This Youtube link perhaps explains it… :)

“Look Better-Feel Better-Wake Up Your Body”… Umm, okay. All hail SA_Steve for that highly weird picture.

As the Earth is warming up, arctic ice cover is melting away at an increasing rate. Estimates have been given that around 20% of Earth’s yet untapped resources are within the Arctic Circle.

In order to illustrate the geopolitical risks behind nations claiming parts of the arctic as their own, a map has been created by the good people of Durham University.

The map can be seen here. The power players are Russia, Denmark, USA, Canada and Norway.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a mechanical device dating to the ancient Greece. It was used at least for time-related and astronomical calculations.

Why I’m interested in it, is that in essence, it’s an about 1900 year old mechanical computer. Research is still ongoing as to the details what it is and what it does.

Now some more of the internal functionality and purpose has been deciphered – one of the functions was the timing of the ancient Olympic Games!

Nature has the story. You can read the paper too.

Legal interception (i.e. spying of communications done by the instances of the government, with a permission) is coming soon to an ISP near you. Unless it’s already there, of course. Basically, if you are one of the Bad Guys(tm), all your communications would be spied upon and examined in detail. Of course, even if you are one of the Good Guys(tm) your communications would need to be spied upon and examined in detail, but that would surely be for your own protection and safety.

“But what about Skype – surely they can’t eavesdrop on Skype, I heard it’s secure and encrypted”

Well…
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If James Brown and Einstein were accelerated to near-lightspeed and then collided inside a particle accelerator, the result would be some funky science – a bit like this prime number generating formula.

Spoiler: a(n) = a(n-1) + gcd(n,a(n-1)), a(1)=7, n >= 2. Calculate a(n)-a(n-1), skip the 1′s and remove duplicates.

This short BBC clip about the statues of Bamiyan was fascinating. It might be that there is still one huge Buddha-statue intact on the valley floor, currently hidden under water. Considering that the Taleban shelled and destroyed the Buddha-statues and the elaborate cave paintings behind them, finding that hidden one (if it still remains) would be a major archaeological find.

After consuming vast amounts of the spice melange and taking inspiration from Nostradamus, Gartner presents their view of the Top 10 Disruptive Technologies for 2008-2012. It’s an interesting list, in many ways, although I think it’s lacking some very big things.
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This just in, water on Mars!

My jaw really dropped when I saw this: an elephant paints a painting. This is simply just awesome. Check the video on YouTube.

In the background you can see other elephants painting other things, and the keepers hauling some of the finished paintings for people to see. Therefore I don’t think the elephants have been taught to draw just one thing. It seems that the same elephant indeed draws the same thing, exactly the same way every time. In other words, it’s just repeating a learned pattern. It’s not creating the picture.

Well, I still want to say that the painting is very sweet: an elephant carrying a red-orange flower in its trunk. Even though the elephant did not use its creativity to make it from nothing.