Archaeologists have unearthed 2,400-year-old treasure in a Thracian tomb in eastern Bulgaria. Professor Daniela Agre, who led the team of 15 from the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute, said the finds, made on Saturday, provided enormous clues to understanding one of Europe’s most mysterious ancient people
Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head. As the lovely Feòrag notes; Looks like someone’s implementing the literal kill file!
It’s not a head exploding button, but it’s close enough
Why one species branches into two is a question that has haunted evolutionary biologists since Darwin. Given our planet’s rich biodiversity, speciation
clearly happens regularly, but scientists cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it. Now, researchers studying a family of butterflies think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed species
Using technology already available for self-cleaning windows and bathroom tiles, scientists hope to paint up cities with materials that dissolve and wash away pollutants when exposed to sun and rain. The idea: UV rays hitting the titanium dioxide coated cement and concrete trigger a catalytic reaction that destroys the molecules of pollutants, including nitrogen oxides
The first mirrors have been cast for the world’s largest telescope. The result of cooperation from some of the foremost institutions in education and science in the nation, the Giant Magellan Telescope stands to operate at a resolution 10 times larger than the Hubble. The project, set to be constructed in Chile, is slated for completion in 2016
Lance Armstrong has won an unprecedented seventh Tour de France, closing the curtain on one of the most extraordinary cycling careers ever. The American safely crossed the line in the peloton at the end of the 144.5-km final stage on the Champs Elysees
The Telecommunications Workers’ Union of Canada has been locked out by Telus, a large phone company and ISP. Two of TWU’s sites (including Voices for Change, a message board where union members can discuss issues such as being without a contract for 1666 days and last having received a general wage increase 2031 days ago). Telus is playing very dirty — they’re blocking access to the union’s web site so that their workers and the general public are cut off from legitimate debate about this action. This is inexcusable: imagine if this phone company chose to block all calls into union headquarters. OpenNet Initiative has done a report on the incident showing that by blocking the Union’s IP address Telus not only blocked access to the union’s sites, but also to an engineering company; a breast cancer fundraising site; an alternative medicine site based in Australia; and a Colorado based electronic recycling company
, as well as more than 760 other domains — via BoingBoing
In a continuation of their free software friendly activities the BBC has announced that they want to open up their TV listings to creative developers. They explain; Developers and designers are being encouraged to come up with innovative ways of using TV and radio schedules by taking part in a BBC competition. The competition, announced at the Open Tech conference in London, has been organised by the BBC’s backstage developer network. Backstage lets people remix the BBC’s content to make new applications. We want people to innovate and come up with prototypes to demonstrate new ways of exploring the BBC’s TV schedule
It is a work of art that truly represents the nadir of film making; a movie so bad that it’s good. It has been labelled The Worst Movie Ever
by the Golden Turkey Awards and is also the winner of two notable Razzies. Ed Wood’s classic movie Plan 9 from Outer Space is now in the public domain and available as a free download thanks to the fine folks over at Archive.org — via Slashdot
Roman Polanski, the Oscar-winning film director, has won £50,000 libel damage over a magazine article that accused him of seducing a model while on the way to the funeral of his murdered wife, the actress Sharon Tate
New Smyrna Beach, Florida police are on the lookout for the naked tickler. Investigators said they believe one man could be responsible for a series of bizarre break-ins in which a naked man enters victims’ rooms while they are sleeping and tries to tickle their feet. The naked tickler struck again in New Smyrna Beach over the weekend. Investigators have been working on five similar, unsolved cases since 2001. Most of the victims are women over age 60, said police Commander Wade Kirby. Kirby said no arrests have yet been made because they don’t have a lot to go on — via Warren Ellis
An Active Denial System
weapon that fires a 95GHz microwave beam at rioters to cause heating and intolerable pain in less than five seconds
is scheduled for service in Iraq in 2006. It was recently tested on people playing the part of rioters at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico where they asked the subjects to remove glass and contact lenses to protect their eyes. Hopefully real rioters will get the same courtesy. Police and the Marines are working on portable versions. Sandia Labs also has a writeup on this system with pictures of smaller versions of the weapon
Two recent Utah high school graduates won the first-ever Ricoh Sustainable Development Award for inventing a better car air conditioner based on the Peltier effect. The peltier chips used in the device are more energy-efficient, last between 20 and 30 years, are solid-state, and don’t harm the environment with ozone-depleting freon like today’s car air conditioners
Due to an increase in their funding the Australian Bureau of Statistics is making many of its publications free so that they can be accessed by anyone from any computer with internet access. There are no special requirements and no passwords. The free material will include electronic publications (pdf and html) and electronic tables in spreadsheet or data cube formats which contain publication tables
London has faced a second attack as bombers targeted three Underground trains and a bus. I was left with the impression that it was a copy cat attack, by people so mind-numbingly incompetent that you could almost hear the Benny Hill theme playing as they scuttled away
Produce industry service company Durand-Wayland developed a system for identifying produce with laser-etched codes in 2002. These fruit tattoos would replace those little stickers that always get stuck in your teeth when you bite into a nice, crisp apple while distracted — via BoingBoing
New Castle County police arrested a former pediatric nurse Thursday night, saying she tried to poison her 22-month-old son by injecting human faeces into his bloodstream. Authorities said Stephanie McMullen, a former pediatric oncology nurse at Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children, is accused of deliberately injecting faecal matter into her son, her only child, causing him to be hospitalised numerous times — via Warren Ellis
Did the book geek thing last night and went to a Neil Gaiman book signing. A hell of a lot more people there than when I accidentally fell over a signing at Kings Comics many moons ago.
He was really sweet, if looking totally shagged out from an insane schedule.
I picked up the Mirrormask script book, got my first and last issues of Sandman signed, am kicking myself for forgetting to bring Good Omens (which appears to have vanished into the depths of the bookcase) and my copy of NeverWhere now says Mind the Gap
.
He said there’s a new edition of NeverWhere due out in September with more bits in it.
Books Kinokuniya wanted to get him a gift for doing the signing, but he politely refused. Instead they decided to get everyone who came along to write a note in a book for him. I mentioned his brush with Cthulhu at WorldCon in Boston last year
Actor James Doohan, who transported the crew of the original Star Trek
television series through space on the command Beam me up, Scotty
, has died at the age of 85
A mob has fire-bombed the headquarters of a bizarre Malaysian cult built around a giant teapot. The attack comes two weeks after the sect was raided by religious officials. About 30 assailants armed with Molotov cocktails attacked the commune in the early morning. The blaze engulfed a car, burnt one building and scorched the giant teapot itself. The sect in Malaysia’s northeast believes the teapot has healing properties. Its leader, Ayah Pin, reportedly believes he is the boss of all religions
and the owner of everything in his Sky Kingdom
. State religious authorities have outlawed the teapot sect as a deviant cult — via Warren Ellis
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