This will be a photograph in the top 10 of many future lists. - Andrew Baron

Explanation: "In January 2007, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance. Near the image center, though, seen through clouds, was the most unusual sight of all: Comet McNaught. The photogenic comet was so bright that it even remained visible though the din of Earthly flashes. Comet McNaught has now returned to the outer Solar System and is now only visible with a large telescope. The above image is actually a three photograph panorama digitally processed to reduce red reflections from the exploding firework." - Andrew Baron

very hip, I've seen this photo before (might have been on APOD) - Michael Kowalchik

sometimes good photography gives me goosebumps! - Phillip Jeffrey

great image - Pete Delucchi

Mississippi is fattest, Colorado is the leanest - Jess Lee via Bookmarklet

This data set *so* needs to be a cartogram. - ⓞnor

Boulder will humble you: http://andrewhyde.net/boulder-... - Jason Wehmhoener

This is obese - I don't even want to see "overweight." Colorado is the only state where it's not a granted that 1 out of 5 is obese (though by the looks of things, the average is 1 out of 4). Does this include children? Pre-edit: clicked on the article - the overweight numbers are amazing. I'm certainly in these categories - I must disclose. - Vince DeGeorge

cool chart - looks like our primary home (ct) is #3 & secondary (vt) is #5 :) - mike "glemak" dunn

For comparison, this morning I flew a 767 with 40 tons of freight 3100 miles and burned 10,000 gallons of fuel. That comes out to around 12.4 ton-miles per gallon. - Chris Johnson

So, hopping a freight is going to be the new hip thing? How does this compare to passenger trains? - ⓞnor

Passenger trains are much less efficient than freight because they have to expend a lot of energy going faster and providing power for lights and A/C. Still, trains are the most efficient form of passenger transport (2100 BTU/passenger mile vs. 3182 for airplanes) in this country. - Gabe Schaffer

Wikipedia says vanpools and motorcycles are both more efficient than rail. (I wonder how many passenger-miles per gallon a zeppelin gets...) Maybe a lot of cities run near-empty buses along many routes, and that pushes down the occupancy (and efficiency) numbers? - ⓞnor

I suspect that vanpools are so efficient because they just use a full van to transport a bunch of people from point A to point B rather, so they are generally full and have direct routes. - Gabe Schaffer

Here's what I need: Fast, works on existing directories (no iPhoto style import), easy to delete photos I don't want, simple color correction + cropping, and very fast. Very nice to have would be the ability to upload to Smugmug or Google, basic video stuff (time crop), video re-encoding (my camera saves videos as mjpeg for some reason). - Paul Buchheit

Aperture is the primary professional, and most excellent application for OSX. It is worth the money, it is not iPhoto. It is easy to use, and you are likely to not want to use anything else. - Steve Pribut

Sure, you could write it in AIR, but I haven't heard anything yet that convinces me you can't just use the leopard finder for what you want. - Chris White

Adobe Bridge - Bjorn Tipling

chris - i agree. Leopard finder and photoshop are the best solution until Google brings Picasa to Mac - Jared Radosevich

"chart of Dow Jones index returns by U.S. president since Herbert Hoover" - Simon via Bookmarklet

I question how much impact presidents have on our macro economy. I'm a Bill Clinton voter, but I think much of the stock market performance during his tenure is the dot com boom. Without that, I'd guess his numbers fall in the mid-range. We're getting smacked right now by the housing bubble and skyrocketing oil prices. I don't look to Bush re: housing bubble or oil prices. Growing global oil demand + OPEC constraints more the culprit. - Hutch Carpenter

Yes, I agree. Beyond general amusement value, I doubt that the graph is actually useful -- particularly since for each presidency there are so many other factors at play, such as the economic policies of the preceding president. - Simon

I agree there is a strong correlation between the fall of the dollar, the fall of the stock and real estate markets, and the rise in oil prices. I don't believe it is oil that caused the other problems though, but currently more of the other way around. Capital tends to move from markets that are receding to markets that are advancing. - Chris White

