Proportional newsmap. Gotta be the coolest thing since sliced gravy. It shows headlines culled from Google News in proportion to how many related stories there are. One of the interesting things I like is the ability to get a representative "mindshare" comparison between different countries. For best results, hit F11 under IE to go fullscreen.

Odorants enhance survival of olfactory neurons. Seems if you don't smell something for a long time, you may lose the ability to. Truely a use it or lose it situation.

Ah, the smell of money and politics. Dick Clarke wrote a book bashing the Bush administration's policy toward Al-Queda and its response to 9/11. Funny thing is, in between bouts of self-aggrandizement, Mr. Clarke says nothing about the Clinton administration's eight years of failing to address the threat of Al-Queda, despite repeated attacks that resulted in the death and injury of hundreds, including American citizens. And why do you suppose he gives his former democratic bosses a free pass but dumps hard on the Republicans? Well, turns out Clarke is an old friend and colleague of Rand Beers, and jointly teaches "Post-Cold War Security: Terrorism, Security, and Failed States" with him at the Kennedy Institute. Rand Beers is National Security coordinator for John Kerry's presidential campaign. Do you suppose this influenced Clarke's stance? Maybe. Or maybe he just has a book to sell.

Culturing T-Cells. This could be huge. There are many immunocompromised people, like folks with AIDS, who could really benefit from a boost in their T-cell population. Cancer therapies that center on tagging cancer cells so that T-cells recognize them as foreign could be greatly accelerated. Folks with septicemia could possibly fight off their blood-bourne infections. Yep. Good stuff.

Man arrested for allegedly extorting Google. What a dipshit. Given his obvious lack of brains, I suspect his "program" probably just clicked endlessly from the same IP address - something Google is sure to trap. To pull this sort of thing off, he'd have to have some sort of worm that makes zombies of thousands of computers, each of which clicks just once on any given Google ad. (And not too many ads from one IP per day, either. You can bet Google limits that too.) Frosting on the cake is him actually showing up at Google, expecting to discuss the terms of his extortion. Amazing.

NASA hears words not yet spoken. What a cool invention. This may be the thing that tips speech recognition into the mainstream. One of the problems with current speech recognition is that people around you can hear what you're 'typing', which distracts the dictator who is worried about sounding stupid and having to constantly correct themselves (I know I'm glad nobody watches me type) and distracts the eavesdropper, who should really be focussing on their own work. I want one.

Tissue cells can revert to stem cells. Looks like another important source of stem cells has been identified. This should help reduce the crippling effect of Bush's stem-cell moratorium in the US, and allow US researchers to perhaps keep pace with researchers everywhere else.

Offshoring complements US capabilities. I agree with this opinion. Despite working in a field where offshoring has made an impact, I feel it is a much better use of global resources for those who can do better work for less to be allowed to do so. I hear arguments regarding trade imbalances, but it seems to me that capital that is allowed to flow where more wealth gets created will ultimately provide the greatest fertilization. We can expect that, ultimately, these developing nations that receive our capital should flourish and develop their own needs, which we may end up satisfying one day. The other argument I hear against offshoring is the drain on human capital, as expertise to do the work ends up being developed overseas instead of here. The US has been a net talent sink for so many decades that I wonder how anyone can now raise this alarm against other countries. Like capital, brainpower that is concentrated in the environment where wealth-creation flourishes is appropriate. If offshore environments allow people to band together to create wealth more efficiently, it only makes sense that this is where the human capital should go. Any imbalance related to the relative wealth of the client and server nations will soon be equalized. Granted, 'soon' may be measured in decades, which isn't soon enough for a displaced worker, but overall, it is best for the world economy.

The origins of Islamic Terror. This is an excellent article that details the culture that gave rise to militant Islamic terrorists. Seems like ubiquitous internet availability could do wonders toward diluting the sort of cultural extremism that gave rise to a generation of Isalmic militants under Wahhabinism.

Folate may curb heart attacks, strokes. The government has accidentally saved 48,000 lives per year by requiring folic acid added to flour. They meant to curb birth defects, and they did, but a sudden drop in the incidence of heart attacks and strokes was observed right after they started adding folic acid to flour in 1996. I can't think of a happier accident in the history of government. Science is replete with happy accidents, but it seems to me that government almost never screws up in our favor. Or, at least, we never hear about it.

The great thing about blogs is they give you a chance to display your naivete in public. I got all hot about Bush's proposal to add an amendment to the constitution defining marriage as existing solely between a man and a woman. Then I realized just how unlikely it is that this could actually come to pass. Since Bush choose to try to enshrine this in the constitution, and since he's certainly no stranger to the machinations that getting such an amendment passed would require, it is obvious that he meant to communicate the appearance  of being vehemently opposed to gay marriage to those who don't realize that the mechanism he chose intentionally precludes it ever actually being abolished, while communicating with a wink and a nod to those who understand what he's done that he's just courting the votes of the, um, "unsophisticated". Or maybe I'm not only naive, but cynical.

Researchers report bubble fusion results replicated. This started out appearing like another "cold fusion" claim, but it looks real now. If this can be controlled, we could have fusion energy much sooner and far cheaper than traditional magnetic or inertial confinement paths. Very cool.

Stirring the pot. Sunni Muslims control most of the governments in the middle east. Sunnis and Shiites have a long history of brutal violence against one another, that continues today. One interesting consequence of Saddam's removal is that Iraq now stands poised to become a Shiite-goverened nation, right next-door to Shiite-fundamentalist-goverened Iran. So it appears that Iran and Iraq, who recently squandered the lives of several hundred thousand of their young men in a protracted war that gained neither party anything, will soon become Shiite allies surrounded by a sea of Sunnis. If nothing else, this will give extremists from both camps of the Sunni/Shiite divide something other than Israel and The Great Satan to focus their energies on. I predict a long period of disquiet. Okay, make that a long extension to the long period of disquiet already seen by in the region.

N Korea 'trafficking drugs'. Okay, in a previous post, I said it's too bad the DPRK government can't get their economy to produce something the world really wants to buy. It seems they actually do provide something the world wants, it's just something the world wishes it didn't want. But if DPRK didn't have this to sell, they'd just have to fall back on WMD and counterfeiting to make ends meet. Since we're not willing/able to do much about Kim Jong Il (though their propaganda about it is a hoot), we may be in the unpleasant position of deciding which pernicious habit is least offensive to us and turn a blind eye.

5.6% high or low? Mark Twain catatagorized prevarications as "lies, damn lies and statistics". This article shows it's the presentation of a statistic that converts an innocent number into a prevarication.