"Research led by a pair of Iowa State University psychologists has proven for the first time that exposure to violent video games can desensitize individuals to real-life violence." I find the use of "first" in this phrasing to be the interesting part.

The Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser which we discussed in 2005, was successfully tested some time ago against Katyusha rockets such as those currently falling on Israel. Northrop Grumman (videos page was moved) is working with the USA and Israel to complete the system. IsraeliWeapons.com (YouTube video) says "The laser could be in use in 2007.", but it looks like the development budget (pdf) goes to 2010 now. This month, Northrop Grumman has been promoting a related "Skyguard" system for ballistic threat protection and protecting aircraft near airports.

KSDK TV reports a Boeing 767 airplane flew for 100 hours after mice were noticed aboard. Exterminators estimated hundreds of mice could have been aboard, although at a maintenance facility only 17 live mice were found. They did not point out that snakes like to eat mice.

David Bradley points out that new research found that "... extracts of Devils Claw (Harpagophytum procumbens), White Willow Bark (Salix alba) and Cayenne (Capsicum frutescens) all reduce low-back pain better than placebo. ... An extract of cricket bat willow was the very product that kick-started the pharmaceutical industry when German manufacturer Bayer branded a modified version of the active component, acetylsalicylic acid, as aspirin."

I think I might have started the Beowulf imagining. But at least I really meant to promote the clustering concept.

To the expected comment in the Colossus Rebuilt article, I added a twist:

Back then, you have to imagine an Odysseus cluster of these things.

As The Register points out, the digitized documents (TIFF files) for the recently settled Minnesota Microsoft case are on the MN Fourth Judicial District Court server until April 26th, according to a notice on the Court's home page. Want reading material for the weekend? Incidentally, it's 100,502,973 bytes in 288 files.

Xerox can now spray electronic circuits with plastic materials. Ink jets can now create semiconductor base and electronic devices on it. Conductive ink has been available for some time.

At least two California cities are literally giving a red light to speeders. The Ventura County city of Thousand Oaks in 2000 installed a traffic speed detector which turns a traffic signal red when a speeder is approaching. Pleasanton has also installed one now, giving speeders at least a 10 second red light. The Pleasanton light will give the red light only in the direction of the speeder, allowing traffic in the opposite direction to continue. The Pleasanton traffic chief has been watching the operation of the Thousand Oaks device, where he used to work. Pleasanton considered a red-light camera but that project stalled in 2002.

When it comes to who can provide Fortezza Support, there is no such agency.

The Register points out that Intel has released code for reading lips from a video image, Audio Visual Speech Recognition (AVSR). They do point out that better results would probably be achieved by combining video and audio recognition processing. I don't know if they have any patents, we all know some prior "art" from 2001, er.. 1968. HAL's accomplishment was also mentioned by CNN during 2001 in an article about this group's work.

A record of recent global temperatures has been assembled by piecing together the hundreds of studies with past temperature estimates [Discovery, Harvard]. The record shows there was a "Medieval Warm Period" warmer than the 20th Century. This was followed by the "Little Ice Age", which ended around 1900. We're having average climate now. Numerous sources indicated this, but apparently were not gathered into one document

Submitted...

Microscopic life at 41km has been found with a balloon-based device. One fungus and two bacteria. So this extends the biosphere from 41km above to at least 4-6km down (depth of Seljan Ring test). We discussed life at depth recently, as well as other possible space life. Credit where due: Cardiff via ScienceBlog via Sci-Fi Today via Slashbox.

Well, this discussion on the origin of oil from deep rock rather than dead stuff has been going on for days...I'm dropping a copy of my latest reply here because I think I hit a Slash limit in posting it...

Gold is pointing out that carbon can be much deeper, and availability at the surface is dependent upon deep geology rather than past surface pools of muck.

No one has suggested that oil avaliability is dependant on 'past surface pools of muck'; I really don't understand where you are getting this from.

"Surface" as in "origin not in deep rock". "Pools of muck" as in "plant and animal matter buried in low-oxygen conditions" (has to be low-oxygen or the long chains with hydrogen will not exist and no long-chain hydrocarbons can appear).

Why hydrocarbons should have been retained in the mantle when every other volatile has been effectively stripped (due to melting and cycling through oceanic crust) is unexplained.

By "stripped", I assume you mean broken down from long chain molecules to simpler structures. Methane (CH4) is rather simple. Gold repeatedly points out that methane is more common at greater depth, and hydrocarbons become more complex with decreasing depth. Just what would be expected if the material is being altered as it rises.

Carbon in subducted rock has to go someplace. There are five possibilities:

• Carbon might sink and be lost (unlikely as it is less dense than nickel-iron)
• Carbon might be trapped and never rise (unlikely, as volcanoes often bring material up from subducted areas).
• Carbon might bubble up early in the process and leak right at the fault.
• Carbon might travel great distances under crust, whether dissolved in mantle material, in deposits under crust, or in lower levels of crust.
• Carbon might accumulate near subduction areas and push upward.

Gold's ignorance of the last 40 years of geology shines through; dismissing the entire science of petroleum geology is bad enough for a non-geologist, dismissing plate tectonics, standard planet formation theories, basic physics, and in fact anything that gets in the way of his theory is worse.

Yup, awful crimes. How was Copernicus punished?
I haven't seen him dismissing plate tectonics, although I don't know if he believes that the 4 billion-year-old continental cratons contain carbon from Earth's formation, or if the deep carbon in them is from subducted ocean floor (ocean floor before 200 Ma is gone).

As an astronomer, he probably knows planetary formation and physics quite well. He does state that no gases were incorporated in Earth, so carbon, water, and nitrogen must have come from material within the planet. I don't know what he thinks happened to lighter elements during the Earth-shattering impact which created the Moon (my observation is that the Moon's density is significantly less than Earth, so much separation of dense material must have already happened before impact -- or dense material didn't splash high enough to stay in orbit).

Middle East has been greatly disrupted by tectonic activity (90 degree rotation is somewhat drastic), and obviously there are many faults to deeper areas. So the search for "source" rock has actually been the search for rock which met expectations near the reservoirs.

90 degree rotation is not very drastic.

Well, I thought for recent time it was. Although perhaps the subduction under the Arabian plate since 650 Ma was more important in carbon sources than the movement. The pressures by surrounding plates are interesting, but I don't know if that caused any fractures in the oil-producing areas -- volcanic rock is to the west, not within the oil fields.

And the fact that source rocks have been found, with appropriate thermal conditions and migration pathways is pretty strong evidence, especially as when these rocks are NOT found, there is no oil.

The biogenic theory requires certain source rocks, so finding such rocks includes the biogenic theory as a possibility in the Arabian area (even in the basement rocks in Yemen, due to proximity of biogenic source rocks). Abiogenic theories don't care what kind of rock is near the surface, although obviously an impermeable cap is needed for a reservoir where we tap one. There also are issues about the temperature and pressures being insufficient to create biogenic oil in shallow sedimentary rocks.

Biogenic origin theory does not explain finds where there are no expected formations. There are hundreds of producing wells in basement rocks, and some hydrocarbons have been found in rather unconventional areas. Gold has plenty of references to his experiences drilling in the Swedish impact ring. Anhydride Petroleum continues exploring the basement oil/gas which Hunt believes are part of the source of the Athabasca Tar Sands.

Have a read of this: Petroleum geology, Saudi Arabia. [sc.edu]

Nice description of the biogenic interpretation.

To read from Gold's site:

If the major volume of the Earth has never been molten, the mantle of the Earth underneath the crust must still contain the diversity of chemistry, the chemical energy sources and the sources of gases and liquids that would be the legacy of an accretion process from diverse and initially cold solids.

Except that mid ocean ridge basalts [which sample the mantle beneath effectively] exhibit an extreme uniformity of compositions. Basic physics also gives us raleigh numbers for the mantle indicating that it is well mixed.

Yes, the mid-Atlantic ridge is a spreading zone, so it should have metal-rich magma rather than the silicon-rich lava in a compression zone. So if mantle magma is well-mixed, whether there is carbon in it depends upon whether carbon can mix or dissolve in nickel-iron, and it can be expected to be everywhere. Carbon dioxide is in mantle magma, so carbon is indeed part of the global molten mix.

So the same weak points along the Southeast Asia plate edges which cause volcanoes also cause hydrocarbons to become available near the surface.

No, the hydrocarbons are found in the back-arc settings. These are not 'weak points causing volcanoes', it's subducting slab dehydration melting the mantle above. Hawaii is not mentioned by Gold probably for the reason that it is known to have a deep component to it's magma and yet emits little or no methane.

Actually, Gold mentions Hawaii briefly (your browser might have a Control-F search command), and as I mentioned above carbon dioxide emissions have been studied in Hawaii. Carbon dioxide is not methane, but it shows carbon at 40 km depth from a mantle source.

A few years ago the life forms around deep-ocean thermal vents were a surprise. Now ancient bacteria alive in rock 2 miles down have been found. The story is in the San Francisco Chronicle. It is also at Nature.Com, but that server is already rejecting connects. Other bacteria survived frozen in the pressures of an ocean 100 miles deep. This increases the known limits of where life can exist on any planet. Thomas Gold undoubtedly is not surprised at hot, deep bacteria living on hydrogen.