Consider that before 2001, we hadn't spent a trillion dollars on the Iraq war, didn't have radio and tv ads for interest-only loans every 10 minutes, and it was rare for institutional investors (e.g. large mutual funds) to buy commodity futures and hold them (by continually rolling them over) as part of a long term investment strategy. - Chris White

"One question for Ear-a-round is whether it can be made cheaper than fencing. At $600 a cow, that is not obviously yet so. Dr Rus, however, is working on getting the price of the hardware down to the $100 that farmers will pay. Meanwhile Dr Anderson is about to start working out how many cows actually need to be fitted with Ear-a-rounds to control an entire herd. He hopes that, by identifying a herd’s leaders and fitting out them alone, this number can be reduced to a handful." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

Just like people. - Paul Buchheit

Oh. I pictured virtual cows mooing 'en garde!' - Andy Wibbels

This is less sophisticated technology than an iPhone. I'm sure with an AT&T subsidy they can get the cost to $199 per cow (with 2 year contract). Seriously, though, this has other implications -- changes in movement could be provide diagnostics for cattle illness (moving slowly, not roaming as far, etc.), or telemetry could be added (temperature, heartbeat)... whole "cattle drives" could be conducted over the web... at least until the hackers break in and steer your herd onto an interstate... :-D - Karim

Paul - lol "just like people." so there are cow "influentials?" - Karim

But by carefully conserving water with the specially designed low-impact toilet I had installed, I can take comfort in the knowledge that I did what I could do to delay this inevitable global death-age by as many as several nanoseconds. Together, we can make an unbelievably negligible difference. - bob

I am still following the "golden" rule of flushing. When it's yellow, let it mellow. When it's brown, flush it down. Also, purchased a front loading set (washer & dryer) from Samsung last year. Uses considerably less water and electricity than conventional laundry sets. Have had no problems up to now (knock on particle board). - Les

What happens to all the water you don't use? It just runs down the river back into the ocean. - Amit Patel

I refuse to like this largely because I did _not_ like those things. I couldn't eat more than 2 bites. - Erica Baker

Hey, I wouldn't even take 1 bite. But I still like ridiculousity. - Amit Patel

Voodoo Dougnuts here in Portland has a bacon doughnut, but I can never bring myself to buy one... - Frederic

I guess that is one way to reduce headcount at Google! - J. Phil

But how do I get a good donut burger here in the bay area? - j1m

Advanced creature creation techniques from Maxis. - Adam Helweh via Bookmarklet

doesn't it bother you that EA owns all rights on the creatures you create and they even have the right to modify and monetize them (but you don't)? - Gaby Benkwitz

No, I guess it doesn't bother me. - Amit Patel

Only the ones you choose to share on Sporepedia. If you choose not to share anything they can't touch it. - Michael Narciso

Interesting choice of locations. Skipping SOMA because it's too intensive? - Chris White

Very cool! I really enjoy having Wifi wherever I go, ive only seen one city around here with city Wifi, and that's Montgomery, AL - Aaron Myers

is it not based on security settings of some sort? - Zee from WeDoCreative

You get it from the same company you get your current encription from (like Verisign) except it costs a lot more money. - Chris Nixon

Well, a regular cert more or less says you're talking to the DNS owners of the domain listed in your address bar. Which is a service that ought to be worth about 5 cents. This one says... that you're talking with the organization that is generally known by that name? What *does* stop me from getting a business license for Fiend Feed, Inc. and so on? At some level it seems to be chasing "authenticity" which really means "will pay a bunch of money and/or fill out a bunch of annoying paperwork". - ⓞnor

What I really want is "is widely and unambiguously recognized by the community as the entity associated with that name". Where "the community" is... some big trust network centered on you and people you know? - ⓞnor

this is still far from regular idi... I mean casual consumer :) they shall say how much you are INSURED on your login when you come to this site, and insurance expressed in money, with sum signed by issuer into server side SSL certificate - only then you know for how much you are protected :) names are like talk - cheap :) - silpol

Video interview with Will Wright. - Nick Munson via Bookmarklet

what you want is something i've been crying for, for years & its data poritablity - sam via twhirl

