Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

APOD: 2011 September 4 - In the Shadow of Saturn

NASA’s curiously worded press release earlier this week about an event later today prompted speculation that the space agency had discovered extraterrestrial life; going by a leak ahead of conference, it’s actually something about as alien as you can get from physiology as we know it, only on this very planet. According to NOS, NASA has found a new type of bacteria in Mono Lake, California, which lives with levels of arsenic in its biology that were hitherto believed impossible.

NASA find new lifeform: arsenic microbe widens likelihood of extraterrestrial life - SlashGear

The iconic writer reveals the shape of things to come, with 45 tips for survival and a matching glossary of the new words you'll need to talk about your messed-up future.

A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years - The Globe and Mail

“According to the RIAA, the Pirate Bay has stolen about 46 times more dollars than actually exist on Earth.”

If you can't beat a dead horse, join him.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you're trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I'd like to work for you.

Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

Taxpayers should get a receipt so they know what they're paying for, a think tank called Third Way argues in a new paper.

Here's a sample from the group. It includes federal income tax and FICA, which funds Medicare and Social Security. Details are here.

What we pay for provides a view of this.

Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt. : Planet Money : NPR

We entrust Google with our most private communications because we assume the company takes every precaution to safeguard our data. It doesn't. A Google engineer spied on four underage teens for months before the company was notified of the abuses.

GCreep: Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats (Updated)

A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. The team engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus to assemble the components needed to crack apart a molecule of water, yielding a fourfold boost in efficiency over similar processes.

MIT Researchers Harness Viruses to Turn Water Into Hydrogen Fuel | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Some of these are really interesting.

30 Most Incredible Abstract Satellite Images of Earth : Environmental News Blog | Environmental Graffiti

Trillions and Zillions of Ideas.

Consciousness is a Ball.

Ideas are like fish. Originality is just the ideas you caught.

David Lynch, on Ideas (and TM)