This site is offering a newly updated version of Erik Drexlers book "Engines of Creation" for free (as an e-book). Looks like he just updated it in Feb of 2007. For anyone who hasn't read the original "Engines of Creation", I highly recommend it if you are interested in nanotechnology or are just looking for a good read. It is one of my favorite books.

Updated version of Drexlers 'Engines of Creation'

January 1992, a freighter crossing the Pacific from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Wash., ran into rough weather near the International Date Line. As the ship heaved through the storm-tossed seas, several cargo containers on deck—including one filled with tens of thousands of plastic tub toys—came loose, fell overboard, and broke apart. Seven months after the spill, the plastic ducks, beavers, turtles, and frogs began washing up on beaches. Scientists who track ocean currents were ecstatic.

Even today, additional members of the tub-toy armada occasionally make landfall. The date and place of each of the nearly 1,000 toys recovered to date provide a data point, says Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer in Seattle. Some of the toys are well traveled indeed—one frog washed ashore in Scotland, and a duck turned up near Maine. However, most of the drifters have remained stuck in the Pacific Subarctic Gyre, a set of deepwater and surface currents spanning an area the size of the continental United States that generally flows counterclockwise around the northern Pacific Ocean.

Floating toy diaster helps educate

A mathematical formula can now predict how the frothy head on a beer changes over time, a finding that may have a wide range of commercial uses beyond pulling the perfect pint, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

Beer smarts:)

Of beer and bubbles: The formula for a perfect pint | Lifestyle | Reuters

hehehehehehe......or rather....muhahahahahahahahha.

Best joke ever...and so true

A vaccine designed to protect humans against the H5N1 influenza virus, known as bird flu, has been approved for the first time in the United States.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the approval Tuesday. Officials said the vaccine could be used in the event of an influenza pandemic to provide early limited protection in the months before a vaccine tailored to a specific pandemic strain of the virus could be produced.

FDA approves first U.S. bird flu vaccine - Nature

Johnny Cash's longtime lakeside home, a showcase where he wrote much of his famous music and entertained U.S. presidents, music royalty and visiting fans, was destroyed by fire on Tuesday.

Fire destroys Johnny Cash home - CNN.com

So much time on their hands....

Geekologie - Legos playing Wii

As many as 8,000 gallons of a toxic solvent spilled into the Ohio River Wednesday after a barge hit an underwater dam, Coast Guard and Illinois state officials told CNN.

Um.....doh.

8,000 gallons of�toxic�chemicals�spill into Ohio River - CNN.com

wow...this looks yummy....except for the walnuts. Deadly deadly walnuts...

BLACKBERRY BROWN-SUGAR CAKE Recipe at Epicurious.com

Total lunar eclipse on March 3rd. Next Sat. We should be able to see it as the moon rises. I hope it isn't cloudy.

NASA - Eclipses During 2007