Yeah, but I want automagic data portability. I want it to go on in the background. I don't even want to know it's there. I just want to click a button to sign up for a service and be done with it. Or better yet, have my IA sign up for the services it figures I'd be interested in, and then just show me the best content from said services. - Tad Donaghe

But the point of new social networks is to shed all your stupid non-friends! - ⓞnor

I still want people to be able to add me without leaving my website. Isn't that what AJAX is for, after all? - Rahsheen Porter

How about being able to sign up for disparate services/sites here on FF and automatically have all subscriptions updated in said service and automatically have said service's content spewed out here in FF? I want FF to be my primary hub for all things internets. - Tad Donaghe

"Prototype contact lenses that include LEDs and circuits could become a tiny personal display. Babak Parviz wears contact lenses. But he's not yet using the new contact lenses he's made in his Seattle laboratory. Containing electronic circuits, they look like something from a science fiction movie. He's now going to add some extremely small light emitting diodes (LEDs), helping turn his prototype contact lenses into a sophisticated personal display - the tiniest one possible." - RAPatton via Bookmarklet

that can't be good for one's health. fascinating though - Cee Bee

Interesting technology... - Daniel Schildt

"Why are you staring into space and chuckling to yourself", asks my wife. "Oh, just checking my email, got some funny ones today", I reply. - Nick Lewis

My two questionable cents: (1) power supply and (2) cooling. Much like current artificial eyes, but way harder to solve. - 9000

“In a study published today in Cell Metabolism, mice given resveratrol -- the first of an eagerly-anticipated class of longevity drugs -- enjoyed dramatically improved health, even when they started taking the drug late in life.” - Amit Patel

"Regardless of mouse weight and diet, resveratrol worked wonders. At two years of age, or the mouse equivalent of senescence, the mice were more coordinated than their non-dosed counterparts. Their bones were thicker and stronger, their eyes free of cataracts, their hearts beating strong. At the cellular level, tissues displayed gene-level changes almost identical to those produced by caloric restriction. The mitochondria of resveratrol-taking mice also proved healthy. Mitochondrial degeneration has been implicated in a variety of diseases, leading some researchers to believe that heart disease, cancer and dementia -- all the so-called diseases of aging -- have a common root. "The mice had tremendous health benefits from taking resveratrol," said de Cabo. "If any of those parameters translate to humans, it will be tremendous." When Sinclair and de Cabo's mice started taking resveratrol they were one year old, roughly equivalent to 35 human years. The success suggests that the drug's benefits could be en" - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

Sign me up. - j1m

Regular biological evolution evolves the _values_ of the genes often, but rarely the _methods_ (crossover, mutation, chromosomes, sexual reproduction, etc.). What if machine evolution was able to evolve both its own genes and the structural properties of - Amit Patel

The best known perpetrator of this is Comcast, a major US ISP. Comcast forges packets to stop computers communicating when their networks are overloaded. They selectively do this to certain programs and it's very hard to detect. - Jon McAlister via Bookmarklet

thanks for pointing me to Visualizing Economics... love the site - Mark Williamson via twhirl

Same - great site ! - David Th

Would really like to see another line added for the mean income. - Ken Sheppardson

My favorite detail is the fact that the Gulf War was so short that it needed to be written vertically. - James Cham

Meanwhile, the price of bread has tripled and the hours of labor extended. - Thomas T. Panto

Guilty. - Hao Chen

"Tests showed that after six weeks, the T-cells of the 15 worm recipients began to produce lower levels of chemicals associated with inflammatory response, indicating that their immune systems were more suppressed than those of the 15 placebo recipients. Despite playing host to small numbers of parasites, worm recipients reported little discomfort. Trial participants raved about their allergy symptoms disappearing. Word about the study soon appeared online among chronic allergy sufferers, and a Yahoo group on “helminthic therapy” sprung up. “Many of the people who were given a placebo have requested worms, and many of the people with worms have elected to keep them,” Dr. Pritchard said." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

I saw this yesterday. As a sufferer from allergies, my current reaction is: no no no! Un-like! Especially when he says “The itch when they cross through your skin is indescribable.” My allergies aren't bad enough to sign up for an experiment :) - Jennie Lin

it seems to be a good news day for beneficial medical discoveries and innovations. - edythe