As a child, Ronald Mallett wanted to travel back in time to try to prevent his father’s death, and hence went on to study physics. Despite now believing that the present cannot be affected by meddling with the past, he has announced his intention to build a ‘time machine’ based around circulating laser beams, using equations based on Einstein’s work on realtivity. The project is in need of financial backers, but he reckons he can have the desktop device made and ready to confirm (or falsify) his theory within a decade. Stop giggling at the back.

Chevy’s decided to get all “viral” on us by recruiting users to mix advertisements for its new Chevy Tahoe. Thing is, there’s nothing saying the ads have to be complimentary. (The linked ads are kind of lame — but the concept’s worth a giggle.)

There’s nothing like inflammatory rhetoric to get the blood flowing, but holocaust doesn’t actually seem such an inappropriate term to describe widespread deaths of coral reefs in the Caribbean and Indian and Pacific oceans. In the Caribbean, sustained record water temperatures weakened the coral, and a disease called “the white plague” dealt the death blow.

Space Shot is another space tourism company offering a suborbital ride using Rocketplane Limited. You can win a chance to be on one of those rides at their main website.

School kids in the United Kingdom were able to sidestep British legal restrictions on importing and exporting weapons for use in torture with “a letterhead, a mobile phone, an email address, and a little money.” What’s most interesting about this story from my perspective is not the merit of the law itself, but how it demonstrates the power of communications technology to route around government.