Chrisopher Reeve died yesterday

Superman has fallen

] Gmail was created by the web search company Google in
] April 2004 amid much excitement as every user is promised
] an unprecedented gigabyte of storage space for messages.
] Google encourages users to keep all their old messages
] and automatically searches these to determine what kind
] of web advertisements might interest users.
]
] But Gmail's copious storage space has inspired a number
] of programmers to come up with completely novel ways of
] using the service.
]
] These include a "weblog" or online message board that
] uses Gmail to store postings and a desktop file system
] that plugs straight into the Gmail system.

Article: Google's Gmail inspires imaginative 'hacks' | New Scientist

This is pretty neat. Scientists have isolated a bacterium that turns a toxin into a plastic...very useful:)

Bacteria turn toxin into plastic

From skullaria:

I love all the jibjab animations.

This one is too funny.

I've memed so much discussion about this but haven't memed the meme itself! - T

JIBJAB does 'This land is our land' Political Humor at its best

] By raiding nature's tool cabinet, researchers have
] developed a potentially faster and more practical version
] of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), itself a
] foundation of modern genetics.
]
] The breakthrough, called helicase-dependent amplification
] (HDA), could result in small, hand-held devices which
] enable doctors to test blood samples directly in the
] surgery and forensic teams to detect a suspect's DNA at a
] crime scene.

nano says:

I am going to go ahead and file this one under "Damnit, why didn't I think of that". This is a discovery that someone could have made ~25 years ago. Helicases were discovered in 1976, and Mullis presented PCR to the world in the early 80s. If Kary had of thought about adding helicases to his tube of nucleotides and polymerase, it would have saved alot of work for grad students in the 80s (of course, just the fact that he came up with PCR already saved grad students from alot of work, but whose counting). PCR sans helicases require temperature changes in a cyclic fashion in order to make the copies of the DNA. Before the invention of the thermal cycler (god bless this machine), grad students would have to move tubes from water bath to water bath by hand (keep in mind that to make enough copies to work with, the PCR reaction has to be cycled through all required temps ~25-30 times, which resulted in hours of moving tubes every couple of minutes to a different water bath (once again, god bless the thermal cycler).
Adding helicases to the mix was a genious idea - could be nobel worthy. With helicases, the reaction can take place at 37 degrees, which means that PCR just got portable, and cheaper too (helpful for labs without alot of money to buy a thermal cycler). My hats off to these scientists....its always those discoveries that were sitting right in front of our faces for years that are sometimes the most amazing.

New Scientist

] A top Clinton-era expert on Europe and security warns
] that if the deadly Madrid bombings prove to be the work
] of al-Qaida, it could transform politics throughout
] Europe

An interesting point in this analysis which is different then mine is that I would have thought that Al'Q would have supported the socialists in spain, because doing so would remove spain from the table in terms of the conflict in the middle east. But this guy says that they support the right, so that the issue is less likely to be resolved peacefully. To me that seems like a suprising result. As an asymetrical element fighting a democratic state, I would think that I would want to use the element of shock to encourage the election of a government which is pliable and will do things that I want them to do, rather then the election of a government which is rigid and will attempt to engage me directly in a conventional way that I can't defend myself against.

Can anyone point me at a resource that discusses this in more detail?

Salon.com News | Spanish bombs

] Researchers are reporting new evidence supporting their
] earlier discovery of an inexpensive "tabletop" device
] that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion
] reactions.
]
] The researchers believe the new evidence shows that
] "sonofusion" generates nuclear reactions by creating tiny
] bubbles that implode with tremendous force. Nuclear
] fusion reactors have historically required large,
] multibillion-dollar machines, but sonofusion devices
] might be built for a fraction of that cost.

Freakin cool

Evidence bubbles over to support tabletop nuclear fusion device

Check out the picture at the top left. This guy is an independent who managed to get elected despite being opposed by both liberal and conservative media in the country. He is very much a product of the internet. He is a Howard Dean who made it. The traditional sources of power in South Korea are nailing this guys ass to the wall because he is an outsider. Of course, he is not without fault. He would have avoided impeachment if he had agreed to apologize over some technical elections issue. He refuse to do so, and so they booted him. Of course, its entirely possible that the call for an apology was literally an attempt to put him in a catch 22 situation where if he agreed to apologize he would be admitting wrongdoing and would be subsequently impeached anyway.

All in all, you can chalk this up next to Dean's implosion as a failure of the new media to challenge the present world order.

President of South Korea impeached

] Called the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton, or
] BLEEX, it is part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects
] Agency venture designed to help foot soldiers carry
] heavier loads over even longer distances, by connecting
] robotic supports to their legs to reduce the load.

New Scientist - Exoskeleton

] A federal appeals court has agreed to hear a request from
] the woman formerly known as "Jane Roe" to reconsider the
] 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that
] legalized abortion.

CNN.com - Effort to reopen Roe v. Wade - Feb. 19, 2004