May 2012

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Facebook’s shares simply can’t seem to be succeessful and on Tuesday they closed at $31, 18% less than their $38 initial offer from last Friday. After a lot of speculations, however, it looks like there will also be an official investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – the authority that monitors the stock market – and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authorithy (FINRA), a private organization that however has some authority in the management of financial exchanges.

The first launch of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket on December 8, 2010 (Photo NASA/Tony Gray and Kevin O'Connell)

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The Dragon spacecraft just took off successfully from Cape Canaveral using a Falcon 9 rocket and after about 10 minutes it reached orbit. It’s the first spacecraft built by a private company headed toward the International Space Station. The cargo it’s carrying includes supplies but also the ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper, who died in 2004, and actor James Doohan – “Scotty” in Star Trek – who died in 2005.

Strength of Stones by Greg Bear (Italian edition)

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The novel “Strength of Stones” by Greg Bear was published for the first time in 1981. After a series of religious wars, in the XXII century the part of mankind most observant of the Abrahamic religions leaves the Earth and emigrate to the planet God-Does-Battle, where they built huge automated cities that watch over the citizens’s righteousness. However, the religious rules programmed into the cities are strict and they end up evicting humans considering them impure.