Damaris B. Sarria is a Thermal Protection Systems Engineer on the Space Shuttle Orbiter, and is pursuing her Masters in Aeronautical Science. She is documenting her work and progress towards her goal of becoming an astronaut on her blog How I Am Becoming An Astronaut. Her latest post is about analyzing the tile damage on the current mission of the space shuttle Endeavor. Link -via Bad Astronomy

People in Russia say that there is no wedding without a fight. That’s not right, there are. But not this one.

From English Russia, with love video. http://englishrussia.com/?p=1228 -Thanks, Jan!

There is no end to the ideas people have for decorating their bodies. Neatorama featured science tattoos recently; now here is a gallery of anatomical tattoos! Link -via Respectful Insolence

An Egyptian mummy known as Demetrios at the Brookyn Museum is wrapped in linen decorated with rare red paint. X-ray fluorescence revealed that the paint matched the chemical analysis of lead from Spain’s Rio Tinto region. Demetrio’s death is calculated to be 94-100 AD, according to museum conservator Lisa Bruno.

"At the time, Egypt was in the Roman Empire, so the finding reveals how widespread trade was throughout the empire," Bruno said. "The mix of cultures probably was not unlike what exists today in Egypt."

Link

Wired Blogs is looking at who is editing Wikipedia entries in order to protect or shape their own image.

Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith just launched an unofficial Wikipedia search tool that threatens to lay bare the ego-editing and anonymous flacking on the site. Enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and you get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then with one or two clicks, you can see all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia's pages.

Wired is collecting cases of Wikipedia edits coming from those who stand to lose or gain depending on the accesible information. Several are already listed. They invite anyone to contribute cases you know of, or that you can find via Griffith’s search tool. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/vote-on-the-top.html -via Metafilter

Fark displayed its 3 millionth active thread today. Fark is an odd news aggregator and networking site launched by Drew Curtis in 1999. Fark now receives around 2,000 submissions a day. Congratulations to Drew and the gang at Fark on the milestone! Link

People in Spain and France try to set a world record for underpants-jumping. Wikipedia has no entry for underpants jumping, so I am still bewildered after watching this. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Arbroath

The Watercone is a low-tech device for turning saltwater into fresh water for human consumption. You put saltwater into the base, set it in the sun, and as the water evaporates and then condenses, it runs into the trough at the cone’s edge, leaving the salt in the base. Turn it over and pour the water out of the top! Link -via Reddit

It seems solid to me, but to a physicist this is a valid question. Glass is one of the

"squishy" substances that cannot be pinned down as a solid or liquid. Referred to as "soft condensed materials," they include everyday substances such as toothpaste, peanut butter, shaving cream, plastic and glass.

As water cools to its freezing point, it crystallizes into ice. When glass cools from a hot liquid, it slows down but never crystallizes. Researchers at Emory University have studied the phenomenon for years, but have yet to find a definitive answer, which could greatly impact the science of nanotechnology. Link

Lantern Fish is a beautiful and creepy animation of various deep sea fish, directed by Adam Gault and illustrated by Stephanie Augustine. http://www.transbuddha.com/mediaHolder.php?id=2669 -via Transbuddha

The Quagga looks like a cross between a zebra and some other animal, like the series of zebra posts on Neatorama just recently, but it was a type of zebra. The Quagga became extinct in the late 19th century. DNA analysis of the preserved remains of several Quaggas revealed that it was not a separate species, but a zebra subspecies. The Quagga Project hopes to selectively breed zebras with DNA similar to the Quagga in order to bring the Quagga back and reintroduce it to protected preserves in its former habitat in South Africa. Link -via the Presurfer

They really should have seen this coming. Push play or go to Live Leak. -via Arbroath

The morphing faces of movie stars. A video from Philip Scott Johnson (eggman913), who also brought you Women in Art. Push play or go to YouTube, where you’ll find a list of the pictured actresses.

The big nations (Russia, China, and the United States) vie to see who can win the most Olympic medals, but when the medal count is adjusted for population, the Bahamas are king! Sure, they’ve only won five medals in the last three Summer Games, but with a population of 331,000 that’s the most per capita medals. This map shows the countries that have won the most medals per million in population. Medal counts are only from the Summer Games since 1996, because the fall of the Soviet Union changed national boundaries considerably. http://www.unusualmaps.com/olympics.html -via Look at This

The Smoking Gun has another collection of mug shots featuring t-shirts with slogans (previous post). If you can’t see the example on the left, it says, “Trust me. I do this all the time.” I believe the photographers sometimes arrange the shots to include the t-shirt phrase! Link -via Fark