Buckypaper is the new steel

I've heard about this innovative material before & now more articles about it are popping up online.
Think: the flexibility of paper, strength of steel when stacked together, conductivity of copper & silicon and the heat distribution of aluminium. The only problem at the moment seems to be bonding.
The material is made of carbon nanotubes, which makes for a very smooth surface, rending adhesives ineffective. Now the goal is to artificially add defects to parts of the surface, so that adhesives can be used.
So what does this mean in future?
Customising the shape of your car will be easy, vehicles will be lighter & therefore faster, while burning a lot less fuel to move the weight.
Land speed records will shattered, structures will be much lighter and yet still be able to withstand forces exerted on them, intricate circuitry that is light and doesn't overheat, etc etc.
There's even talk of using it for laptop computers to draw heat away without adding weight to the laptop.
Frankly, I think that as production scales up & costs are decreased, we're going to see Buckypaper being used in many different industries.

Veterinary X-Prize

Finally there may be an easier solution to the unwanted pet problem in South Africa (& the world). Billionaire Gary Michelson is a surgeon-turned-inventor who has devised a number of surgical instruments, operative methods and medical implants. He is offering 25 million USD to to anyone who can invent the first safe non-surgical method to spay or neuter pets.
Fanfreakingtastic!
Local institutions like the SPCA, FORA & Wet Nose would welcome this method, considering how many pet owners do not bother to neuter their animals, or do not have the funds to.
Apparently in America, 4 to 6 million animals are euthanised each year! I wonder what the local statistics are...
Let's hope that someone wins the grant & produces a methods that is safe and cheap! There are thousands upon thousands of unwanted pets in South Africa, thanks to irresponsible pet owners.

All I want for Christmas is a jacket made of cheese?!

So according to a Dr. Neal Barnard (founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) cheese can be addictive - because it contains small amounts of morphine made in the cow's liver. Apparently when the dairy protein is broken apart in the stomach during digestion, it releases the opiate molecules.
That would explain why some people can't seem to get enough of it...
However, there's cheese addictions & cheese addictions!
Take this Canadian artist for example. He seems to use cheese quite a lot. Perhaps his mother denied him the pleasure as a child & he's now making up for lost time by over-indulging.
I'm sure the creative process must be quite frustrating if you can't finish a piece because the craving constantly overwhelms you & you keep nibbling on the work...
Check out his Cheese Room, Candy Chair & the bed made of ham.

So long Bob & thanks for all the rats!

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Dictators, Habit #3; Refuse All Assistance
In the past there have been numerous stories of conditions worsening in Zimbabwe and of people going to great lengths to keep feeding themselves.
This article in the Cape Argus is an indication of just how bad things have gotten in Zim; people are eating rats to keep surviving & following railway lines where grain is transported, hoping to pick up a few stray seeds.
Obviously Robert Mugabe's tactic of "Food crisis? What food crisis?" is still working.
Illegal immigrants are still flooding into South Africa on a daily basis, desperate to send home food to their families while Bob sits in his presidential palace cutting up a nice, juicy steak every night.
And while Bob chews through that medium/rare morsel, I have to wonder how many of those starving Zimbabweans know that 1) Robert Mugabe's diet hasn't suffered at all in the last ten years, 2) Mr . Mugabe has regularly refused food aid from the US - using various excuses & 3) the Zanu PF government has done almost nothing about the crisis, often denying that there is one...
Obviously Bob's dementia is now available in a handy tablet form, taken daily by every Zanu PF cabinet member - with water after a full gourmet meal!

Yeti or stretch of the imagination?

I've been mulling over this story since I read about it 2 days ago.
Apparently on the left is the footprint of a Yeti and on the right is a human footprint.
Firstly, I feel sorry for the poor individual who had to take their shoe & sock off in frozen Nepal for the shot on the right.
Secondly, I'm supposed to believe that the shot on the left is actually a footprint of a bipedal creature?! Riiiiight. I mean, I have an imagination, a really good one at that. But that's pushing it.
I'm more likely to believe that a bunch of deer got drunk, followed the researchers around, measured their feet at night, made their own mock-up of a human foot (which is quite difficult without opposable thumbs I must tell you - & that'll explain the odd shape better than a change in temperature would) & then trotted around leaving funny impressions in the snow before snickering off and watching the enthralled researchers from behind a bush.
Yehp, about as believable as an abominable snow man that has so cleverly eluded researchers and their cameras for almost a hundred years now.

