Amphibious caterpillars!

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201003265

Oh, wow! Dennis Hopper reads beat poetry...

On Petticoat Junction!

Two-drug combination kills precancerous colon polyps

http://www.physorg.com/news188995706.html

Augmented reality business cards

These are really cool!

Vitamin B6 levels inversely correlated to colorectal cancer risk

http://www.physorg.com/news187978106.html

If businesses are paid to cut energy use...

Why don't we do the same thing for homeowners?

http://www.slate.com/id/2248558/

A roof is a terrible thing to waste.

Subhendu Guha

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=does-solar-power-need-a-revolution-10-03-21

The people who bust myths and urban legends

I love Snopes!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124958817

Spitzer Space Telescope

The Spitzer Space Telescope site is jaw-dropping terrific!

Videos are available in good quality and also in high definition through iTunes.

For example, using the Spitzer Space Telescope, it was possible for astronomers to determine that, around a young Sunlike star 500 light-years away, dust in the circumstellar disc was undergoing melting and crystallization to form olivine crystals!

Although these are "podcasts", they are "video podcasts".

http://spitzer.caltech.edu/video-audio/960-hiddenuniverse027-Showcase-Cooking-Up-Cometary-Crystals?autoplay=true&limit=20

To subscribe in iTunes, click on the iTunes button below the video.

http://spitzer.caltech.edu/

Earthquake in Chile

The damage to buildings in the recent earthquake in Chile was far worse than expected given the extremely strict building codes.

This does not bode well for the Pacific Northwest and for Japan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28yanev.html

Hayabusa might make it back to Earth!

This is unbelievable! The Hayabusa spacecraft, which was thought to be lost, is on its way to an Earth rendezvous this summer!

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1003/13hayabusa/

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/89510417.html

Oh, oh... Export land model

As an energy exporter gains foreign exchange, its economy booms, and it consumes progressively more of the energy it produces. There is therefore less for sale on the world market, even if there is no change in production level.

Saudi Arabia’s booming economy and soaring demand for electricity is increasing the kingdom’s reliance on oil to produce power. By 2012, it may be using 1.2 million barrels a day – more than twice current levels -- to meet its electricity needs. This increasing use of oil is occurring because the Saudis’ natural gas production cannot keep up with power demand.

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=3610

Compression of Morbidity

People are afraid of living a long time because they are afraid that that means they will be disabled for a long time, but it seems that what is happening is that the period of disability is remaining the same (or even shortening), while the functional lifespan is increasing.

And the average lifespan is increasing by 6 hours per day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_of_morbidity

"We're living longer because people are reaching old age in better health," said demographer James Vaupel, author of a review article appearing in the March 25 edition of Nature. But once it starts, the process of aging itself -- including dementia and heart disease -- is still happening at pretty much the same rate. "Deterioration, instead of being stretched out, is being postponed."

http://www.physorg.com/news188655254.html#firstCmt

Gynandromorph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynandromorph

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4709354

There are chickens that are gynandromorphs.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124529630

Excellent Astronomy Podcast

http://www.astronomycast.com/

Red dwarfs

On one hand, they have very long lifespans.

On the other hand, they tend to flare a lot, which would not be good for the atmosphere of a planet in the habitable zone or the life on that planet.

Another complication is that cool red stars seem not to form certain chemicals which would favor life.

http://spitzer.caltech.edu/images/2020-ssc2009-09a-Cool-Stars-May-Have-Different-Prebiotic-Chemical-Mix

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

What we love in life echoes through Eternity.

LED lights are almost ready for a major transition

Within a few years, the prices of LED lights for general illumination will go way down, and the performance will go way up. There will then be a huge transition, and if there is minimum Jevon's paradox, we might actually get energy savings!

http://www.primestarled.com/led-lights-portfolio/#/

A kind of Jevon's paradox

If you make something more efficient, sometimes people just use more of it.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/consumers-buy-more-efficient-refrigerators-but-keep-the-old-ones-humming/

The US no longer controls the price of oil

...the twin peaks of oil production in 2005 and 2008 reveal that while the world was able to respond to a moderate price advance coming out of 2002, nearly all of the price action above 40.00 dollars a barrel starting in late 2004 did not produce more supply.

http://www.oilprice.com/article-the-us-no-longer-controls-the-price-of-oil-in-a-peak-oil-world.html

Hilarious

Critics have remained unconvinced, despite the fact that many still can't differentiate between Emily Howell's work and that of a human. For instance, one music-lover who listened to Emily Howell's work praised it without knowing that it had come from a computer program. Half a year later, the same person attended one of Cope's lectures at the University of California-Santa Cruz on Emily Howell. After listening to a recording of the very same concert he had attended earlier, he told Cope that it was pretty music but lacked "heart or soul or depth."

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-02/composers-music-making-machine-stirs-controversy-about-creative-originality

More evidence of life on Mars as soon as 2012

Biological reactions often favor one isotope of an element over others. Such reactions can therefore leave signatures in the isotope ratios.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover is scheduled to land in 2012. It has a mass spectrometer that will be able to measure sulfur isotope abundances.

If sulfur 34 is depleted in sulfides compared to in sulfates, this would, on Earth, be an indication that microbes had converted the sulfates into sulfides.

If an asteroid is a threat to Earth

Instead of blowing it up, which might result in it reaggregating in a matter of hours,

If a sizeable asteroid is found heading towards Earth, one option is to nuke it. But too small a bomb would cause the fragments to fly apart only slowly, allowing them to clump together under their mutual gravity.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527514.700-terminator-asteroids-could-reform-after-nuke.html

mine it out of existence instead!

http://www.physorg.com/news187550107.html

We overeat because food is now designed to make us overeat

"Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/13/obesity-salt-fat-sugar-kessler

Asteroid impacts and antipodal fracturing

Toshiba ends 120 years of incandescents

http://www.pcworld.com/article/191694/lights_out_on_incandescent_bulb_production_at_toshiba.html

It's time to try out an LED.

Maybe the banksters think the easy growth is over because the cheap oil is gone

I wonder if one reason the banksters are so intent on looting the system, in what at first glance seems to be unenlightened self-interest, is that they know really serious energy supply problems are coming, and there wont be any recovery in the future anyway, so they might as well get what they can get now and get in the lifeboats...

http://energyassociation.blogspot.com/2010/01/matthew-simmons-latest-presentation.html

Tokyo Sky Tree broadcast tower

The first 1,000 feet is built... just 1,000 feet to go!

Hmm, usually, when a "tallest in the world" structure is built, it is a sign that an economic crash is coming right behind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Sky_Tree

http://www.tokyo-skytree.jp/

Intraterrestrial life

The biomass below the surface of the Earth easily that at the surface of the Earth.

While Mars, Ceres, the ice moons of the gas giant planets, and the ice dwarfs in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud may look barren at the surface, their subsurface environments are similar to subsurface environments on Earth, which we know teems with archaea at least.

The search for extraterrestrial life in the meantime focuses on intraterrestrial life.

http://www.physorg.com/news187384035.html

Cracked just gets better and better

http://www.cracked.com/

The movies

The only place the world is as it should be.

A masterpiece!

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

Happy Birthday, Karen!

She would have made 60. What we missed over these many years we will never know.

Even more water on the Moon!

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/nasa-finds-millions-tons-water-ice-lunar-craters-no-moon-bombing-necessary