It's good to see Slashdot use the metric system, in this case centimeters, to describe the size of the animal, but it gets a bit confusing when it is combined with giving the depth it is found at in miles.

There was a time when all cars were built with a frame and then an additional external skin or paneling, and similar for aircraft. One then realized that one could combine the load bearing and the skin in one material, and this is called monocoque.

Using the skin for storing energy (especially storing "weightless" electrical energy) seems to be just a logical extension of the monocoque concept. Maybe cars will be built in some synthetic double shell lined with massive-surfaced nanoscale carbon structures?

Rick Falkvinge, the chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party has made a statement in an internal newsletter. It can be found here.

An excerpt in a quick-and-dirty translation by me:

"I ask everyone to exercise extreme caution in this issue and keep two very important things in mind:

We cannot and should not second guess the results of a trial. We should not even hint whether he is guilty or not, not internally and not externally. If somebody asks, we reply that it is a serious crime he is being accused of, but that there is no basis for us to speculate about his culpability.

It is not Assange that we are helping. We don't know the guy. The organisation The Pirate Party helps the organisation WikiLeaks, and that on a sound ideological common ground. If the organisation Wikileaks has problems with their staff, they have to solve it, not us.Most contact between WL [Wikileaks] and PP [Pirate Party], has been between theirs and ours technicians, and not with Assange."

For us who do not own stock in whatever company footed the bill for this movie, it is from our perspective more interesting how many people saw the movie, dollars be damned. Why count in dollars, when we can estimate the number of people who saw it? Then you could say something like "750 000 people have seen this move", which is kind of more interesting.

Discover talked to Kevin Warwick
(puts on sunglasses)
Or did they?

Using face recognition like this is a substitute for human attention. Ideally in a school, teachers and other staff should recognize you and know your name, and notice if you are absent. It is about people actually communicating with and caring for each other. This system in the school sounds more like a prison surveillance system, used in an environment where trust cannot be built.

Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb.

Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things:
1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count
2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.

The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before

Wrong! It is pretty clear that autism is more common than before and it seems to be something in the environment, but we do not know what, from Scientific American:

The California researchers concluded that doctors are diagnosing autism at a younger age because of increased awareness. But that change is responsible for only about a 24 percent increase in children reported to be autistic by the age "A shift toward younger age at diagnosis was clear but not huge," the report says. Also, a shift in doctors diagnosing milder cases explains another 56 percent increase. And changes in state reporting of the disorder could account for around a 120 percent increase. Combined, Hertz-Picciotto said those factors "don't get us close" to the 600 to 700 percent increase in diagnosed cases.

Read more here: New Study:>Autism Linked to Environment: Scientific American

Actually, there is a car manufacturer that tailors its cars so they should sustain an impact with a moose. It is SAAB, and they do this because one of their top execs was killed in a head on collision with a moose.

SAAB tests each car model with a simulated moose coming in through the windshield. If you think about it SAAB cars' windshields are more curved. There is a reason for that.