News Briefs 24-09-2009

I LOL, therefore I AM :)

• The Pinwheel galaxy: the kind of thing God created when He/She was on acid :-P
• NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is set to make its third and final flyby of the planet Mercury on Sept. 29th, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
• Free will is not an illusion after all. Yeah? tell that to the voices in my head!
• Scholars try to rescue reputation of royal wizard John Dee. Um, why the man who coined the term 'British Empire', was the queen's most trusted adviser, AND the original 007! needs to have his reputation rescued is beyond me.
• 'Estate Sales' can turn preternaturally interesting in Minnesota.
• Gamers —& porn fans— rejoice! Touchable holography is getting closer.
• Immortality only 20 years away, says Ray Kurzweil. Right - along with nuclear fusion, UFO disclosure...
• Is the swine's oink worse than its H1N1 bite? Maybe they said the same things about rats in the Middle ages...
• The Recession: Bad for us, but good for the Earth?
• Too Many Zombies: a zombie a day is just what the houngan prescribed.
• Dr. Strangef*#k, or how I learned the Soviets built a *real* Doomsday Machine (without telling anyone), and stopped worrying about my credit card debt. Yeeeeeehaw!!
• It's the end of the world as the Hondurans know it —and both Zelaya & Micheletti feel fine :(
• Hugo Chavez's BFF Noam Chomsky explains how the US uses the war on drugs as a cover to control Latin America.
• Moctezuma: the leader who lost an empire. And you know what? That might not have been such a bad thing (Sorry, Neil Young).
• Mayans 'played' pyramids to make music for rain god. I bet tuning them was a real pain in the chuun ;-)
• "Oh look, honey— a wooden horsey!": Archaeologists find suspected Trojan war-era couple.
• Hunters took refuge under Ohio rock shelters for 12000 years. Talk about stubbornness! Me, I would have gathered some berries and call it a day ;-)
• Don’t Look Down: 10 Peculiarly Precarious Modern Buildings. What, you though the future was going to be like in The Jetsons? See any flying cars around, do you?
• Ten wild things that fell from the sky. Brought to you by... Popular Mechanics? PM goes Fortean?? Ok, *now* the sky is really falling!
• The most horrific cryptids you'd never want to meet. Hmm... I don't see my Gym class teacher on the list.
• The 10 most puzzling ancient artifacts —because tourists on Spring break all leave trash behind... even if they come from the Pleiades.
• 30 amazing crop circles —though I suspect that 'amazing' is not the term most favored by British farmers.
• An expert challenges that ludicrous $700k bill for damages (allegedly) caused by Gary McKinnon.

Thx to my peeps Greg, Rick & Kat.

Quote of the Day:

"I think everyone in the future will probably blame us. We knew how to profit but not protect."

Fernand Pareau, French mountain guide, who has witnessed the startling decline of Mont Blanc’s snowpack firsthand.