Ken Norton passes at 70 - fallen to heart failure, though he will be remembered as a great hearted heavyweight in his day.

So sad that the great heavyweight Tommy Morrison has passed away at the age of only 44... more inside

Jack Vance Memorial That jack Vance has left us here on the dying earh more inside

Hemp is a Godsend now even for making supercapacitors based on nanotechnology. "Supercapacitors offer a low-cost alternative source of energy to replace rechargeable batteries for various applications, such as power tools, mobile electronics, and electric vehicles." more inside

Kooteninchela deppi was named in honor of Edward Scissors Hand actor Johnny Depp, since it had scissors hands already in the Cambrian Period 500 million years ago.

Write or critique haikus as if tapping on typewriter keys in a monkey sweatshop!

The hypothalamus knows when it's time to die. So it is said to excrete a hormone for initiating mass cell death during times of excess, holding back on it during hard times. (Sensing somehow that the whole herd may go down, the gland tries then keep the individual soldiering on for the future.) But with people, a variety of psychological factors ameliorate that. Because for some reason, individuals actually live longer in the lands of plenty. So Maybe, deep down, we believe we're already standing on the edge of an abyss? more inside

I Touch Myself singer has passed away in NYC. .

Smart Highways are being tested in the Netherlands right now. But I caution that a lot of maintenance work will be needed to keep the system working sensor-wise.

Where's that confounded sun? Used to navigate when the lodestone fails, Vikings and Englishmen of olde, could find the position of the sun on cloudy days by rotating a calcite crystal and lining up the two planes of light diffracted from the source even on cloudy days, according to a French team researching a British shipwreck.

Hilda of Klint painted monumental abstractions before abstractions were cool. In seclusion at the start of the 20th century, she worked spontaneously, insisting that her paintings not be shown until 20 years after her passing. Many of her pioneering efforts are seen now for the first time.

Cannibalistic Cop frightens away jurors in lurid case. It's hard to make a fair trial for somebody accused of the worst, as shown in New Guinea recently - even though the witch was herself purportedly tried by cannibals.

Irrational eliptic curves animation ... Well, that's what I was looking for. I leave it for the long lost geek monkeys to figure it out.

Turkish mosaic bridges cultures ... When The Dallas Museum of Art discovered they had a mosaic stolen from an archeological site they returned it to Turkey, which may now want to share and exchange other works of art. So that's one bridge. Another is that The Orpheus Mosaic itself is a bridge to pagan Greek legend. more inside

Clearing land mines just got cheaper. Designer builds off childhood toys he and his brothers built in Afghanistan. He's in the running for an award. more inside

Intellectual Property to become picky. If you buy a product, or have it shipped to you from overseas, can you resell it in the US? The Supreme Court will hear the case October 29. Big importers have a big stake. But it could even affect little guys who want to resell their own camera, for example, purchased on a family trip... more inside

Curious George: Has the MoFi Wiki been discontinued? I can't get Forksclovetofu's mp3 blog to load anymore. I get an error like this: Setup.php must be included from the file scope, after DefaultSettings.php... Am I doing something wrong? Or has the wiki.monkeyfilter.com been discontinued? That would be sad, since Fork's mp3 blog was thought to be his memorial here :(

Grand mother strategy cuts across species as a way to further the tribe. "Males become more fecund as they get older, so in Darwinian terms, it pays to have long-lived sons." Since the mom is probably a working dolphin... wait, what were we talking about? Right, pan-species strategies. Looks like it works beyond our own. And that's why women don't keep bearing young for long: they must concentrate on the next generation of theirs...

Two months ago Ray Bradbury left this particular world :(

The devil's own disease spreads like a zombie outbreak. More properly known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease, it's a contagous cancer that started from the bite of one infected Tasmanian devil. Let's hope they find a cure, so the devils don't all bomb-out like the Tasmanian Tiger did a century ago... Oh, and here's a new Aussie movie staring Willem Dafoe, called The Hunter, based on what might happen if just one Tasmanian Tiger was left for corporate pillaging. See, the movie hypothesizes that, for the sake of medical warfare, the bite of the Tiger was poisonous - even as this new devil cancer spreads like a contageious poison <:(!)