Global warming came to an abrupt end this summer
The average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average – the 34th coolest on record, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. August was also below the long-term average. The analysis is based on records [...]

Ardi – First Ape Woman
She lived at the dawn of a new era, when chimps and people began walking (or climbing) along their own evolutionary trails.  This is Ardi – the oldest member of the human family tree we’ve found so far.  Short, hairy and with long arms, she roamed the forests of Africa 4.4million [...]

Two Romanians accused of sophisticated phishing attacks targeting major financial institutions have been extradited to the US for trial.
25 year old Petru Bogdan Belbita and 28 year old Cornel Ionut Tonita, both from Romania, were arrested in Canada and Croatia respectively.  They stand accused, along with five other defendants, of duping customers of financial institutions, [...]

Overstressing the ultra ultra conservative moral fiber
of an overly conservative society?

A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.
Abdul Mouti Bayoumi said supplying the item was akin to spreading vice in society, a crime punishable by death in Islamic Sharia law.
The device is [...]

The woman who inspired the classic Beatles song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, has died at aged 46, a charity said today. The song featured on the ground-breaking 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
John Lennon’s elder son Julian said it was inspired by a picture he drew of his classmate Lucy O’Donnell [...]

 
Job seekers queue up to attend a job fair  in Chicago.
Despite signs that the economy has resumed growing, unemployed Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.  Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government [...]

 
Grandparents are stepping up, and the American family may never be the same.  A few years ago, a key microtrend was the Working Retired — aging Americans who were so enjoying work and health that they either wouldn’t retire or were starting second careers altogether. One incidental effect was that grandparents weren’t around to help [...]

Najibullah Zazi after his arrest in a terrorism investigation
Eight years after 9/11, the specter of terrorism still haunts the United States. Just last week, F.B.I. agents were working double time to unravel the alarming case of a Denver airport shuttle driver accused of training with explosives in Pakistan and buying bomb-making chemicals. In Dallas, a [...]

Filoha Meadows in central Colorado
A refuge for the Ute Indians and a transit corridor for the marble quarried for the Washington Monument, Filoha Meadows in central Colorado has been used as farmland, an arthritic retreat center, and a movie set. Developers eyed it to build 15,000 square-foot homes, while others envisioned the entire area under [...]

Chinese researchers have unearthed the fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings in northeastern China, which they suggest is a missing link in dinosaurs’ evolution into birds.   In a paper in the journal Nature, they said they found the well-preserved fossil of the “Anchiornis huxleyi,” which roamed the earth some 160 million years ago, [...]

Artist’s rendering, Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway
The Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway, a 40km long marine causeway featuring a 22km bridge and 18km embankments connecting the west coast of Qatar to the east coast of Bahrain, is scheduled to begin construction in 2010.   The $3 billion project was originally scheduled to begin last year in May 2008, however in [...]

Replica of the Ark of the Covenant in the Royal Arch Room of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial.
When you hear the words “Ark of the Covenant” what comes to mind? For some, Steven Spielberg’s film “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” provides the most vivid pop-culture reference to this mysterious sacred [...]

Archaeologists have found new clues from the Mayan ruins of Kiuic in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:
… The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
“The people just walked away and left everything in place,” says archaeologist George Bey of [...]

Job Voyager is a set of interactive charts showing changing occupations reported to the US Census Bureau from 1850-2000. It was made by Jeffrey Heer of the University of California at Berkeley from data collected by the University of Minnesota’s Population Center using the visualization software Flare. You can use the feature to examine the [...]

More skilled immigrants are giving up their American dreams to pursue careers back home, raising concerns that the U.S. may lose its competitive edge in science, technology and other fields.
 

Chinese government workers dressed in traditional costumes take part in a competition of singing patriotic songs in Chengdu.
Chinese citizens and government workers have been preparing for months for their upcoming celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1st. Parts of Beijing have been shut down several [...]

Dorm life has become a central part of the
college experience, but may soon go away
Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which “going to college” means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like [...]

A skeleton, found at one of the most important, but least understood, Roman sites in Britain is puzzling experts from The University of Nottingham.
A skeleton, found at one of the most important, but least understood, Roman sites in Britain is puzzling experts from The University of Nottingham.

Read it and weep…

Scathing and right-on visual commentary on the lotto from Cracked.com — it’s not just a tax on innumeracy, it’s a finely tuned psychological weapon used to exploit cognitive blind-spots and profit from human misery.
The recession has seen a rise in lotto sales as people streamline their financial idiocy from “paying for money [...]

 
Space time continuum may be the stuff of Star Trek, but it’s not mere fiction to Holly Branigan. The Edinburgh University psychologist can actually “see” time:
“I thought everyone thought like I did, says Holly Branigan, also a scientist at Edinburgh University, and someone with time-space synaesthesia.
“I found out when I attended a talk in the [...]

One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Americans are still feeling the effects of the credit crisis that roiled the financial system and crashed the stock market. Many are searching for jobs, recalibrating their investments or quietly licking their wounds. In many cases, their story comes down to a number. And, in many cases, [...]

1990 Mazda Miata
While the rare-car world focuses on rare Bugattis and 1960s muscle cars, lots of car enthusiasts might  unknowingly have potential top-dollar classics gathering value in their garages, overlooked by today’s collectors. They are the Japanese import models of yesteryear. (Pics)
 

A Ballsy Invention At The Time

The first Nerf product debuted forty years ago today. It began as a humble orange ball created by toy developer Reyn Guyer. His team designed several games that could be played with it and marketed it to Milton Bradley. That company turned him down. So Guyer took his product to [...]

Tough figures for this big state!

Out of a job? If you live in the Great State of California, you’re in good company: two out of five working-age Californians do not have a job!
“The current recession stands apart from prior downturns for both the depth and breadth of destruction in the job market,” the report says. [...]

Have we reached magnetic polarity escape velocity yet?

Scientists have long speculated about the existence of magnetic materials that have only one pole, instead of both negative and postive poles. Claudio Castelnovo of the University of Oxford thinks that his team has found evidence of the existence of these monopoles in certain rare-materials known as “spin ices”:
At [...]