The Vickrey Auction: If you're selling a valuable item via sealed-bid auction, it might be to your advantage to use the Vickrey auction system, in which the item goes to the highest bidder, but he or she gets it for the price of the second-highest bid. Mathematician Francis Su explains why.

Top 11 Campaign Pledges You'll Never Hear.

Physics discovery of the day: Under certain circumstances, a bouncing ball can rebound off the wall with greater perpendicular velocity than it originally had. Here's the explanation.

Would you enjoy working for Google? Take the Google Labs Aptitude Test.

"Hundreds of airline passengers suffered disruption to their travel plans when a major regional airport was shut down for an hour after a humming and vibrating adult sex toy was mistaken for a bomb." (Via Linkfilter.)

Invention of the day: Caffeinated beer. No, really. (Via /.)

Is it bad for first cousins to marry?

Nanotechnology invention of the day: Memory chips based on tiny mechanical switches offer increased storage density, speed, and decreased power consumption than conventional storage media.

Why Google News is in perpetual beta even though the bugs have been pretty much worked out. Short answer - it's the lawyers.

Coffee really is addictive. (Via /.)

"Ten Tech Items Inspired by Science Fiction" (Via Linkfilter.)

The US Air Force is trying to develop anti-matter weapons. (Via IPList.)

Scientists have located the source of Earth's low frequency hum.

"The U.S. government plans to offer will offer low-quality images of its new $50 bill over the Internet but they can't be saved, scanned or printed."

One of Google's biggest challenges is how to retain key workers who are now suddenly wealthy.

Global warming fears may be based on a systematic error in climate modelling. According to the article:

The Earth's temperature may have fluctuated more wildly during the past 2000 years than previously thought, according to a new study that challenges how researchers use tree rings and corals to give us a picture of the Earth's past.

If true, the study suggests that recent warming might not be as unique as was thought previously, and might partly be due to natural temperature cycles, rather than humans spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

More information here.

Noah Shachtman has a review of current US space warfare plans.

NASA's Spaceguard program, which is designed to detect asteroids on a near-Earth trajectory, is doing quite well.

The Dilbert Ultimate House.

A robotic mouse uses real mouse whiskers to help in navigate.