertisements to trust hardly anyone. So when Steve Jobs pitched real computer achievements that were even better than advertised, people began to notice. To be clear, Apple was not a first, second, or even third-time success. It was a company that rode some decent highs and some pretty bad lows until 1985, which was when Jobs fell prey to a corporate coup that led to his removal from nearly all aspects of day-to-day Apple business and ultimately caused him to resign five months later.  After his resignation (an event that Jobs would later refer to as "being fired") Jobs founded NeXT in 1985. Because he cut all Apple ties in anger and short-changed himself in doing so, it wasn't long before Steve's wealth (a seven million investment in the new company) started to run out.

Enter billionaire Ross Perot, a man who believed less in NeXT the company than he did in this young entrepreneur who boiled with such passion. Ultimately, NeXT was to build the computer used to invent the World Wide Web at CERN.

In a sweet irony, in 1997 Apple purchased the successful NeXT company, which by that time had become a software-only designer. It's WebObjects programing became the basis for what would become MobileMe and the Apple and iTunes Stores.

In the meantime, starting also in 1985, Jobs had become deeply ensconced in a new movie venture called Pixar, which led to a string of hugely successful movies and ultimately to its all-stock sale to Disney in 2006. This sale not only solidified Jobs' profile on Forbes' Richest People in the World list, it also gave Steve ownership of 7% of Disney's stock, making him by far that company's largest stockholder (Roy E. Disney, by comparison, had a stake of only 1%).
 It's time to recollect that we were attempting to define exactly what it was that made Steve Jobs such a successful businessman and icon to millions. It is likely that we have already stumbled across the answer, but maybe we should step back to that ironic NeXT sale to Apple to best illustrate the Steve Jobs "something" that turned out to be everything. In 1997, when Apple purchased Steve's NeXT company, it also welcomed its co-founder back into the fold. A few months later, he again rose to the level of CEO and the projects and personnel bloodbath that followed is the stuff of nightmares and legends.  It is right around this time, as Steve Jobs rose from the ashes, that his laser-like vision and devotion to perfection became evident. Steve was no longer a drifter on the high seas of silicon valley, he was instead one of its captains, and this time he knew it. Steve had for the previous two years already been riding his Pixar employees to a state of fear and perfection, and now he started to do the same with everyone at Apple. Projects and people who were not pushing the company to greater heights were thrown overboard as surely as those more successful, vision-supporting efforts were coddled and rewarded. We don't need to relive every success that followed, which were myriad and continuous, but we do have to recognize that Steve Jobs 2.0 brought to the table a vision so strong that it literally seeped from the pores of his employees and from the company itself. For years, tech enthusiasts became glued to every word that Steve Jobs spoke, and the reason was simply that Apple's (and Pixar's) product releases always met or exceeded every expectation that their captain had publicly established. If Steve Jobs said you can expect something amazing in two, three, or four months, it happened, and it usually caused jaws to drop to the floor when it did. Compare that with Tim Cook today. Has he ever inspired anyone with any single word or phrase? Now, let's not make this a pile onto the poor billionaire event, but suffice it to say that Tim Cook spends most of his time dodging questions about what Apple is or isn't doing. And when he's not dodging, he's usually setting the audience up for low-expectations, of which Apple usually goes on to fall short.    So the Steve Jobs void is two- or maybe three-fold: we miss his unfaltering vision of a bright and beautiful technological future; we miss his simultaneous ability to lead his companies to that exacting level of achievement; and, most of all, we miss the knowledge that no matter the storms or condition of the sea, our captain would always take us there. R.I.P. Steve Jobs. We will continue to remember. If you'd like to learn more about Jobs, Ashton Kutcher's new movie, click here: http://jobsthefilm.com/      

Readers know that this blog is dedicated to either authors or items of real science or news. I try not to fill this space with spurious articles or science too early in its infancy.

A recent medical discovery, however, seems to warrant shouting out the results a little early. Wednesday, the BBC reported that a team of scientists led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK charted 21 major DNA mutations that are the actual creators of 97 percent of all cancers.

We should clarify that the mutations create the cancers but outside stimuli (like UV damage or smoking) cause the mutations. Once DNA is mutated, it becomes susceptible to tumor growths.

So what does this mean, exactly? Why is it important?

A simple example might come from law enforcement. An unknown serial killer might successfully kill dozens of people over an undefined period, but once law enforcement can zero in on the right clues they can often identify the criminal who is then taken into custody fairly easily.

