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‘Oh, wait, you mean they were serious!? SHIT!’

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If you grew up thinking there were nine planets and were shocked when Pluto was demoted five years ago, get ready for another surprise. There may be nine after all, and Jupiter may not be the largest.

The hunt is on for a gas giant up to four times the mass of Jupiter thought to be lurking in the outer Oort Cloud, the most remote region of the solar system. The orbit of Tyche (pronounced ty-kee), would be 15,000 times farther from the Sun than the Earth’s, and 375 times farther than Pluto’s, which is why it hasn’t been seen so far.

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Presumably it won’t make you slip on the ice and fall 1300 feet to your death.

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As cell phones have spread, so have large cell towers — those unsightly stalks of steel topped by transmitters and other electronics that have sprouted across the country over the past decade.

The wireless industry is now planning a future without them, or at least without many more of them. Instead, it’s looking at much smaller antennas, some tiny enough to hold in a hand. These could be placed on lampposts, utility poles and buildings — virtually anywhere that has electrical and network connections.

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Probably good advice. They sound pretty mean.

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Well, they’re from Harvard, so I’ll want independent confirmation.

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SkyNet, here we come….

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James Hobbs was attacked in Highbridge on 15 January after he popped out to Tasty Bitez for some meaty goodness. He suffered a deep cut across the throat, but “held the wrapped £3.40 takeaway to his neck for several minutes” until his cousin could provide a towel to stem the flow of blood.

Be prepared.

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The Verizon iPhone 4 contains a radio chip capable of connecting to both CDMA and to GSM networks, a detailed autopsy of the device has revealed.

The take-apart was conducted by iFixit.com and exposed the presence of Qualcomm’s MDM6600 chip, a part that supports both types of cellular technology when connected to appropriate antennae.

Naturally, the Veriphone’s integrated aerial is tuned to CDMA, but there’s technically nothing to stop Apple incorporating a second, GSM-tuned antenna too, allowing it to produce a single handset capable of connecting to either network.

Oh ho ho….

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Don’t blame them. Inventory is much easier when it’s bits on a server rather than boxes on a shelf.

Oh, hey, wow, maybe we could do that with books….

(I’m REALLY glad I own Apple stock.)

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Original Greek statues were brightly painted, but after thousands of years, those paints have worn away. Find out how shining a light on the statues can be all that’s required to see them as they were thousands of years ago.

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More than four years after its publication, five disgruntled readers have filed a class-action lawsuit against President Jimmy Carter and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, alleging that his 2006 book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” contained “numerous false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author’s agenda of anti-Israel propaganda and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as advertised.”

Wonder if we could sue the Obamassiah for impersonating an American.

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Postings on Twitter reflect some well-known regionalisms, such as Southerners’ “y’all,” and Pittsburghers’ “yinz,” and the usual regional divides in references to soda, pop and Coke. But Jacob Eisenstein, a post-doctoral fellow in CMU’s Machine Learning Department, said the automated method he and his colleagues have developed for analyzing Twitter word use shows that regional dialects appear to be evolving within social media.

Hey — tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting examples of metagames — not the strategy of metagaming, but playable games about videogames. Most of these, like Desert Bus or Quest for the Crown, are one-joke games for a quick laugh. Others, like Cow Clicker and Upgrade Complete, are playable critiques of game mechanics. Some are even (gasp!) fun.

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Michael says that he’s already gotten so many requests for one that he’s planning on putting it into production.

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We have the technology.

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The Office of Naval Research TechSolutions department has delivered the first 30 sets of what it calls Fast-Tint Protective Eyewear (FTPE). They can change tint automatically based on exterior light, much like currently available prescription glasses, but thanks to their LCD construction can go from dark to clear in just a half-second. This means a SEAL squad could blow a door and infiltrate a room without having to ask the terrorists to hold their fire while everyone takes off their shades.

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GOOD LUCK getting anything past government regulators.

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Little more than a year ago, Google first allowed netizens to upload any file to Google Docs, a move that transformed the service into something not unlike the oft-rumored but never delivered “GDrive”. And now the company is going a few steps further.

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Don’t automatically assume you need special food-storage containers. Why not just put leftovers in a bowl with a saucer or bread-and-butter plate on top? If it fits snugly, it’s no different than aluminum foil or a plastic lid. (What? You thought that “burping” a Tupperware container got all the air out?)

The next time you finish up some jam, pickles or spaghetti sauce, save the jar. (Quart canning jars are good for food storage, too, if you can get them cheaply. More on that below.)

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Though suburban cul-de-sacs have long been attractive as quiet, safe places for families, their disadvantages are becoming clear. One of the biggest problems is interference with motor- and foot-traffic flow. Research by Lawrence Frank, Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, looks at neighborhoods in King County, Washington: Residents in areas with the most interconnected streets travel 26% fewer vehicle miles than those in areas with many cul-de-sacs. Recent studies by Frank and others show that as a neighborhood’s overall walkability increases, so does the amount of walking and biking—while, per capita, air pollution and body mass index decrease.

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A scientific conference at Megiddo, “Synchronizing Clocks at Armageddon,” launched a project to analyze 10 separate Iron Age destruction layers using four state-of-the-art scientific techniques: radiocarbon dating, optical luminescence, archaeo-magnetism and rehydroxilation — a new method pioneered in Britain within the last two years.

Megiddo is the only place in the world with so many destruction layers — archaeological strata resulting from a calamity such as a fire, earthquake or conquest — that resulted from a specific event in history.

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Ferran Adrià, one of the world’s most celebrated chefs, has unveiled plans to transform his restaurant, El Bulli, into an environmentally friendly academic research foundation dedicated to pioneering molecular gastronomy to even greater heights.

