Google is looking for a new logo, with the help of Dilbert. In this interview, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams said, "This partnership exceeded my wildest dreams... I hoped I would get a free Google shirt, and I got three of them plus a mug".

What's it like to pop a water balloon in zero-gravity? These NASA scientists show you here. (Via BBspot.)

"Copy-Proof" CDs cracked with a 99-cent marker pen.

What exactly is deja vu? This explanation sounds haunting familiar, as if I've heard it somewhere before. Either that, or it's a glitch in the Matrix...

The Top 10 Biggest Lies Told on the Internet.

There's enough fuel in the Arctic to power the Earth for centuries in the form of hydrates. According to the article, "gas hydrate reserves may well represent more than twice the energy value of all other fossil fuels–gas, oil, and coal–combined".

Wired has a detailed review of Steven Wolfram's new book, A New Kind of Science. I at least have to give him credit for boldness. Business Week has a good review, too.

China is planning to build a base on the Moon.

IBM scientists have developed carbon nanotubule transistors that "substantially outperform" the best silicon counterparts. Moore's Law marches on...

Spice up your marriage with these sex tips from Donald Rumsfeld! (Via Neoflux.)

How many moons does Jupiter have? We're up to 39 now. Astronomers have discovered 11 more moons.

"Meat is good food", according to PWEETA (People Who Enjoy Eating Tasty Animals). (Via BBspot.)

"Can a Child Love a Robot?": So far, children seem to be able to tell the difference between a robotic dog and a real dog. But this may change as such toys like the Aibo become more realistic. The article notes that It's already been shown that elderly nursing home patients who cannot keep real pets still get many of the health benefits (such as lowered blood pressure) by holding and caring for mechanical dogs as they would for caring for real dogs.

Everything you know about Star Wars is wrong: Jonathan Last argues that the Empire should be considered the good guys and that the rebel alliance is just a bunch of terrorists. (Via Neoflux.)

Did your computer help distribute pirate copies of the new Star Wars movie? It might have, if hackers were able to create a hidden folder inside your recycle bin open to the rest of the internet.

An asteroid impact probably started the era of dinosaurs before another asteroid ended it.

Fingerprint sensors can be easily fooled by gummi bears. Then once you've used the fake gummi finger to get past the security checkpoint, you can just "eat the evidence". More details here.

Napster is finally dead.

Only in Ireland can you get free drink vouchers via SMS.

MIT researchers have shown that it is possible to create extremely realistic forgery videos of people saying things that they've never actually said. This should be a boon to political propagandists around the world.

I shouldn't be surprised that The Onion frequently gets angry e-mails from clueless AOL users who can't tell the difference between satire and serious news.

Unmanned "snipers in the sky" could change the nature of warfare by giving the US government the capability to assassinate individual bad guys from a mile up in the air. (These would clearly fit on the high end of the "Top Murder Weapons by Income".)

"Spintronics": An excellent review article from Scientific American.

Top 10 Things we want to hear Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) say in the new Star Wars movie. (Via Fark.)

Napster is on the verge of death. The CEO has quit, and the "remaining employees were offered two unappealing options: Quit now and receive severance pay, or take one week of unpaid leave, hoping somebody will revive the once powerful file-trading company". Almost all of the employees are choosing the first option.

Spacewar, the first computer videogame turns 40. An online version is available here.

MSNBC has a very favorable review of Abiword, the free open-source cross-platform word processor.

Google AdWord Poetry.

The first starship powered by solar sails is scheduled to be launched in the autumn of 2002.

US space war capabilities are pretty damned impressive but we should watch out for these counterstrategies.

For the ultimate in pithiness it's hard to beat the Four Word Film Reviews. (Via GMSV.)

I always thought this was a myth, but apparently reading too much as a child can damage your eyes.

Identity thieves can get all sorts of juicy information from jail websites.

Smart cards are vulnerable to "an inexpensive attack that employs a $30 camera flashgun and a microscope."

Don't use any of these misleading emoticons!

Is the Earth being bombarded by strangelets? Some physicists believe that the Earth is being bombarded by "strangelets", which are "tiny cosmic missiles weighing tons and travelling at 900,000 mph. They are only the size of a pollen grain but so dense they can rip through the planet and exit on the other side in seconds." Two explosions in 1993 are felt to be caused by these strangelet impacts. (Via Slashdot.)

NASA needs to buy some of its spare computer parts from eBay because they are becoming increasingly scarce and obsolete.

Antigravitational "lifters" might actually work.

Can you handle the Tobasco Challenge? (Via GMSV.)

Today's game is a thinking game: Laser.

The Bowlingual will translate dog barks into human speech. (Via Techdirt.)

Hiding a backwards voice in one's music is so passe, now that some musicians are hiding pictures of "devilish faces" in their songs.

There is no natural limit to human life expectancy according to some Duke researchers. In the developed countries such as US, Japan, and western Europe, life expectancy is "steadily increasing by three months a year, per year[sic]". I'm just waiting for medical science to advance to the point that life expectancy increases by one year per year -- then I'll never die! (Malignant cackling in the background...)

Toilets are cleaner than your workstation. (Via Megarad.)

Salon has a pair of articles on blogging that don't just rehash the usual tripe about blogs-vs-"real journalism". Take a look at them here and here.

Today's tasteless game: Russian Roulette. (Via BBspot.)

Dead cell phone saves a man's life.

Banner ads we'd like to see. Some more banner ads we'd like to see. And a third batch. (Via Madville.)

An astronomical catastrophe will almost certainly destroy all life on earth. Fortunately, it won't happen for about one hundred million years.

Londoners love using e-mail to stab their coworkers in the back. In a related article, Salon describes how office e-mail wars work in the US.

Stupid people (aka "Persons of Density") need to stand up for their rights! (Via Ryan Edwards.)

Airbus is planning to install hidden cameras on its airpanes in the light fixtures above passenger seats -- in the name of passenger security, of course. (Perhaps I missed it, but how exactly does this stop a dedicated suicide hijacker? And unless these cameras are also planted in the bathrooms, this leaves a bad guy an obvious place to prepare any weapons or explosive devices unobserved by the flight crew.)

The bionic retina has helped restore partial sight to several blind or near-blind patients.

Robofalcon: Wilfred Emonts has invented a 7-foot robotic falcon that can scare away real birds from airports. Given that airplanes are more likely to be brought down by a "bird strike" (when a bird gets caught in an airplane engine) than by a terrorist attack, this seems like a very useful invention.

The Midwestern Mailbomber was traced because he turned his cell phone on.

When one computer virus infects a second computer virus, you end up with a very "nasty piece of code".

Some Aibo owners get a little too obsessive about their robotic dogs.

The latest conspiracy theory is about the "rash" of recent mysterious deaths among the world's leading microbiologists. Of course, the skeptics insist on taking all the fun out of it...

Today's tasteless game: Boy Band Blast-a-rama.

Thermogenerators can tap the temperature differential between a human body surface and the clothing a person is wearing to generate enough electricity to run "smart clothes"

Undetectable "Son of Cookies": Scottish Enterprise is developing a new, advanced "sensor" system to monitor websurfers without relying on computer cookies. These "sensors" can monitor individual keystrokes, can be altered remotely, and are "almost impossible to detect". But privacy advocates should fear not, for the developers assure us that "[s]afeguards to prevent misuse of the software will be developed at the same time as the program itself." Ok, I feel much better now. (Links via The Register.)

Sweden the socialist paradise? Sweden is often portrayed by American leftists as an enlightened example of compassionate socialism. However, recent figures from Swedish Research Institute of Trade published in the "liberal Dagens Nyheter newspaper" show that if Sweden were a US state, it would be the poorest state, ranking below Mississippi. The article also states that "Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household." And according to figures from the United Nations Crime Victimization Survey, Sweden has more crime than the US. (Via Plastic.)

The FBI kept a very extensive file on Albert Einstein because of his "left-wing associations". You can look at it here.

Are you still using circulating blood to sustain your life? Hip nanotech enthusiasts in the 21st century will instead rely on vasculoid, "an aggressive nanomedical device that lines your blood vessels and replaces the blood". More details here.

Hypnosis: How much is bogus and how much is real?

I swear that I didn't take any perverse pleasure in playing AntCity.

The Top 10 Worst Pick-Up Lines For Geeks.

A lawyer in Glasglow claims to own the Sun. (Via Madville.)

How are other countries approaching the cloning issue? This informative article is full of surprises, including the claim that in China "scientists have cloned dozens of human embryos with few ethical qualms".

How to cheat at Solitaire and Freecell. (Via Fark.)

After 9/11, online dating has now become socially acceptable.

Those little bars of soap in your hotel room can add up to $50 per night to your hotel bill.

Today's tasteless game is the suicide bomber game. There's even a big uproar about it already.

Are computer games a form of free speech? Excellent article on a current court case in Missouri.

Racial profiling can be good in medicine. (I'm amazed that someone even has to actually make this point, but Dr.Satel does it quite eloquently.)

The secret to George W. Bush's power. (Via BBspot.)

Deconstructing the Blog: John Dvorak gives his Eight Rules for the Perfect Blog. (Not for the easily offended blogger...)

The New York Times has finally discovered weblogs.

The history of World War II would be much more interesting if we included the magical superpowers. (Via Memepool.)

TV studio technicians watching a pornographic videotape accidentally hit the "send" button and broadcasted it to thousands of viewers instead of the scheduled miniseries. (Via Fark.)

Frequent flyer miles currently in circulation exceed $500 billion in value, making them the second biggest world "currency" after the US dollar. And at their current rate of growth, flyer miles "could overtake the dollar within two years". Where will we spend them? According to this related article in the Economist, "US Airways has launched a deal where, for a mere 10m miles, you can buy a seat on the first private spacecraft to take passengers into space, scheduled for 2004."

Cool photographs of aerogels are available at this NASA website. My favorite is the flower floating over a flame insulated by the aerogel. (Via ThreeRiver.)

How to Hack Your Mobile Phone: "Changing the ID number of your phone is as easy as swapping the font in a word processing document."

Despite the recent Supreme Court ruling, John Ashcroft and the Justice Department still want to outlaw "child pornography" that doesn't actually involve any real children having sex. Here's how they plan to do it.

A software geek's guide to coffee.

"Fly the Copter": Today's time-waster is this game in which you have to navigate a remote-controlled helicopter through a maze of barriers. What's deceptively simple about this game is that at any time you only have two choices -- either press the left mouse button or not. (Via MetaFilter.)

"US Sailors Wear Out Sex Workers": In yet another example of the stress caused by the War On Terrorism, prostitutes in Perth, Australia were "reeling from exhaustion" after dealing with an influx of US sailors from warships coming off of tours of duty in the Middle East. According to the article, "Mary-Anne Kenworthy said she was forced to close the doors of her famous Langtrees brothel for only the third time ever yesterday because her prostitutes were so worn out they could no longer provide a quality service." (Via WonkoSlice.)

Will the future belong to biotechnology or nanotechnology? Or both?

Unbreakable quantum cryptography could become commercially available in the next couple of years.

The Ultimate Summer Job: Nintendo will pay fifty people $100 a day to play computer games all day long this summer. "Strong thumbs required." You can apply here.

Because good passwords can be so hard to remember, computer scientists are trying to devise easier ways of authenticating users in a secure fashion. One novel system uses patterns of clicks on a picture.

There's quite a bit of science to shooting a rubber band. (Via MadVille.)

You, too, can break out of jail with just dental floss and toothpaste.

Amateur astronaut Mark Shuttleworth says that his 8-day trip to the International Space Station has definitely been worth the $20 million he spent. I guess his last name is appropriate...

Remote controlled rats: Scientists have imbedded electrodes into rat brains in a fashion such that the rats could be controlled remotely over 1600 feet away. The rats could be instructed "to turn left or right, climb trees and navigate piles of rubble".

Finally, a useful robot: A University of Florida student has invented a robot that opens beer bottles for you. The inventor noted that he had to go through 134 beers "for calibration and testing purposes".

Scientists have invented surgical sutures that tie themselves.

If you are going bald, the Hairogenics company will preserve a sample of your hair in its underground vault (for a fee of course) until science comes up with a cure for baldness. Just in case this future cure requires a sample of your present hair and you don't happen to own a freezer of your own. Um, sure.

"Zip" compression programs call also be used to identify the author of a text file.

GeekPress returns: Diana and I have returned from our firearms course. All I can say is that this was the coolest class I've ever taken! I'll post a separate, more detailed description later once I've had time to gather my thoughts.