It’s fair to say that at the just-concluded G-8 Summit in Japan, the world’s leading industrialized nations haven’t covered themselves in glory. Pierre Rousselin writes for France’s Le Figaro newspaper: “Confronted with skyrocketing oil prices, the rising cost of food, the financial crisis, chaos in the money markets and finally, global warming, the powerful have no convincing...

Columnist Steven Greenhut writes: Syndicated columnist Bob Novak, writing about the surprising number of conservatives who are backing Democrat Barack Obama rather than Republican John McCain for the presidency, captured their widespread sentiment when he quoted one "Obamacon" with impeccable GOP credentials: "The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling...

At the risk of exposing my nerdish side I just had to post this video. It must have taken forever to put together.

Today marks the 100th anniversay of one of the enduring mysteries of the modern era. On June 30, 1908 an object of some sort exploded above some distance above near the Tunguska River in Siberia. The exact nature of the object remains a mystery but the effects were mind boggling. For an area of close to 1,000 square miles everything was flattened. Upwards of 80,000,000 trees were destroyed and there was...

One of the more baffling news stories we have been covering on WORLDMEETS.US is that over the resumption of American beef imports to South Korea. For the past two months, daily protests and candlelight vigils have paralyzed the heart of Seoul over what appears to most Americans as a severe over-reaction to a minor trade issue.

From moderate cartoonist Tom Briscoe:

According to this report from the New York Times, the Federal Government is moving to dismiss the lawsuit attempting to stop the activation of the CERN Large Haldron Collider in France. A large portion of the motion to dismiss seems to be coming from legal maneuvering as opposed to an argument on the merits of the case. Calling its claims “overly speculative and not credible,” and saying that it is too late...

It turns out that while making the cycling video (thanks for the kind comments and emails!) I was bit by a spider. That bite turned into an adventure in itching the likes of which I had not endured before, but not near as bad as the shocking story of “M” told in this week’s New Yorker. Itching is quite the diabolical sensation: Though scratching can provide momentary relief, it often makes...

(See Parts One and Two) For those following this story, the concerns expressed by a number of scientists over the Large Hadron Collider are more complex (make that far more complex) then earlier descriptions provided here. With thanks to JTankers in previous comment threads, I went and gave a listen to an interview with Nuclear Physicist Walter Wagner. (Parts one, two, three and four.) A number of facts about...

Following my original post on Europe’s CERN particle-physics lab’s safety review of the massive, Large Hadron Collider in France and Switzerland, we received quite a bit of feedback by comments and e-mail. Some of the more compelling information provided is to be found at the LHC Facts web site. Rather than copying a lot of information here, I’ll leave it to you to click through and check it out,...

It’s taken me a while to get around to Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid? in the July/August Atlantic, and I have no excuse. For all its assertion that we need to be immersed in narrative and longer stretches of prose, at 4,000 words, it’s not even that lengthy an article! In it Carr says: The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork,...

Following the release of a safety report on the Large Hadron Collider, it appears that the world’s largest particle accelerator is on track to begin operations next summer. This comes in spite of fears on the part of some observers that it could create miniature black holes which could destroy the planet. Europe’s CERN particle-physics lab has issued its long-awaited report on safety issues surrounding...

Speaking as an amateur home brewer, I’m a big fan of yeast. They are marvelous little critters who have the incredible ability to eat sugar and excrete alcohol. What’s not to love? Other sorts of yeast make it possible for us to have bread to eat and medical products to improve and extend our lives. Well, now there may be one more, earth shaking reason to cheer for miniscule engines of biology....

Yesterday I quoted Stephen J. Dubner’s criticism of Michael Pollan and the local food movement and concluded, generously, that “Dubner’s contribution to the [food] debate is to keep it real.” Then I listened to his appearance (mp3) on The Takeaway. Dubner apparently hardly even bothered to prepare for the show. Said he, straight off, when the interviewer assumed he had “actually been...

Stephen J. Dubner wonders, do we really need a few billion locavores? And with that wonder he skewers the notion that the local food movement can really enhance the economic, environmental and social health of our planet as much as some Michael Pollan adherents might hope. His piece starts out with this anecdote: We made some ice cream at home last weekend. Someone had given one of the kids an ice cream maker...

From the BBC: High-resolution satellite images have revealed the “rapid deforestation” of Papua New Guinea’s biodiversity rich rainforests over the past 30 years. An international team of researchers estimates that the current rate of loss could result in more than half of the nation’s tree cover being lost by 2021. They added that the main threats came from commercial logging and burning. Existing...

The blame game has already been going on, and is likely to become ugly and fierce as to who is causing maximum pollution and contributing towards visible changes in environment. On the one side we have “developed” countries refusing to have a critical look at their reckless consumerism. While on the other are the “developing” countries wanting to mindlessly ape the Western lifestyle...

Why is New York being invaded by German tourists like ‘Troy by the Greeks?’ According to Die Zeit’s New York Correspondent Eva Schweitzer, they come to the ‘Big Apple’ for Apples – the computer kind … but the hardships that they endure are nothing compared to the bind that American find themselves in. Schweitzer writes:

CNN Video (preceded by a brief commercial) In another seemingly-perfect launch, the Space Shuttle Discovery is on its way to the International Space Station. Like many space geeks, I remained a bit tense until the solid rocket boosters were dropped but it now appears everything is right on target. The shuttle will be taking a Japanese-designed lab module to the space station, it weighs in at about 16 tons and...

NASA’s successful landing on Mars was not only a technical and scientific achievement, but a political one. Pierre-Yves Frei writes for the Tribine de Geneve of Switzerland: “Just as the Moon was conquered due to the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR, the conquest of Mars is meant to retain American leadership space … Beijing has promised to put people to the moon by 2025. Suddenly, the...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

Joke: Two computers got married. They had a baby computer. What was the baby computer’s first word? “Data…” Reality: A computer has now been “trained” to read peoples’ word images — which could be a boon to political consultants wanting to get into voters’ heads. And you think politicians pander a lot NOW..? A computer has been trained to “read”...

With America’s sixth successful unmanned landing on Mars, the Russians appear to be feeling a bit of “space envy.” Andrei Kislyakov writes for Russia’s Novosti news service: “It seems that the Americans take the Red Planet quite seriously. On May 26, NASA’s Phoenix Lander touched down in the vicinity of the planet’s North Pole. … People might wonder, how is America’s...

At the time of this writing, we are slightly more than 36 hours from the long anticipated landing of the Phoenix on the cold surface of the Norther polar region of Mars. At least we hope it’s a landing, as opposed to an impact. There is nothing simple about pulling off a landing on the red planet and, to date, we are running about a fifty percent success rate. The spectacular achievements of the twin...

Deng Coy Miel, Singapore