News Briefs 04-02-2010

I don't know about you, but I feel more like an alien from inner space.

• All humans are 'aliens from outer space', says a leading British scientist.
• Abstract thoughts? The body takes them literally.
• Hubble snaps hypervelocity collision between asteroids.
• Skeptics continue to offer profound wisdom on UFOs. Or not.
• Searching for signatures of interstellar archaeology.
• Did giant meteorites slam Earth around AD 500?
• Solar storms could disrupt TV coverage of 2012 Olympics; new NASA satellite will predict what's coming.
• Cosmic Log: Dodging the arrow of time.
• Scientists explain why Clint Eastwood and John Wayne always win their shoot-outs. Steven Seagal could have told them that years ago.
• Mice given extra doses of new magnesium compound had better working memory, long-term memory and greater learning ability.
• Everywhere in a Flash: The quantum physics of photosynthesis.
• The Lancet retracts 1998 paper linking autism to vaccines.
• Researcher who started the vaccine-autism debate accused of unethical behaviour.
• Sweat and blood: Why mosquitoes pick and choose between humans.
• New tyrannosaur had more teeth than T. Rex.
• Trails found in rocks dating back 565 million years are thought to be earliest evidence of animal locomotion ever found.
• Torrential rains in Bolivia cause partial collapse of a giant limestone wall covered with dinosaur tracks -- revealing more dinosaur tracks.
• Traditionally they've been painted as a noble mission. Now, two new books tell the gruesome reality of the Very Unholy Crusades.
• Archaeologists in Britain claim to have discovered a part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever.
• Long lost theory on Silbury Hill is uncovered.
• Early draft of US Constitution found in Philadelphia.
• China through Victorian eyes.
• In China underworld, hacking for fun and profit.
• Pentagon's black budget tops $56 billion, with total 'defense' spending to top $740 billion. Meanwhile...
• Pentagon funds Spider-Man tech for real-life wall crawlers.

Big thanks to Greg and Red Pill Junkie.

Quote of the Day:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower