So, we've dealt with the bike. What about a helmet? Personally, I say yes. more inside

A satellite's eye view of the earth Or, for those of you who can never remember whether it's nighttime over there, and always wind up waking your distant friends/family/lizard alien overlords there's this. more inside

Um, I dunno, fifty.....ish? How well can you estimate things you know nothing (more or less) about? more inside

Standing waves of electrons. The Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) is capable of resolving atomic scale features (like the carbon atoms in a graphitic plane.) more inside

Interview with a Chernobyl engineer. From where I stood I could see a huge beam of projected light flooding up into infinity from the reactor. It was like a laser light, caused by the ionisation of the air. It was light-bluish, and it was very beautiful. I watched it for several seconds. more inside

Neil Gaiman is a rat. Helping the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, one rodent at a time. more inside

Shiny Things more inside

Evidence? Why should we care? Feel free to ruin a person's life. It's not as if you'll ever have to answer for it. more inside

Francis Crick dead at 88. more inside

Treasures of the World From PBS comes this intriguing, somewhat behind the scenes, look at the Taj Mahal, the Mona Lisa, Guernica, the Hope Diamond and others. more inside

Anti-social behaviour orders aka Asbos are a UK law designed to protect the public from behaviour that causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. And the cool thing about them is that they are heard as civil cases, which allows hearsay and balance of probabilities. But breach of an Asbo is a criminal offence. more inside

Gallery of Apollo mission photos. via Slashdot, sorted by mission number. I know a lot of us probably saw it over there, but I think it's worth posting here as well. more inside

Oh wow, he really said that didn't he. Nicely put. more inside

Photographs matter. Peter Dombrovskis was a photographer of the Tasmanian wilderness. It was his images, most especially Rock Island Bend, which helped to stop the damming of the Franklin River for hydroelectricity, and which preserved it for the enjoyment of all. more inside

Spiny Things! more inside

TISM: a band, & buncha guys having fun and swearing a lot more inside

Have some shiny things more inside

Slashdot effect: a force for good? On November 8th, 2001, Distributed Proofreaders was slashdotted for the first time, with others over the years (third graph down). OK, so it's bad form to link to a site where they need to sign in, just so they can read a post, but really....everyone should be in distributed proofreading anyway.

Just a little chaos at the airport. (NSFW, unless you have headphones). An oldie but a goodie. more inside

San Francisco clubbing. Did you know that it is illegal to allow dancing without a permit in San Francisco? (scroll down to Dance Hall Keeper) I didn't. Starting with an existing club, you'd think it'd be easy, right? more inside