A plane has reportedly crashed in the Gulf of Mexico after the pilot, believed to be the only person on board, fell unconscious Thursday morning. The plane was flying about 28,000 feet before it ran out of fuel. Two F-15 jets were scrambled to monitor the plane, which went down into the waters of the gulf 170 miles off the Florida coast. [Photo: Flight Aware]
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A plane has reportedly crashed in the Gulf of Mexico after the pilot, believed to be the only person on board, fell unconscious Thursday morning. The plane was flying about 28,000 feet before it ran out of fuel. Two F-15 jets were scrambled to monitor the plane, which went down into the waters of the gulf 170 miles off the Florida coast. [Photo: Flight Aware]

President Obama canceled NASA’s plan to replace the space shuttle in favor of a more modest program, and then Congress slashed the funding for that. So, for the first time in 50 years America is not the leader in spaceflight.

The 7,000 layoffs at the Kennedy Space Center triggered 7,000 more in the surrounding Florida community. Unemployment has been close to 11 percent. [CBS News]

But if we have learned anything in the last few years, it is that traditional media are now only in charge of part of the story. There is a paucity of facts and an excess of processing power because everyone with a keyboard is theoretically a creator and distributor of content. Most of those efforts begin from behind a firmly established battle line, then row backward to find the facts that they need. Was that a dark spot on the back of George Zimmerman’s head in the grainy police video, or evidence of a beat-down? We retweet and “like” what we agree with and dismiss the rest.
New York Times columnist David Carr takes on the media and the court of public opinion’s reaction to the Trayvon Martin shooting in his latest piece “A Shooting, and Instant Polarization.” [NY Times]