Hello hello, I’m in a place called Vertigo …
- An anonymous submission to Phenomena Magazine reveals startling revelations about the recently revealed Leonardo Da Vinci painting of Mary Magdalene. Check the IP address, I’m sure it’s the good folks at the Maranatha Puzzle.
- The FDA in the USA has approved the first brain stem cell transplant. And my head I’d be scratchin’, while my thoughts were busy hatchin’, If I only had a brain…
- Get out of my head: Big Business hope to decode the brain’s secrets. If they patent “thinking”, and introduce a user-pays system, they’re not going to make any money from our species.
- Small time inventors cry foul on patent changes that will give too much power to Big Business.
- An accidental invention could eventually make the light bulb obsolete. I wonder if the proverbial light bulb appeared above the inventor’s head.
- SETI and the Cosmic Quarantine Hypothesis.
- Tenants find what they first thought was a bomb in their new home, but the previous owners say it’s a device designed to scare off aliens living underground.
- Doctor Who is to be given a risque spin-off for adults, with sex and swearing. I just can’t imagine K9 having sex and swearing like a dockworker, sorry. Instead of a scarf, the naughty doctor will wear a feather boa.
- A third of Brits believe time travel, ala the Tardis, will be possible in the future.
- CSICOP and skeptics gloat like fat kids with the key to the chocolate factory over failed predictions for 2004.
- We don’t know who the parents are, but meet the new planets in our neighbourhood.
- Flotillas of relatively simple space probes should be used to explore the solar system instead of single, high-tech rovers and orbiters.
- Sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail missions to Mars and should therefore be studied by NASA, warns a top-level panel of US researchers. There really isn’t much room in those space shuttles.
- The launch of Europe’s first mission to the planet of love, Venus, due to have taken place next Wednesday, has been postponed.
- Titan’s methane clouds may be spouting from geysers. That’s geyser, not geezer, you whippersnapper.
- Now you see it, now you don’t. Does Dark Matter exist?
- As NASA stutters and stumbles, the Dragon of China awakes to conquer the space race of the 21st Century.
- An activist’s tale: In southern China, the beating of a well-known campaigner exposes trouble in the villages.
- China’s Unquiet Countryside: As China’s cities boom, cash-strapped local governments face the disillusioned poor.
- What are the trends most likely to affect our immediate future? Some of the world’s smartest people provide their answers. My head’s full of straw, but please post your thoughts.
- This age of fanaticism is no time for non-believers to make enemies. Do Humanists need to be less fussy about working with the religious who share our commitment to social justice?
- The most detailed analysis to date of how humans differ from one another at the DNA level presents strong evidence natural selection shaped recent human evolution.
- Will John Cleese be the last Lemur left alive? He will be if the destruction of Madagascar’s forests continues.
- What can the past teach us about fighting flu pandemics?
- Dangerous levels of bacteria have been found in drinking water aboard US planes. Scotch and coke, please, but no ice.
- Sadly, a baby died after being fed a diet of raw vegetables by its Vegan parents. Animals who eat animals have more sense.
- Skeeter the narcoleptic poodle has been prescribed Ritalin for a rare disorder. Let sleeping dogs lie. I’m sure there’s many a cat who has the same disorder.
- A story of love and courage, between a US serviceman and a Japanese woman, alone together in North Korea.
- Ride the Tiger, a review of the first full English translation of Buddhism’s guide to the afterlife, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
- The Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuang may be guarding buried treasure. See Zahi, magnetic scanning works.
- A 1,700-year-old tomb containing bronze mirrors, porcelain, and money, and inscriptions of fish, beasts, dragons, and phoenixes has been found in eastern China.
- The world’s oldest noodles at 4000-years-of-age, have been unearthed in China. They’re being served with stir-fry mammoth.
Thanks Kat
Quote of the Day:
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
J.R.R.Tolkien
