Whew, lots of interesting things this week popped up...

"Not Just Warmer: It's the Hottest for 2,000 Years"

"Don't Rely On Microsoft, Trade Group Urges Homeland Security"

"Failing at Living"

The trials of teaching 14 year-olds:

Sick On The Inside

"We have almost 30 percent of our prison population in Texas infected with hepatitis. That’s not so different from the numbers you see in the Dark Ages with the plague."

According to "youth marketing experts", Apple is one of the coolest, popular brands among teenagers (even though they're probably using Windows at school):

American Brandstand

Want to know what brands are mentioned the most in popular songs these days? Here's a chart, updated weekly:

Diamond-cutting robots are on the rise! Contrast with the recent progress made in synthetic diamond tech (see the recent Wired) and you'll see how the entire industry could be completely automated in a few years...

"Keepers of the Magic Kingdom"

A great story about Disney's biggest fans, and an interesting comparison to Talmudic scholarship. Is God really in the details, and are details necessary for organizational and religious longevity?

The Global Rich List

See how many people are poorer than you in the world!

Ever see that movie "Blast From The Past", about a man who spent 35 years in a nuclear fallout shelter built by his dad?

Well, here's "The Subterranean Fortress", the largest, most extensive hand-built private bunker ever made in the United States:

California candidates are given the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner, to see which ones are replicants. This is hilarious!

In some developing countries counterfeits are of better quality than the real thing...

The best article so far on the Aquada, the first amphibious sports car that actually looks sporty:

This is a previous news item, but you can compare it to the world's first amphibious RV:

India's struggles with genetically modified crops...

Thanks to the human genome project, researchers are pioneering the field of ionomics, the study of how genes regulate ions. That can lead to plants that soak up heavy metals...

Visionary architect Eugene Tsui Why generic "modernism" is a plague, and how to design a humane future: "Look at a box-shaped house - it wastes so much space and so much material, it is structurally weak and prone to the elements, it is psychologically and emotionally demoralizing because it is so contrary to the way that we, humans, are created."