This planet keeps getting weirder by the day. Feel free to post your thoughts – if you still have any.
- Neanderthals roamed as far as Siberia.
- Ancient Australian rock shows oxygen was in Earth’s atmosphere millions of years earlier than previously thought.
- Antarctica has been home to tiny creatures and plants for tens of millions of years.
- Poles apart: Destruction at the ends of the Earth is described in The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic (Amazon US & UK). Joanna Kavenna’s The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule is available at Amazon US & UK.
- Old masters’ paintings of striking sunsets show effect of huge volcanic eruptions on climate.
- Borneo caves yield clues to why Earth’s climate suddenly changed – several times – over the last 25,000 years.
- Ice Age was defrosted by warming ocean, not rise in CO2.
- New solar technology could provide all US electricity – including a switch to electric cars feeding off the grid.
- Water forms a floating bridge when exposed to high voltage.
- Secrets of 1957 Sputnik launch revealed.
- Previously dismissed by researchers as a man-made phenomenon, an undergraduate student found the mystery cosmic burst which now has astronomers agog.
- Magellanic Clouds are recent arrivals to the Milky Way’s neighborhood.
- NASA says it has no plans for ‘utilization and exploitation’ of the International Space Station after 2015, just five years after the ISS becomes fully operational.
- Can the world’s toughest animal survive space? Who cares — let’s breed ’em for biofuel.
- Dengue fever surges in Latin America, with one in four cases in Mexico now being the deadly hemorrhagic form. Experts blame climate change.
- Impact of Arctic heat wave stuns climate researchers.
- Rock samples show that Yucca Mountain – where the US government planned to store 70,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste – is directly on top of a fault line.
- Milton Sprouse, a World War II veteran who was at Roswell Army Air Field when the Roswell Incident took place, has stepped forward with his recollections of the event. Mysterious metal, alien corpses, and a military coverup? Sprouse says, ‘It’s all true.’
- Convenience store owner says two men claiming they were Hindu priests and could read his mind used hypnosis to render him unable to resist as they robbed his business. (With video)
- Ninja she-devils rob Pennsylvania gas station at swordpoint. (YouTube video)
- 6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes.
- The full transcript of Wired‘s Interview with Ridley Scott, who has finally created the Blade Runner he always imagined. Blade Runner: The Final Cut will hit theaters in Los Angeles and New York in October.
- The weird Russian mind-control research behind a DHS contract.
- A review of Making Money (Amazon US & UK), Terry Pratchett’s prescient new addition to his satirical Discworld series, which deals with – among other topics – racism, sexism, journalism, death, war, the army, the Inquisition, the ambiguous nature of good and evil, and the uncomfortable power of narrative.
- If you’re rich, well connected, and invited (like the other 150,000 registered users), it’s aSmallWorld.net.
- Japanese to patent transparent frog.
- Many a decent chap has pondered why rogues have so much luck with the ladies. Now researchers have discovered why.
- Google and Microsoft Want Your DNA.
- Francis Crick was high on LSD when he deduced the double-helix structure of DNA.
- Matthew Delooze describes his recent Ayahuasca experience.
- Dawkins rails at ‘creationist front’ for duping him into film role.
- Skyrocketing grain prices are altering the economic landscape for everyone.
- Naomi Klein debates Alan Greenspan on the Iraq war, Bush’s tax cuts, economic populism, crony capitalism and more. For more info, check out The Guardian‘s Special Section on Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Amazon US & UK).
Quote of the Day:
…since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.”… What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.
Thomas L. Friedman, in his Sept. 30th op-ed ‘9/11 Is Over‘.
