- PALO -

theatlantic:

The Spring of 2012 Is the Hottest in U.S. History

In case, you know, you haven’t been outside in the past three month, it’s about to become official: unless a freak blizzard blankets the country by Thursday, the spring of 2012 will go down as the warmest for the U.S. in 117 years of record-keeping. The National Climatic Data Center won’t release a report on the temperatures in May until sometime in June, but based on their assessment of March and April, University of Maryland professor Steve Scolnik, who blogs at Climate Capital, says that our warm May will smash the 102-year-old record.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire. [Image: Dino Grandoni]

The 123’ Space Shuttle mock-up, in tow with the M/ V Ross Sea, departed Cape Canaveral, Florida this morning destined for Johnson Space Center. The exhibit will make the 8 day transit through open water to its final destination in Houston where it will be displayed for all audiences as a part of NASA history.  Courtesy of Kirby Marine.

ducksrfriends:

When the kids aren’t around, the adults finally get to play with the wagon (Taken with instagram)

theatlantic:

Does It Matter Where You Go to College?

Meet Ben. He’s a high school senior from a middle class family in Massachusettes who is choosing where to attend college next year. He’s down to two schools: prestigious Boston College, or the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, his state’s top public campus. Even with the generous financial aid package from BC, he would still graduate with a big mound of loans. UMass, meanwhile, would be more than $15,000 a year cheaper.

Which should Ben pick? Prestige or price?

With the cost of higher education climbing every year, and student debt surpassing $1 trillion, more and more young people will have to decide whether to make that trade-off. It begs the question: Does it really pay to go to an elite university, financially speaking?  Researchers have been investigating this issue since at least the 1980s. And their findings tend to show that when it comes to future earnings, where you go to college counts.

Read more.

I use this to center myself sometimes.