Medary.com

Media company to consolidate worldwide software development in Geneva and Singapore.

That's continues steady growth. A reasonable person might be tempted to conclude that Tax cuts work.

Kansas City is holding a Fringe Festival this weekend. What's a fringe festival? kcfringe.org has the answer:

Our roots trace to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, which spontaneously erupted in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1947. Eight groups, not invited to perform in the larger Edinburgh Festival of the Arts, created makeshift theatres on the outskirts - or "fringe" - of the established festival. Soon the Fringe Festival gained a large and loyal following, outstripping the mainstream festival.

Fringes around the world have adapted a simple formula that was created in Edinburgh. The main principles were to provide all artists (both emerging and established) with the opportunity to produce their play no matter the content, form or style, and to make the event as affordable and accessible as possible for the members of the community, empowering audiences with the ability to decide for themselves the truly great productions from the good, the bad, and the gloriously disastrous.

Yes, you read that right. Hyperventilation has not yet been linked to global warming, however it's link to a diffuse sense of worldwide catastrophe is undeniable.

Seven schools meet in Fargo, ND today to discuss forming a new collegiate wrestling conference. From the Sioux Falls Argus Leader article:

South Dakota State, North Dakota State, Northern Iowa, Utah Valley State, Northern Colorado and Wyoming are expected to send representatives to the Fargodome today. Fresno State (Calif.) and Air Force Academy also have indicated a commitment.

The five wrestling members of the Big XII (Iowa State, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State) have approached this new league with a merger proposal.

Royals come back from trailing 5-0 to outlast the league-leading White Sox in 13 innings and win the 2-1. (Gotta love the Chicago Tribune's headline: Field of Screams.) Royals need to go 43-18 to finish .500, 25-36 to avoid 100 losses.

Blind kid is a whiz at computer games.

Richard Branson and Burt Rutan create company to design and build a new sub-orbital passenger spacecraft and it's carrier airplane.

From the press release:

The launch customer for this new joint venture between Virgin Group and Scaled Composites will be Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson's commercial space tourism venture. Virgin Galactic has placed orders for five SS2's and two WK2's, with options on further systems, thus securing the exclusive use of the systems for the initial 18 months of commercial passenger operations.

The Spaceship Company plans to make spaceflight affordable for the masses and to demonstrate the commercial viability of manned space exploration. We are dedicated to reaching that goal with the first generation of spaceship systems developed for routine, scheduled flight operations. Those systems will be environmentally friendly and will include new solutions to optimize both safety and the passenger experience. We expect that as the flight hardware matures, and is operated by competing spaceline companies, many thousands of people will experience the wonder of leaving the earth's atmosphere each year.

Did the EPA bring the Shuttle down? From NASA's application to the EPA for a waiver from the CFC ban:

A reduction in compressive and tensile strengths was also realized due to the change from CFC 11 blown foam." "The new foams were also more susceptible to a phenomenon known as "popcorning", sporadic loss of small pieces of foam at low heating rates, leading to ET Intertank foam loss that ultimately resulted in Orbiter TPS tile damage.

Dem senators want confidential Roberts papers. The Wall Street Journal thinks it's a mistake to give them the papers:

At about the time the first batch of documents was being delivered to Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon, the eight Democrats on the Judiciary Committee sent a thank you letter to President Bush that began with the words, "We are disappointed," and went on to label as "ill-advised" the Administration's decision not to release Judge Robert's papers from his years as Deputy Solicitor General under the first President Bush.