While America is a young country not as prone as some others to preserving ‘relics’ of the dead, we do appear to have a thing for blood, which, if modern science progresses as some think it might, could result in some interesting historical clones. This article on the subject by El Pais columnist Marcos Balfagon reflects on this odd historical preoccupation, and on the wisdom of someday restoring...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?” With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines. One...

Soon we won’t need hypodermic needles. This device delivers a high-velocity jet of liquid that breaches the skin at the speed of sound: [T]he MIT team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has engineered a jet-injection system that delivers a range of doses to variable depths in a highly controlled manner. The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force...

How confused and ‘dangerous’ has German foreign policy become? For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, German Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser [ret.] pulls no punches, as he lays out in detail how Germany has disappointed the United States and its NATO partners in Europe with its U.N. Security Council abstention on action in Libya, its refusal to allow its forces to face the same dangers as its coalition partners...

The New York Times has an interesting and, I am sure, controversial opinion piece, which from the beginning (Title: “G.O.P. Nightmare Charts”) to its conclusion (see below) suggests that present trends “do not bode well for Republicans.” All sarcasm aside and keeping in mind that the Times is called a “liberal newspaper” and worse, that it is written in “a place for opinionated...

There is beauty for those who have the eyes to see it. There is peace for those who have the ears to listen to the facts about what beauty endures.

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The Historic SpaceX launch was scrubbed at the last minute. Newsy.com reports:

Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech: Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is basically a portable, poor man’s version of fMRI, Brainput measures the activity of your brain. This data is analyzed, and if Brainput detects that you’re multitasking, the software kicks in and helps you out. In the case of the Brainput research paper, [MIT's Erin Treacy] Solovey and her team set up a...

Six years ago, I found a group of Koch intimates running stealth initiative campaigns in a dozen states and more. They poured millions of anonymous dollars — seemingly coming from just three anonymous contributors — into pushing their Frankenstein legislation on the unwitting citizens of said states. When the story came to light, the national media ignored it. (The New York Times, at best, rather...

There was a story about solar energy in yesterday’s New York Times. There was a very different story about solar energy in today’s Los Angeles Times. It would be nice, very nice indeed, if policy makers in this country read both these stories and drew the appropriate conclusions. The New York Times story was about a wonderfully intelligent, market-based method of putting solar panel-generating electricity...

How long will it be before America’s friends and adversaries all have the same drone technology that the U.S. is using to such effect in places like Pakistan’s tribal areas? Based on this article by columnist Laura Gil of Colombia’s El Tiempo, that time has already arrived – along with some of the most complicated questions involving civil liberties, human rights and international...

Who needs to lift those heavy glasses anymore to get drunk? Now there’s a mouth spray to do it quicker and with less effort.

Tonight will be a night to remember. A night of a Supermoon. Newsy.com reports:

UPDATE: Related in more ways than one to the “brain drain,” especially as it affects our young people, is a “brain waste.” Paul Krugman addresses how some of our policies are contributing to “wasting the minds of a whole generation.” Please read it here == Original Post: The unemployment in Spain “just hit a depression-level 24.4 percent.” Portugal, and Greece are not faring much better. Meanwhile...

TechnoLlama, with a view from abroad: From the start the Bill was advertised with an unhealthy dose of jingoism, its proponents sold it as a way to defend against foreign cyber-threats. While not mentioned specifically, the Act talks mostly about US intelligence agencies sharing information with private parties (with adequate security clearance) and viceversa. Checks and balances are supposedly placed on the...

In a rushed vote, the House passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 248 to168. Techdirt’s Leigh Beadon calls it an explicit attack on the freedoms of every American: Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for “cybersecurity” or “national security” purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed....

memeorandum with color annotationOne of my favorite sites for seeing what’s hot in the political blogosphere is memeorandum. Fortunately, it’s a favorite haunt of Andy Baio, too. Baio is a writer and tech entrepreneur in Portland, OR. He’s fashioned a cool tool that illustrates the political leanings of the blogs featured in discussion on memeorandum. Research (Glance and Adamic) in the early...