Zimbabwe's vets up in arms! (Okay, so I couldn't resist the pun)

That's "vets" in the sense of war veterans and not those wealthy people who charge you more money to treat your dog's sniffles than you'd pay to eat at one of Johannesburg's finest restaurants...
So why are these war veterans up the miff tree? Because Morgan Tsvangirai is not attending the latest summit claiming to address the "Zimbabwe Crisis".
The leader of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association (They have an association for this?!) has threatened to "take action" against Tsvangirai, who is not attending the talks in Swaziland due to troubles with travel documents.
Surprise, surprise! The Zimbabwean government refused to issue Tsvangirai with a new passport, providing him with emergency travel documents only...
Sounds very conducive to change and democracy in Zimbabwe, now doesn't it?
Oh yeah and it gets better; the leader of this association for war vets, Mr Jabulani Sibanda has accused Tsvangirai of causing Zimbabweans "to suffer" and that "If he behaves the way he is behaving, this nation will take action to defend itself from him. He is leaving the people of Zimbabwe with one option: to take action."
Oh boy, that's rich considering where it's coming from.
The talks have been postponed till Monday and will now be held in Harare, but Morgan Tsvangirai has stated that he will continue to boycott unless the government issues him a passport.
The government has countered this by stating that there is no paper to issue new passports with.
There's a paper crisis in Zim?!?! I guess it'll have to be filed under the Continuing Crises List, right under No Food, No Electricity, No Fuel, No Democracy & No Slush Fund for the War Vets, No Brill Cream for Bob's Hairdo, etc etc...

Renew your rodent's recall

So apparently researchers have been able to erase traumatic memories from the minds of mice, by manipulating one protein...
So naturally as a Supervillain, I immediately thought; Okay. Of mice and so what of men?
How much longer will it be until we can manipulate people's minds, forming them into the perfect passive minions we've always wanted?
Imagine being able to wipe the slate clean with your wife; she'll never know how often you've forgotten your anniversary - you could make her forget you've even had an anniversary!
Or your previously disgruntled staff will forget about what a cheap-skate boss you've been, or how those bonuses you mentioned, never got paid.
You could turn your naughty kids into obedient little angels within a single day, or maybe even erase that memory of your bad first impression with that hottie you met at the bar...
There's so much potential here; especially for gullible 'super heroes'...
"Now if you'll just step into this little machine please. Hold still while I put this device over your head and jab you with this little needle. You'll be out in no time!"

How did we end up here?

Take a look at this slide show from Vanity Fair, featuring some iconic photos from the publication through the years and ask yourself this: how (and why?) has public perception of "beauty" & attractiveness changed?
Long gone are the days of Cary Grant & Jean Harlow - people who by today's standards wouldn't be considered that good-looking. And yet in their time, they were the pin-ups & heart-throbs.
These days it's botoxed "beauties" that blaze their ways across magazine covers as the ambassadors of attractiveness.
Somewhere, someone made the wrong turn at Albequerque...

Keystroke eavesdropping

And you thought you were pretty clever; typing in your password quickly & making sure no one was watching. Well now they don't have to.
Remember the days when individual keys on ATMs emitted a unique sound when pressed, until someone realised how easy it was to figure out people's passwords... It took a while, but eventually each key sounded the same note as all the others on the keypad.
What has this got to do with your keyboard and password? Well if you've ever wondered how a keyboard works on a computer, you will no doubt have wondered how long it would be until someone could guess your password by standing next to you and recording those little electronic impulses sent by each keystroke.
Four guys from the Security and Cryptology Laboratory in Switzerland have figured out how to do it remotely; by measuring the electromagnetic waves each keystroke creates.
They found four different ways to fully or partially recover keystrokes from 11 different wired keyboards - but before you throw a "but" in my direction, read the article. You'll see that the keyboards were a range of models from different years and even a laptop keyboard was tested (Check out the sample videos).
So what does this mean?
A hell of a lot for information security in the future. It's not like every single PC-user out there has super-secret information, but there are many companies out there that are going to have consider methods to guard against this.
But how exactly do you counter this? While a couple of answers spring to mind, they're all methods that can be worked around...

Umbrellas in space, oh my!

In an effort to combat climate change, individuals have dreamed up all sorts of ideas; like an array of umbrellas that would cast an even shadow over the earth...
So while self-tan sales would go up, what exactly are the plants supposed to do - take a vacation from photosynthesis?
It's about as ambitious as Tsiolkovsky's Space Elevator. And while both would be very expensive projects, at least the space elevator would be useful in the long run.