Where Is Human Evolution Heading? - U.S. News & World Report

If you judge the progress of humanity by Homer Simpson, Paris Hilton, and Girls Gone Wild videos, you might conclude that our evolution has stalled—or even shifted into reverse. Not so, scientists say. Humans are evolving faster than ever before, picking up new genetic traits and talents that may help us survive a turbulent future.

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How Did Life on Earth Get Started? - U.S. News & World Report

On an arid outcropping of basalt in northwestern Australia, some of the oldest rocks on Earth lie exposed to the fierce sun. Formed at the bottom of an ancient ocean, this volcanic material shelters what one scientist calls the "oldest robust evidence" of life. At a scientific meeting at Rockefeller University in May, Roger Buick of the University of Washington said that the 3.5 billion-year-old rocks hold traces of carbon that once made up living organisms.

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Will Respirators Help Our Olympic Athletes? - Slate

Four members of the U.S. Olympic cycling team sparked outrage Tuesday when they disembarked in Beijing wearing masks covering their mouths and noses. The U.S. Olympic Committee has issued several hundred respirators to its athletes to use as they prepare to compete at the Games. Will those masks actually help?

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U.S. Cyclists Are Masked, and Criticism Is Not - NY Times

After months of speculation about how Olympic athletes would react to the air quality problems here, some answers arrived at the airport Tuesday, when four track cyclists on the United States team stepped off their flight wearing masks over their mouths and noses.

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Over-driven: why our cars guzzle gas, what to do about it - Ars Technica - Jonathan M. Gitlin

From more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to tapping the strategic oil reserve, politicians and pundits spar daily over the best solution to America's ongoing fuel crisis. But no matter which side of the fence they're on, almost everyone can agree on one thing: Americans are going to have to get used to paying more for their gas than they have in years past; possibly much more. The specter of permanently higher gas prices has already driven consumers and automakers to take a long, hard look at the fuel economy ratings on the vehicles that Americans own and produce, and what they've found has sparked an aggressive search for ways to squeeze more miles out of each gallon. In this brief article, I'll take a look at why the current American auto fleet is so inefficient, and at what's being done to improve it.

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Steve Kelly - 30 July 2008

 
Tom Toles - 30 July 2008

NASA says Mars craft "touched and tasted" water - Reuters

NASA scientists said on Thursday they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander.

"We have water," said William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument on Phoenix.

"We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted," he said, referring to the craft's instruments.

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MIT researchers split water to store solar energy - C|Net

The key to plentiful solar power is water, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Daniel Nocera.

Nocera and his MIT colleague, Matthew Kanan, on Thursday will publish a technical paper that describes what they claim is a breakthrough in solar energy storage.

The idea is to use the energy from solar photovoltaic panels (or another electricity source) to crack water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Those gases would be stored and used later in a fuel cell to make electricity when the sun is not shining.

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Wall-E's World? 86% of Americans Could Be Fat by 2030 - Wired

The blockbuster Disney movie, Wall-E, was criticized for its portrayal of a future in which not just some humans, but all of humanity becomes obese. A new study from Johns Hopkins, however, finds that its depiction comes uncomfortably close to projections from public health researchers.

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Will Cockroaches Inherit the Earth? What Wall-E gets wrong about the apocalypse. - Slate

Pixar's post-apocalyptic love story Wall-E finished No. 2 at the box office over the Fourth of July weekend after hauling in $65 million the weekend before. The film depicts a future Earth abandoned by humans, blanketed in garbage, and nearly devoid of life. At the outset, Wall-E, a robot, has but one companion: a friendly cockroach. How did we come to believe that cockroaches will outlive everything else on Earth?

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White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail - NY Times

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

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Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law: Why it's a lot worse than you think. - Slate

Sometime today, the Senate is likely to approve the most comprehensive overhaul of American surveillance law since the Watergate era. Unless you're a government lawyer, a legal scholar, a masochist, or an insomniac, chances are you haven't read the 114-page bill. Don't beat yourself up: Neither have most of the 293 House members who voted for it last week. Ditto the mainstream press, who seem to have relied chiefly on summaries provided by the same lawmakers who hadn't read it.

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Be quiet: the surveillance cameras might hear you - Ars Techinica

Although crime statistics point to the fact that law-and-order issues are actually less of a problem now than in the past, the general public's perception remains one convinced that muggery and buggery hides behind every street corner. Politicans and the media stoke these fears, and we get hastily made laws and policies enacted as a result. Over in the UK, the trend over the past two decades has been to abrogate day-to-day policing of the streets to an army of CCTV cameras. Soon, if scientists have their way, the cameras will be able to train their focus on suspicious sounds automatically with new AI technology.

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Just returned from seeing Mark Knopfler at Red Rocks. Man does he and his band put on a good show. This year we had much better seats, row 29, as apposed to, lets see 2-3 years ago, that we where way up there. The sound was impeccable

Highlights for me where excellent renditions of Telegraph Road and Brothers in Arms. There where quite a few songs I didn't know off hand but where excellent. The forum on markknopfler.com does have the set list yet, but once it does I'll know what songs to look for.

BTW, viewed a full rainbow on the way up to the upper parking lot. Sweet!

I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.

- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

 
Jim Morin - 21 June 2008

 
Mike Luckovich - 21 June 2008

Nice Guys Finish Last: Why do we expect presidential candidates to be kind? - Slate

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but in the past few days I feel I've been overwhelmed by a tsunami of commentary, all of which purports to prove the fundamental nastiness of Barack Obama or, alternatively, the deep unlikability of John McCain. You thought our presidential candidates were nice guys, regular guys, guys who you'd like to sit down and have a beer with? Guess what, lots of people are now telling me: They aren't!

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Nation's Spies: Climate Change Could Spark War - Wired

Environmental groups have been warning for years that global climate change could make already-tense parts of the world even worse, and even spark whole new conflicts. Now, the nation's spies are saying pretty much the same thing.

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