Goodbye to the Great White Buffalo

The Great White Buffalo has moved on to greener pastures. I got the Rodeo before I could legally buy beer. Now she's someone else's. I did get the new owner to agree to let her keep her name, though :)
Fare thee well, o noble spirit of the plains!

LifeGem Diamonds

A company in Chicago will turn cremated remains into diamonds. Personally, I'd still like to return to the earth (as a distant second to immortality), but I think this is actually a pretty good idea. Except for the cost.

Remote Control Rat

Scientists remotely control rats in a maze using brain implants. Eventually they'll be able to use the same technology on cybernetic limbs. Another step towards transcendance.

Is a virus responsible for human evolution?

Looks like the mojority of human DNA that was thought to be inactive "junk" DNA may really be the product of a retrovirus that infected some chimps a few million years ago and started re-writing their genes. Anybody read Snowcrash?

Smart Birds

They already knew that some birds use tools. Now it turns out that they can manufacture their own tools if no effective ones are handy.

Flying snakes

Now snakes get to fly. That is just so not fair.

Family Values

Immigration officials proudly announce they've arrested a group of smugglers who try to reunite children with their illegal immigrant parents in the states. I'm so proud.
Favorite quote: in some cases "mere teenagers were assigned to care for the little ones." What?!? Teenagers taking care of small children? What kind of animals would allow that?

Digging our own hole

So the whole justification for the war against Iraq is that they might have facilities that could enable them to produce weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the Bush govt is about to build 2 nuclear power plants in North Korea, the third leg of the Axis of Evil, from which they could extract weapons-grade plutonium.

Bush confirms human rights less important than oil

Bush administration moves to block human rights lawsuit against Exxon Mobil in Indonesia. Not because the lawsuit is without merit, but because if Exxon was punished for colluding with the Indonesian military to slaughter the natives for easier access to gas, then the military regime might be less cooperative in the "war on terror". That's just freakin' great.

Insanely Dangerous Security Product of the Year, Runner Up

Crispy critter that pesky carjacker (and anyone walking down the sidewalk at the same time).
Don't worry, it's supposed to be non-lethal. It'll just blind them permenently and horribly disfigure them.
Looks pretty non-lethal in the video, huh?

Insanely Dangerous Security Product of the Year

How many horribly wrong things can you find in this article?
It's a robot with a gun (or machine gun) that can be set to fire on anything that moves, or to be controlled over the internet.
Thank god it has an option for human control over the interent because, according to it's inventor, "Otherwise it could kill people."
You think? Don't worry though, because they've password protected the internet controls, and no one's ever been able to get defeat a password.
I think the inventor should have to put one of these in his house, if he lives through the year, then he can start selling it.
Did I mention that he wants to upgrade it to be mobile?
And my favorite quote, he wants to sell it to the US military, because he feels "It should be in good hands." Presumably because "otherwise it could kill people."