More of NASA's Year of Awesome: Goddard Flight Center

The photo of the "Mickey Mouse" crater on Mercury. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

I previously posted an NASA infographic celebrating its 2012 accomplishments.  The NASA Goddard Flight Center decided that that wasn't enough, and they've posted their own collection of photos and videos. Unfortunately they can't be embedded as a set, but a link to the Flickr album can be found by clicking here.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Goddard Center in Greenbelt, MD this year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Landsat system.  My coverage can be found here.  

Merry PiXmas!

Happy holidays! Yes, this is a Christmas stocking in the shape of the math symbol Pi. I got it from ThinkGeek.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson & the GZA

I grew up on hip hop and science, so I was thrilled to see The GZA appear on an episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's Star Talk. It's fun to watch because they are both fans of each other.  The genuine interest and respect for one another's work is incredibly apparent. My favorite part is around 16 minutes, when they talk about how current hip hop isn't "literate" and how many artists nowadays don't have a muse. A little later, during a great conversation about violence in hip hop , Tyson compares the artful use of lyrics to one of the film masters, as "Hitchcock forces you to fill in the blanks". Check it out below! 

If you can't see the video below, click here.

Nintendo TVii Impressions: Could Be Better

Do you own a Nintendo Wii U system? If so, a new app named TVii is available to you. The app promises to integrate your cable with internet streaming services such as Hulu and Amazon Instant Video (Netflix is arriving in early 2013).. It's a great attempt, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. 

Ideally, the service should allow you to search and browse for shows that you like and easily watch new or old episodes regardless of where they actually reside. In practice ... it has a few kinks that need to be worked out.. The interface is SLOW when accessing content, since it actually closes TVii and launches a separate Hulu / Amazon app to watch the content. All in all, it takes a good minute of waiting, which is just too much in this era of tablets.  Many people would rather just pick up a remote and get instant gratification.

If you can't see the Hulu and Amazon video below, click here.

Nintendo does a much better job with its Sports application, which allows real time tracking of basketball and football, complete with social networking integration. 

If you can't see the Sports video below, click here

NASA's Year of Awesome

2012 was an amazing year for space exploration. NASA has put together a great interactive infographic showing all of their accomplishments from the Mars Curiosity Rover to the GRAIL moon exploration. To check it out, click here!

Also, check out an amazing video of how the Hubble Telescope. Jannik Hansen from Google+ puts its best:

Imagine taking a picture of an empty area of space no bigger to you than a grain of sand held out at arms' length. Through enough exposure, however, Hubble revealed that this miniscule are of space holds a multitude of galaxies never seen before. 

If you can't see the video below, click here.