This is an article about an idea called vertical farming. Basically, the idea is to build high rise buildings for in-door farming. Like massive greenhouses on steroids. They would like to build urban indoor farms in order to meet man kinds increasing food needs.

The vertical farming website lists several advantages to this plan:

• Year-round crop production
• No reliance on weather conditions
• Indoor crops would require far less in the way of pesticides, etc
• Return farmland to nature (I don’t think that this would actually happen).
• The (significant) energy costs of transporting foods to urban centers is also avoided

They are designing the things to produce their own energy so that they are totally self-sufficient. They reckon very little water would be lost (they even want to capture evaporation).

One question that I have is where will all the top-soil come from? And wouldn’t the nutrients in the soil become depleted? Lots of fertilizer.

Anyway, I think that it’s an interesting idea.

These guys are doing research into the effects of alcohol and drugs by getting fruit flies drunk and high. The image below shows the effects of an experiment using “volatilized free-base cocaine”. The images trace the paths of the flies for 1 minute after exposures to cocaine.

1. Normal flight paths
2. After a smallish dose of cocaine
3. After a serious dose of cocaine.

This site sells inflatable weaponry. You can buy a life-sized inflatable F16 fighter jet. Random.

Anyway, they also sell these cool missile balloons that you can tie to your car. Creates a fun effect

Check out this National Geographic article about a very rare bird photographed for the first time. It has an “upside down” beak which makes it look like it’s smiling. I wonder what evolutionary advantage the bird got from that arrangement.

• “Recently rediscovered by scientists in Colombia after a 40-year absence.”
• “First ever [photo] taken of a live bushbird

Wired has some interesting photos of factories in China. This one showing lunch time at a textiles factory is almost exactly how I imagined things while I was reading Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This looks a little strange because of all the pink. It is taken in one of the biggest chicken processing plants in China.

In South Africa criminals have taken to blowing up ATM’s in order to make off with the cash in them. This Financial Mail article discusses the trend:

In the first five months of this year, 148 ATM blasts were carried out across SA - an average of one a day, and nearly three times the number in all of 2006.

Security analysts are growing increasingly concerned at the ease with which the bombers are able to obtain the mining explosives used in most bombings.

“Giant ancient penguins” - what a phrase. Anyway, here is an article about some penguins that lived in Peru 30 million years ago.

• They stood 1.5 meters (4.5 feet) tall
• They had huge beaks and are suspected to have used spear-fishing techniques
• The fossils were found near a Peruvian desert so dry that they think some parts haven’t seen rain in 40 million years!

Here is an artist’s impression showing the size of the penguin relative to a modern penguin.

Check out this very brief article about a drugged up Hollander who was trying to escape the cops when he decided to turn into a field. As you can see, he caused havoc.

I was reading about a study of the life found on and around icebergs (there is a lot of it) and they had this cool pic. Sometimes ice on the top of an iceberg begins to melt and forms a lake. Eventually the lake breaks through the edge of the berg and a waterfall can form. Pretty cool.

This is an article about an elite group of young guys who have made it seriously big on the internet. Many of them got going in their teens and are now seriously rich and famous in their 20’s.

They are undoubtedly talented, but also a little lucky. They were in the right place at the right time, but they were able to take the chance when it came. Yes I suppose I am a little jealous…

Thing is, these guys are a bit like movie stars. Out of the thousands that try, only a few lucky people really make it big - many talented people fail. It’s a risky goal, but if you win, you win big.

For instance Mark Zuckerberg who is more than a year younger than me (he is 23) started and runs Facebook - a great, great website which I often use. Facebook is one of the 20 most often visited sites in the world and has more than 25 million registered users.