It's pretty amazing what human beings are capable of, it seems that no matter what life throws at us we find a way to survive and thrive. Make sure you watch the video above (even thought it's in Chinese). It really made me appreciate the more basic things in life.

How imminent is catastrophic and sudden global warming? Some scientists believe that such an event is just around the corner, and are researching how we could keep the Earth cool in case of an emergency. Their ideas sound fantastic and dangerous, from sending thousands of tiny mirrors into space, to scattering a fine cloud of particles through various spots in the Earth’s atmosphere, with the intent of reducing the amount of radiation from the sun that reaches Earth’s surface. Cloud seeding, originally a process thought to increase precipitation in rain-bearing clouds, has been under investigation since 1946. Salt or silver iodide particles are shot into the clouds, causing condensation and, at least some of the time, rain. Rainmaking success rates vary wildly, though, and a new application for cloud seeding is now being explored. John Latham, atmospheric physicist, and Stephen Salter, engineer, are trying to figure out how to use cloud seeding to increase cloud cover—and hence, cloud reflectivity—without creating rainfall. Their idea is to use unmanned, wind-powered yachts, to shoot sea water in a fine spray into the clouds over southern oceans. This could increase the density and whiteness of marine stratocumulus clouds, already found in these areas, and make them shiny enough to reflect even more sunlight back into space. They say that it would only take a spray of about 500 litres of seawater per second, to cool the globe enough to counteract warming due to CO2 emissions. The question is, how do you test an idea like this without actually putting it into practice? Is it really necessary? And how can we even consider manipulating the weather when we don’t understand it to begin with?

The first Edward Burtynsky photograph that I remember seeing was a dark, flat landscape cut through the middle by a river flowing bright red. At the time, I thought manufactured landscapes referred to the artist’s manufacturing of the photograph— I thought Burtynsky had altered the picture, added red to the river. I was wrong: the river actually flows red due to the tailings that are dumped in it from a nickel mine outside of Sudbury. Burtynsky takes pictures of landscapes that have been manufactured. He captures the imprint that people, our industries and our wastes, make on the natural world. As his website explains, “He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as ‘stunning’ or ‘beautiful,’ and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.” Everyone can look at his photos and take a different meaning from them. He doesn’t condemn, he merely exposes— and he makes it look beautiful in the process. Photo from edwardburtynsky.com

The Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn and observing the planet and its moons since July of 2004 (Cassini’s partner, the Huygens probe, landed on and is exploring the moon Titan), sent back photos in September of one of the most unusual objects in the solar system. Iapetus is Saturn’s third-largest moon, and its unusual shape and bizarre colouring make it stand out so much that it was featured in Arthur C. Clarke’s famous novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Discovered in 1671 by a gentleman named Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Iapetus is distinguished by a dramatic two-tone colouring that make it look like a spherical yin-yang symbol. One pole is bright white and the other, very dark. The two colours can be distinguished even at small scales, as Cassini (the spacecraft) discovered, with craters composed of both light and dark patches but no grey areas at all. The bright part is ice, and scientists believe that the dark material— which constitutes a very thin layer on the surface of the ice— is what gets left behind by sublimated ice (also called “lag’). The moon orbits Saturn in such a way that the same side always faces the planet. From Earth, when Iapetus is on Saturn’s western side, we see the bright part, and when it’s on the eastern side, the moon looks dark. Another interesting feature of Iapetus is its equatorial ridge— so pronounced that it can be seen even from far away. Unlike most moons, it has neither a spherical nor an ellipsoid shape. Iapetus looks more like a walnut.

This is a video showing off the model 2008 Volkswagen Mule, a new, clean, diesel car. It’s designed for use on the highway— Volkswagens were originally made to drive optimally at a steady speed and low RPM for long distances on the Autobahn in Germany. Compared to a hybrid, this diesel vehicle— which can also use biodiesel, of course— gets similar mileage but is a much better choice for long-distance driving or high-speed highways. It seems to me that if you’re a person who uses your car for long distances, you should go with diesel: and if you drive a lot in the city, to commute to work, for instance, hybrids or electric cars are going to be your best choice. The Mule is as clean if not cleaner than a conventional gas car, and, as diesel is less expensive at the pumps than regular unleaded gasoline, they figure it will be a hit.

It is the kind of garage where a stranger walking in will see chaos; but among the gas barrels and fixtures, tubs of grease and auto parts, everything is exactly in its place. The recycled restaurant grease goes through a t-shirt filter into one drum, then it’s pumped into another and heated, and so on. Everyone’s worried about the viability of ethanol and other biofuels once highly populated countries like the U.S. start using them on a large scale. The question is, is the large scale the answer? Almost every sustainable technology that has been developed to provide energy— like solar panels, wind turbines, and ethanol— works, here and now, on a small scale. It is easier to switch energy sources for one home at a time, and individuals can tailor energy production to meet their particular needs. Just imagine how good it would feel to be producing most or all of your own energy! Also, I imagine that it would be a lot like raising your own food— once you can see first-hand how much work goes into energy production and what can go wrong, you are much less likely to take it for granted and more likely to conserve. I don’t think that anything that’s in massive-scale production is sustainable, regardless of the technology or science behind it. Perhaps we can learn from this guy, making fuel for his own car, in his own garage, surrounded by huge oil barrels and creating glycerine as a by-product that he can refine into soap.

In a thought-provoking (and slightly tongue-in-cheek) twenty-minute lecture, Kevin Kelly dares to ask: what is technology? What does technology want? And in terms of human society and culture, what is technology's view of the world?

Thinking of technology as having a life of its own has sparked many a scary work of science fiction. But Kelly carefully takes us through the five major trends in the evolution of life on earthubiquity, diversity, specialization, complexity, and socializationand proceeds to demonstrate how the development of technology has followed these same trends. He concludes that technology is the seventh kingdom of life.

Technology is like a singularity, says Kelly. Before the Big Bang all matter was compressed into a single point, leaving no room for difference. When all of this expanded, so began diversity, freedom, possibility, choice. This, he says, is what technology brings us. Freedoms, possibilities, choices. Perhaps we have a moral responsibility to invent new technologies so that the children of the world can express their own particular talentsafter all, he points out, what would have become of Mozart if the piano hadn't yet been invented?

How well do you know your own mind? How well do you understand its inner workings? And can you really trust it, to tell you what it’s seeing? Our brains are made up of about a hundred trillion individual cells, none of which has any consciousness of its own. So how do these cells work together to create a conscious brain?


Dan Dennet believes, as other philosophers have said, that “consciousness is a bag of tricks.” In other words, the brain isn’t always being perfectly honest. Sometimes it will make you believe that you’ve seen something when you haven’t.

Tests (many of which Dennett demonstrates for the audience) have shown that people often have a really difficult time noticing change. The thing is, the focal region of our eyes is incredibly small—about the size of a thumbnail held up at arm’s length. That is where we get our detail from—the rest of the field of vision is remarkably lacking in detail. To make up for this deficiency, or in situations where additional detail is suggested but not shown, the brain simply fills in the blanks.

Try a couple of these tests and see what you think of your mind’s ability to trick you.

Watch this video

Who says eco-friendly cars have to look strange? And who says they have to be slow? Not Jay Leno— he had General Motors custom build him a sports car that runs on biodiesel. This car is beautiful. Powered by a Honeywell jet turbine engine, it’s not so good on mileage, as Leno admits, but at least it’s using renewable fuels. The design is based on a Corvette ZO6-C6 frame, and made of aluminum and carbon fibre, so it’s nice and light. And get this— the interior is custom designed to anatomically fit Leno’s body shape and size. Ok, so it’s a publicity stunt— but it’s nice to show the world that green cars can be cool, too.

A small group of cylinder-shaped robots, topped with glowing, circular patterns of light, seems to be what comprises a pet these days. GlowBots are small robots that interact with a user as well as in groups, forming social networks based on dominance and learning. Picking one up and shaking it will give the robot confidence and positive reinforcement, so that when you put it down it will find a neighbour to be its ‘friend,’ and show it how to make more complex patterns. Groups of friends can ‘discuss’ various patterns and show others how to copy theirs. Two relatively confident, or equally dominant bots, when they meet, will try to form a combination of their two patterns. The invention was introduced at NextFest, a technology fair put on by WIRED Magazine which ran until September 16th.


Developer Mattias Jacobsson of the Viktoria Institute in Sweden says that he was inspired by the relationships between unusual pets such as spiders and snakes, and their owners. The GlowBots are built on an open educational robotic platform called the