The Royal Society's Science Sees Further: looking ahead - a guide to the future - Telegraph

This year, the Royal Society – Britain’s oldest and most prestigious scientific body – has been celebrating its 350th anniversary. Since its foundation, our understanding of the world has changed beyond recognition. But what will be the challenges that define the coming centuries? As its anniversary year draws to a close, some of the society’s most eminent experts have published Science Sees Further, a report that selects the 12 key issues that will do most to shape science in the 21st century, and offers an educated guess about what we can expect in the years to come.
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Milky Way over Wangaratta vineyard, Australia

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NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website at http://www.nasa.gov.
NASA /read more

Leo Strut: Now Available in Duckling

 Memebase - Memes, Macros, Viral Images and General Silliness

Lazy gangsta should change the toilet roll.

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Have you seen him?

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American government refers to Croatia in 1,686 leaked documents

A total of 1,686 documents in which American diplomats exchange information about Croatia, have been published on WikiLeaks, a non-profit media organization that has made some 25,000 American government records available to the public.

Although the content of the Croatia-related leaks has not yet been confirmed, the largest number of records pertains to the period between 2006 and 2009 when the country was in the final stages of NATO negotiations. Another large part of the records refers to the time of the presidential elections and its aftermath, from December of 2009 and at the beginning of this year.

While the majority of the published records are either classified or unclassified, 24 of the documents have been marked as top secret. Their contents are not yet known, the daily Jutarnji List writes.
Croatian Times Online News

Goodbye, WoW

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Homes Made From Plastic Bottles

Eco Tec's Sky Field House: The first vaulted ceiling using PET bottles.
All Eco-tec projects have a strong social focus. Most of the PET bottles used are recovered in clean-up campaigns and recycling drives. The community then fills them with sand. They train the unemployed and handicapped in their construction methods. They build water tanks, schools, community centers, urban benches as well as homes. Andreas Froese, Eco-Tec's inventor hopes to also build some PET homes in Haiti utilizing construction debris. Most of the PET bottles used are recovered in clean-up campaigns and recycling drives. http://eco-tecnologia.com
The Presurfer

I love your Camera

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The Bionic Vet

"It is 10pm on a Friday night, and Noel Fitzpatrick, the veterinary surgeon better known to television viewers as the Bionic Vet, is preparing to go back into surgery. 'I’m going to go and do what I do,’ he says. What he does is mend people’s pets using radical surgical techniques that include giving them prosthetic limbs. His can-do attitude to cutting-edge science was neatly summed up in the title sequence of his BBC series, which went out earlier this year. 'Give a cat two new feet…’ it showed him saying, '… done.’
The cat in question, Oscar, was flown from Jersey to Fitzpatrick’s multi-million-pound referral practice near Godalming in Surrey in October last year, after its hind paws had been severed by a combine harvester."
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The Man Who Couldn't Stop Running - TIME

"In 1919, when he was 2 years old, Louis Zamperini climbed out his bedroom window and ran down the street naked. The same year, his family moved from New York to California; at one point during the trip, Zamperini went running the length of the train and right out the back of the caboose. He was later found toddling happily along the tracks.
By high school, Zamperini was a phenomenally gifted miler with astounding stamina and a hip-rolling, ground-eating seven-foot stride. But long before then, it was apparent that he had something even rarer and less easily explicable inside him: a chronic restlessness, something beyond even willpower, that wouldn't allow him to give up even when going on was no longer endurable. Zamperini's life is the subject of a new book by Laura Hillenbrand, who also wrote Seabiscuit, the story of another great racer of the 1930s. But unlike Seabiscuit's, Zamperini's story had a terrible second act that took place far from the racetrack."
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Leslie Nielsen dies

"Leslie Nielsen, the actor best known for playing the accident-prone detective Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun comedy films, has died. He was 84."
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Mark Knopfler - Brothers in Arms

WikiLeaks sparks worldwide diplomatic crisis

"The King of Saudi Arabia privately urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear weapons programme, according to diplomatic cables leaked by the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks."
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Follow the leader. Photographer: Guenter-Georg

Pixdaus

So Johnny Depp is to play Tonto in an update of The Lone Ranger. But who will they get to be his kemosabe?

"Unless you've been riding through the desert on a horse with no name, you'll know Johnny Depp is playing Tonto, in an update of The Lone Ranger. Cue debates about political correctness and analysis of Depp's ancestry (he's apparently one quarter Cherokee; is that enough?). But the real question is: who will play the Ranger himself? Or rather, who would want to?"
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Harvard scientists reverse the ageing process in mice – now for humans

"Scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the ageing process after rejuvenating worn out organs in elderly mice. The experimental treatment developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies.

The surprise recovery of the animals has raised hopes among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the ageing process.

An anti-ageing therapy could have a dramatic impact on public health by reducing the burden of age-related health problems, such as dementia, stroke and heart disease, and prolonging the quality of life for an increasingly aged population.

"What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilisation of the ageing process. We saw a dramatic reversal – and that was unexpected," said Ronald DePinho, who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

"This could lead to strategies that enhance the regenerative potential of organs as individuals age and so increase their quality of life. Whether it serves to increase longevity is a question we are not yet in a position to answer."

via The Guardian/read more

Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair - Munk Debates 2

You may need to set aside the rest of your Saturday to get through this, but here in full is the transcript of the long-anticipated Munk debate between Christopher Hitchens and former prime minister Tony Blair.

A boy and his dog waiting for their dad to come home

Pictures and Images

Best. Bookmark. Ever.

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Mark Twain’s Big Book

"Mark Twain’s autobiography — Volume 1 — released in mid-November, is an enormous hit, apparently much to the surprise of its publisher, the University of California Press. Bookstores across the country and online retailers sold out almost immediately, never mind that it’s a work of sobering scholarship and more than 700 pages of very small print.The reasons aren’t hard to find. One is good postmortem advertising. Twain wanted his autobiography published a century after his death in 1910 so he could say just what he pleased. “Unexpurgated” is what you hear about this book, as if Twain were dictating from his cot in the afterlife, full of brimstone and wrath. This is also a scholarly work — the “authoritative” edition. As sales pitches go, it’s hard to beat “authoritative” and “unexpurgated” together.

In fact, there’s really nothing sulfurous about this book. Mark Twain is terrific company, plain and simple. He knew everyone, went everywhere, seemed to be interested in everything and is capable of making the reader — in 2010 — laugh on nearly every page. And this is not, strictly speaking, an autobiography. It’s an autobiographical miscellany, a collection of Twain’s many attempts to write about his extraordinary life.

The system he finally found for doing so is perfect. Twain talks about what he’s interested in until he’s no longer interested in it, and then he talks about something else, wandering at “free will all over your life.

This is a book for dipping, not plunging. Read, as Twain might put it, until interest pales, and then jump. It feels like a form of time travel. One moment you’re on horseback in the Hawaiian islands — or recovering from saddle boils with a cigar in your mouth — and the next moment you’re meeting the Viennese maid he called, in a private joke, “Wuthering Heights.” We can hardly wait for Volume 2."
via NYTimes.com

Antony Spencer: Landscape Photographer of the Year 2010

 "This picture gallery features a selection of photographs taken by Antony Spencer, winner of this year's Landscape Photographer of the Year award."
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Strategies to Get You There by James McMullan

"When drawing the human figure, tapping into the energy chain among the various parts of the body is essential."

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I can't see myself on Google Earth!!!!!?

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Telepathic Relationship

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