The Catalan chef announced a year ago that the three Michelin-starred establishment, crowned best in the world five times, would be closed throughout 2012 and 2013.

This is like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton shutting down for two years to rethink university education — only, in this case, the people in charge know what they’re doing.

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Some news for all of you wine snobs out there.

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Well, you know, that sort of thing happens.

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Not all people are good candidates for this type of technology, but those who are benefit from it greatly. ReWalk’s purpose is to enable these individuals to once again stand, walk and climb stairs, thus giving them the freedom so many of us take for granted every day. These robotic legs make a huge difference in the lives of many people with lower limb paralysis.

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Google Voice is a free service, but porting your existing mobile phone number will cost you $20. Number porting is available to existing Google Voice users right now – there’s a “Change/Port” option on the Settings page once you log in to your account – and according to Google, numbers are typically ported within 24 hours.

When you port your number to Google Voice, doing so actually cancels the existing service plan you have with your mobile carrier. So you’ll have to contact your mobile service provider to set up a new plan under a new number.

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Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

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An online translation of the work of one of the greatest engineers in history.

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Yeah, that sounds like Tennessee.

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Fenugreek, a key curry ingredient, helps to fend off a common cold, it has been claimed, but also has a number of other apparent health benefits.

I’m sorry, but Fenugreek sounds like a character from Star Trek.

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The insanity defense is fairly well-defined, and depending on the jurisdiction it seems like that a lot of supervillains would not actually count as “insane” in a way which would prevent their convictions.

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I suspect that most Haitians, given a choice between having their country run by the U.N. and international ‘aid’ agencies, on the one hand, and a Duvalier, on the other, would pick the latter. Can’t say that I’d blame them.

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We have the technology.

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Hey, if it were easy, anybody could do it.

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It’s simple guys. Give up coffee and tea. Don’t flagellate yourself over it. Don’t invent terribly strict rules to try to govern yourself with a rod of iron. Give up caffeine. Cool your heels, calm your brain, avoid those depressing downs and then watch yourself. Make a daily focus list if you must. Have lists of tasks to do in your email client if you must. Work out what tricks work with you. I am not giving you a tightly worded prescription, iron-bounded rules.

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We have the technology.

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An Italian man who was struck in the head by a stray bullet during New Year’s Eve celebrations is recovering after sneezing the projectile out of his nose.

Next time you get the urge to sneeze, let ‘er rip.

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The New York Times’ “Mapping America” visualization is a good illustration of this strong heritage between cartography and data visualization. It consists of an interactive map of data extracted from the American Community Survey Census, based on samples from 2005 to 2009 and including indicators such as ethnic groups, income, housing, families and education.

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The Leicestershire Trekkie who turned his flat into a replica of the Starship Voyager spent two years battling an alien mould attack, unaware that it was caused by a dope farm in the property below.

The matter was resolved in November, when cops busted the downstairs flat. Alleyne explained: “The police came and knocked on the door of the place below and took away 25 cannabis plants and the equipment. I couldn’t believe there was something like that going on right below me.

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“What the Deepwater Horizon incident has taught us is that releases of methane with similar characteristics will not have the capacity to influence climate,” Kessler said.

The question of what happened to the more than four million barrels of crude oil spilled after the blow out, which also dissipated sooner than expected, remains under debate. Factors including high winds, natural breakdown, evaporation and the clean-up operation have all been suggested.

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A converted church would make a great house. Many of the older ones are in a pretty Gothic style.

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While others wish the new Congress well today on its swearing-in, I plan to light a 100-watt incandescent bulb and hoist a caffeinated alcoholic beverage in honor of a different milestone: starting today, the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee will no longer be under the control of Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

Some lawmakers can talk a decent game about lean ‘n’ smart regulation, but no one ever accused Waxman of having a light touch. (The 900-page Waxman-Markey environmental bill, mercifully killed by the Senate, included provisions letting Washington rewrite local building codes.) He’s known for aggressive micromanagement even of agencies run by putative allies: his staff has repeatedly twisted the ears of Obamanaut appointees to complain that their approach to regulation is too moderate and gradual. More than any other lawmaker on the Hill, he’s stood in the way of any meaningful reform of the 2008 CPSIA law, which piles impractical burdens on small makers of children’s products, thrift stores, bicycles and others.

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Upon examining the US, we find out that Texas fits the bill nicely.  In fact, Texas has 261,797.12 square miles of land, and that is (261792.12<ENTER> 1.602<ENTER> 1.602 × ×) 671,877.17 square kilometers!  Which is, in fact, more than the area we need to house all 7 billion of us at typical New York City densities.  Meaning every man, woman, and child living and breathing on the face of the Earth could fit in relative comfort within the land territory of the State of Texas.

The other 49 states: empty.  Canada?  A wasteland as empty as the northern extremes of Nunavut.  Europe?  Empty.  Asia?  Nobody home.  Africa, Australia, South and Central America, all the islands?  None left.  The entire world outside of Texas contains not a single living, breathing person.

With just over half the daily average outflow of the Columbia River, we could meet the freshwater needs of the entire world’s population.  Now, that is a big pipeline to Texas, but if we could get everyone there in the first place, the pipeline is child’s play!

To recap: so far, we can put every living person on the planet within the land territory of Texas, with density about equal to New York City (not just Manhattan; all 5 boroughs).  And we can give them all adequate water with just over half the water from the Columbia River.

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One question that we get frequently here on Law and the Multiverse is whether superheroes that wear identity-concealing costumes could wear them in court.  A closely related question is whether a superhero could testify under his or her alias and refuse to answer questions about his or her secret identity.  In the US, these are important issues because of the Confrontation Clause, which is where our analysis will focus. We briefly discussed this issue as part of the alter ego post from Dec. 2010; this is a fuller treatment of the specific question of the legal issues related to testifying while disguised.