In this case, it has taken medical science hundreds of years to find the specific clues or, in this case, 21 clues behind 97 percent of all cancers. From this point forward, medical experts around the world will turn their keen minds toward testing for these 21 DNA mutations and then reversing them or creating defenses that will stop cancer tumors from getting their initial footholds.

This breakthrough suggests that cancer could be reduced to a rare affliction--not the major killer it is today--within the next few decades, our lifetimes.

You can learn more about this life-altering discovery here:  http://www.inquisitr.com/904437/cancer-breakthrough-researchers-a-lot-closer-to-learning-what-causes-it/



  

There is a technological and cultural shift underway, and it is definitely extraterrestrial in nature. While most of us go about our Earth-bound lives, dozens of companies and countries are frantically scrambling to put together various Mars colony missions.

We have talked about many of those efforts in bits and pieces, and in a moment we will check out a Hawaiian study of six men and women testing isolation and food for a space trek. Before we go there, however, it might be worth asking ourselves why all of this is happening now.

In a word: Space-X. In 2002, Elon Musk started his Space Exploration company with the sole intention of rekindling mankind's passion for moving beyond our single-world existence.

He states that there are some very good reasons for roving further out into the solar system and eventually beyond, but first and foremost among them is that our species is a sitting duck for any planet-wide catastrophe, manmade or otherwise. Sure, pragmatists say life has survived on this planet for billions of years and will continue to survive, no matter what.

They would be right.

Unfortunately for the Cro-Magnons, dinosaurs, and saber tooth tigers that is little consolation. And I suspect our ghosts would also fail to appreciate pragmatic logic if and when cockroaches become the sole species on Big Ole Blue.

Aside from a species insurance policy, Elon Musk believes a multi-planetary future gives us something less tangible but even more important: hope. A future of space exploration is exciting and dream-worthy, whereas a dystopian existence on a single crowded planet might be categorized as hopeless.

So, what did Space-X hope to accomplish? Its goal was simple: send a greenhouse to Mars with the hope that it would catch the imaginations of world leaders and spur new interest in space. Somewhere along the way, however, Elon's company was forced to reduce the cost of building rockets, and those savings immediately attracted space payload interest.

In short, Space-X discovered that it could generate enough income to go further than launching one Mars greenhouse. It is now on a mission to become a transportation line to and from Mars and beyond. It hopes to become to modern society what the railroads were to the U.S. in the 1800's.

And, just like the railroad boom, space companies are flourishing and rushing to get their piece of the Space-X dream. Elon Musk is smiling because hope is alive and well.

Though the U.S. government has been nibbling ever-so-slowly at the Mars colonies cookie, it recognizes that mankind is now committed to making that leap. And so, as the grandfather with the most experience in maintaining lives in extra-terrestrial environments, NASA is busy solving the small but important problems, one of which is food.

The space agency has been developing special hybrids of vegetables that could survive and maybe even thrive in the thin Martian atmosphere. It has also been perfecting greenhouses for use on the red planet. Finally, it is now testing recipes and meal interactions among pseudo-astronauts who have been quarantined for four months in a special facility on a lava landscape in Hawaii.

It will be several months before the results of NASA's space food experiment are fully examined, but you can learn more right here: http://www.space.com/22360-mars-food-mock-space-mission-hawaii.html

Many years ago, shortly after the development of a quirky little thing called the internet, many of us heard friends talking about a company that was selling books on—of all things—the computer! Obviously, it was just some college kid trying out a wacky idea.
Fifty billion dollars of personal wealth later, Jeff Bezos can rest comfortably in the knowledge that he proved tens of thousands of us wrong. His company Amazon has forever changed the face of retail, not just in the U.S. but around the world.
Last week, news came out that Mr. Bezos (not Amazon) had paid four times more than current market value for the Washington Post, one of the most well-known and influential newspapers in the world. Of course, there are a few who say he bought a pig in a poke, that he just threw two hundred and fifty million dollars at a company well on its way to being swamped by a dying industry.
But then there are the rest of us, those who remember just how WRONG we were about that in-the-computer niche business that went on to become a worldwide marketing phenomenon. And, so, all eyes are glued to the staid old news company that could become…well, no one knows.
What we do know is that the Washington Post transaction will not officially close for another few weeks. While we wait, the journalistic world is holding its universal breath, one simple question on every mind.
Will a likely Jeff Bezos success be replicable, or will history replay itself and see all his competitors washed away?  If you'd like to learn more about The Washington Post sale, click here: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/why-jeff-bezos-and-i-the-washington-post-i-could-be-good-for-each-other/278622/