Photo: Wally Pacholka

A bad thing about living in a city is the light pollution that prevents us from seeing spectacular sights like this: the Milky Way galaxy, as seen from the False Kiva in the Canyonlands National Park in Utah.

APOD, one of my favorite sites, has the larger pic:

Is there any place in the world you could see a real sight like this? Yes. Pictured above is single exposure image spectacular near, far, and in between. Diving into the Earth far in the distance is part of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, taken with a long duration exposure. Much closer, the planet Jupiter is visible as the bright point just to band's left. Closer still are picturesque buttes and mesas of the Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA, lit by a crescent moon. In the foreground is a cave housing a stone circle of unknown origin named False Kiva. The cave was briefly lit by flashlight during the long exposure. Astrophotographer Wally Pacholka reports that getting to the cave to take this image was no easy trek. Also, mountain lions were a concern while waiting alone in the dark for just the right exposure.

Link

Photo: Chromatist Photography

Are you upside down on your property? Well, maybe you'll feel better after taking a look at homes and buildings that are actually upside down. Or maybe not.

Urlesque has a pretty neat gallery of upside down buildings from around the world. This one above is actually a 1997 art installation at Harbour Green Park, Vancouver, Canada by Dennis Oppenheim titled "Device to Root out Evil." ("A country church is seen balancing on it’s steeple, as if it had been lifted by a terrific force and brought to the site as a device or method of rooting out evil forces," according to his website)

Link

And now for a geeky pitstop, here's a parody of The Doors's famous song, a cheeky ad from Linspire Linux titled "Time to Set MS on Fire":

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via AQFL

Whaa? Did I read this right? The citizens of "Taxachusetts" have finally risen against the tyranny of high taxes: there's a ballot measure to get rid of the state's income tax.

Question 1 would cut the tax by half the first year and eliminate it the next year, and Ms. Howell said the state could compensate by cutting lucrative employee pensions, paring bureaucracies and spending wisely.

“We don’t have to cut any essential services or any government programs that are providing a benefit to the people of Massachusetts,” Ms. Howell said. “All we have to do is cut government waste.”

Some voters who wanted taxes lowered to 5 percent have decided to support Question 1 to show their anger at the state, said Barbara Anderson, director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, which advocated 5 percent but is now producing bumper stickers that read “Hell Yes! Question 1.”

Massachusetts does have some experience against that sort of thing - the last time they rallied against taxation, America ended up being an independent country: Link - via Blue's News

The Bailout plan isn't the only thing that failed today: here's a YouTube clip of a tow truck that needed to be bailed out itself after bailing out an overturned semi.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks mowog!

Photo: European Space Agency

Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle named Jules Verne, has successfully completed its mission delivering fuel, water, oxygen, food, and other items to the International Space Station. The spacecraft was then sent on a destructive reentry path that let it break apart safely over an uninhabited part of the South Pacific.

Link - via Gizmodo

Guess who's coming to star in an upcoming Spider-Man comic? It's none other than Stephen Colbert, who's running for president in the Marvel Universe!

Marvel is proud to reveal that Spider-Man and acclaimed television personality Stephen Colbert will join forces in an all new eight-page story featured in the extra-sized AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #573! Acclaimed writer Mark Waid and fan favorite artist Patrick Olliffe present Stephen Colbert, a candidate for the U.S. Presidency in the Marvel Universe, teaming up with Marvel's most iconic crime fighter.

Link

We may not have been giving honeybees enough credit: turns out the insect can count (well, up to four anyhow)!

Also at the Australian National University, Marie Dacke and Mandyam V. Srinivasan trained European honeybees to pass a particular number of colored stripes in a tunnel to get a food reward, which was placed by a stripe. When they removed the food, the bees still returned to the same stripe.

Next, they mixed things up on the bees: they varied the spacing of the stripes, and even replaced stripes with unfamiliar markers. The insects consistently passed the same number of markers to approach the former reward site, demonstrating that they could count, up to four.

The studies burnish the impressive list of honeybees' known cognitive abilities, all achieved with a brain the size of a sand grain.

Link

When you think of a country's export, what comes first to mind? For most people, japan means cars. Saudi Arabia? Oil. China? Everything else.

How about good ol' United States of America? It turns out that our no. 1 export is debt. Lots and lots of debt.

Here's an interesting article by Justin Fox for TIME about how US has been selling $700 billion in debt securities to foreigners every year (the number is the same as the bailout plan, but that's just a coincidence) and how the party's coming to an end (maybe):

Our quandary is that we are apparently not capable of safely manufacturing $700 billion in debt securities to sell to foreigners every year, as we've been doing since 2005. (That this is the same total as Treasury's bailout plan is just a coincidence.) If we keep trying to borrow that much from overseas--as you've probably gathered, selling debt means borrowing money--today's quality problems may soon seem petty. For now, we can still reassure buyers around the world by slapping that GUARANTEED label on our debt. But as financial crisis and economic slowdown cause government debts to burgeon, and as commitments to Social Security and Medicare loom closer as baby boomers retire, that confidence could easily fade.

Link (Illustration: Harry Campbell/TIME) - via reddit

Photo: Hiroko Masuike / The New York Times

Korean artist Jean Shin created this sculpture "Sound Wave" (2007) out of melted vinyl records to connote "the inevitable waves of technology that render each successive generation of recordable media obsolete."

Her sculpture and others made from recycled materials are part of The Museum of Art and Design's exhibit "Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary."

Roberta Smith of The New York Times has the story: Link | Photo Gallery | Jean Shin's website - via Boing Boing Gadgets

A couple walking their dog in a remote, wooded area in the town of Izu, Japan, found what appeared to be a corpse and alerted the police.

When forensic pathologists began to unwrap the "corpse," they realized it was a state-of-the-art sex doll! Naturally, the police weren't amused - and they tracked down the guy who dumped it:

According to investigators, the man had lived with the sophisticated doll for several years after his wife passed away, but decided to part with her after making plans to move in with one of his children. “It seems he grew attached to the doll over the years,” said the chief investigator. “He was confused about how to get rid of her. He thought it would be cruel to cut her up into pieces and throw her out with the trash, so he proceeded to dump her illegally.”

The man, who regrets his lifelike doll was mistaken for a corpse, now faces fines for violating Japan’s Waste Management Law.

Photo: Dr. Rachel Fink / Mount Holyoke College

Every year, the Nikon Small World showcases the best in microscopy. This year is no different. Here are the selection of photographs from the 2008 Nikon Small World: http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/vote-launch.php?showall=true - via Super Punch

This one above is a fluorescence micrograph of 5 days old squid (Loligo pealei) embryos, magnified 80x, by Dr. Rachel Fink of Mount Holyoke College.

Previously on Neatorama: Nikon Small World 2006, 2007 winners | Runner up from 2007 contest and my personal favorite: Zooplankton in a Drop of Water by Peter Parks

Heh! How awesome is this: the "Mechanical Aural Communication Device," a steampunk ear piece (pre-Blue Tooth era, I suppose) made by Flickr user nicrosin. Too bad it's just a prop.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicrosin/2825085895/in/set-72157603710825786/ - via GeekAlerts

The War in Darfur, Western Sudan, Africa, is now in its fifth year and its increasingly unlikely - despite their rhetorics - that major world powers will do anything to prevent the killings.

Some people are now calling for a free market/private sector solution to the conflict: if governments are unwilling to send soldiers to the area, how about the private sector hiring Blackwater mercenaries instead?

John of Locust & Honey wrote:

Several years into the Darfur genocide, it's getting increasingly unlikely that any of the major powers will do anything to prevent the extermination of these people. This problem has led some people to propose a free market solution: mercenaries.

Let us say, hypothetically, that a group of churches or denominations came together and hired a mercenary army to protect the people of Darfur from their Sudanese oppressors. Would their actions be consistent with Christian principles?

Link

Photo caption: A Darfur survivor at the site of a mass grave on the outskirts of the West Darfur town of Mukjar. Photo by: Nasser Nasser and Alfred de Montesquiou - via AP

Marcy Massura of Marcy Writes - The Glamorous Life blog found this suspicious set of knives at her local supermarket for back to school!

Apparently, it's for kids who can't wait to resume their summer vacation by being suspended for carrying weapons to school! Link - via Miss Cellania