Iceland seems to have sold itself to the Russians "We have not received the kind of support that we were requesting from our friends," said Geir Haarde, prime minister. "So in a situation like that one has to ask one's enemies look for new friends." Your friendly local Icelander has some comments. At least I didn't put any of my savings into Iceland, which now looks distinctly unwise. They were offering desperation rates.

Ryan Frank's inkuku chair (Zulu for chicken) is constructed from recycled aluminum coated in plastic bags via Giz.

AFP - Palm oil companies are clearing massive swathes of untouched forest in Indonesia's remote easternmost Papua region, environmental group Greenpeace said Friday.

On a bank of the Mohawk River, a windowless industrial building of corrugated steel hides something that could make floor lamps, bedside lamps, wall sconces and nearly every other household lamp obsolete.

A new study has found that young male dogs playing with female pups will often let the females win, even if the males have a physical advantage.

A new high-powered microscope has allowed scientists to watch a zebrafish develop from a single cell into an embryo with a beating heart, the first time this has been possible in vertebrates, researchers said on Thursday.

Via their blog, Nurture have some commentary on sea ice by Serreze & Stroeve.

Its all pretty vapid: With sharply rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the change to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean seems inevitable. Very good, but The only question is how fast we get there. Well its certainly an important question, but the most important point is that they have no answer.

After the resulting record-low ice extent in September, unprecedented in satellite observations, over 70 per cent of the sea ice cover in spring 2008 consisted of young, fairly thin ice -- an even more extreme situation than in spring 2007. The eyes of the science community and fascinated citizens worldwide were therefore focused on 2008. Would there be a new record minimum in September of 2008, suggesting the start of a rapid slide, or would there be some recovery? Indeed, its good to remember that a lot of the predictions of a record min for this year were based on the fact that much of this years ice was first year, and so would melt away more easily than last year. It didn't happen quite like that; there are lots of complex factors. This year there will be a bit more multi-year ice: perhaps the beginning of a recovery? Naturally enough S+S don't discuss that possibility.

No-one knows if there will be more or less ice next year. Personally I think, on balance, that the 2007 record is unlikely to be broken, and have offered to put my money on it. Or at least some, unspecified amount: I haven't refused any offers yet, not that I've exactly been inundated with takers. I wonder if "Standing on the brink" S+S are willing to put their money where their insinuations are?

I don't believe the assertions that recent years are good evidence of acceleration; indeed, I think its quite likely that the IPCC model consensus is correct. Somehow the meme that the world is well ahead of these model predictions has become dominant. But 2007 was obviously exceptional; to a less extent 2008 was too. Lets not get too carried away on the basis of one or two years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An ambitious project to track down small, icy bodies circling in the far reaches of the solar system has gone cold. Apparently, Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) between two and 17 miles in diameter don't exist.

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NASA / JPL / SSI

The Cassini orbiter took this picture of the Saturnian moon Enceladus taken during Thursday's flyby.

The Cassini orbiter came through its closest-ever encounter with a Saturnian moon with flying colors - and with a fresh crop of cool black-and-white pictures of Enceladus. The most precious products of Thursday's 16-mile-high pass weren't the pictures, but the samplings of the mysterious stuff welling up from the cracks in Enceladus' icy surface.

"One of the key goals of this flyby seems to have been successful," Cassini project scientist Robert Pappalardo told me today.

[Update: its a 5-star hotel, but not with this level of service. Where is JA?]

Since this years sea ice failed to be a record min (how careless of it) there is a sense of furtive scurrying around looking for something else; and DSB is looking at record thin instead: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has melted to its lowest volume in recorded history, according to new measurements they say on 7th october. Interesting.

Volume implies measuring thickness. But while measuring area from satellite isn't too hard (people have been doing it routinely for years, and there are problems, especially when its wet, ahem, but still no-one is too worried), measuring thickness is much harder. Here is some stuff; note that it suffers badly from over-PR-ing in its abstract: though only about measurements it feels obliged to vapour on about prediction. What you can't get from just that abstract is that measuring the thickness via altimetry is rather imprecise, especialy when the ice is thin: something like 0.5m accuracy at best. You can also try to "measure" thickness via microwave emission and guessing the ice temperature and estimating heat flow and modelling and hence guessing thickness; this is also imprecise. Or you can measure it by sonar from submarines; this doesn't give you enough coverage; or drilling holes; this is even worse.

With fossil fuel prices well above historical average, geothermal energy is likely to increase substantially its share of the energy mix, according to Oxford Analytica.

Nebraska prides itself for being one of the states with the lowest cost of living in the country, having some of the cleanest air and water, and being centrally located. An above average health care system is also in place in Nebraska. A hospital stay costs 30 percent less than the average national cost. Some other interesting facts about Nebraska are:

1. Nebraska has no property tax.
2. Income tax liability is calculated based on sales only.
3. Nebraska is the only state to offer a 100% public power system.
4. Agriculture and manufacturing are Nebraska’s primary source of revenue.
5. Nebraska’s top agricultural commodities are: cattle and calves, corn, and soybeans.
6. The Ogallala Aquifer, one of the major natural underground water available is under Nebraska’s soil.
7. Nebraska is the only state with a unicameral legislature.
8. Nebraska is geographically located in the center of the United States, half way between Boston and San Francisco.
9. The state of Nebraska offers several incentives for businesses relocating to the state. including, investment credits, sales tax refunds, and inventory tax exemptions.
10. Nebraska’s largest export is processed food.

The following companies are headquartered in Nebraska. They have a market cap of over $600 million:

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In the course of a vaguely amusing although rather pointless argument on the wiki GW talk page [1] I found I needed the character [[Mr Logic]]. One thing lead to another, and before you know it I was at this all-time classic (warning: contains rude words and concepts).

So now you know why wikipedia is better than Britannica: it has entire (albeit short) articles about one-off comic strips from 1993.

AFP - US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly said Monday it had agreed a takeover worth 6.5 billion dollars with biotech firm ImClone, which is also a target for rival Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS).