The consensus seems to be that the best way to combat the nebulous threat of terrorism is to curtail exactly those freedoms that genuine terrorists so resent, and there’s no US monopoly on the idea either. An engineer from London’s University College is working on an EU-funded airport security system that hinges on fitting every passenger with an RFID tag so that their every move can be monitored for suspicious behaviour. As if airports weren’t demeaning enough already…

What the world really needs right now is … a way to prevent unauthorised use of mobile phones! Well, never fear – DoCoMo NTT are on the case, and have developed a phone that will lock itself up if its owner strays more than a few meters away from it. And here comes the clever bit: the phone will know where its rightful owner is because they’ll be carrying a smartcard that the phone can detect via Bluetooth! Pure genius – that’ll never be hacked, and no-one would ever lose a credit-card sized bit of plastic, would they?

So, how would you like a mirror in your home that lectures you about the dire consequences of your unhealthy lifestyle, advising you on a diet and exercise regime to ditch that spare tyre, and showing you pictures of yourself as you might be if you carry on your current alcohol-and-cigarettes intake? It doesn’t grab me, that’s for certain – but then it’s being touted by Accenture, a company that also makes video monitoring systems to watch for subjects displaying ‘abnormal behaviour patterns’ in the workplace. They sound like a really people-friendly outfit, and no mistake. Maybe they should consider letting the R&D boys out of the clean rooms for a few hours a year.

Another potential solution to the mystery of mammalian extinctions has been proposed – they may have been caused by perturbations in the Earth’s orbit and axial tilt. The theory is that these changes of position relative to the sun would have caused climatic changes that would have thrown previously stable habitats into fiercely competitive environments. I’m no scientist, but I’m always a bit leery of single-cause explanations for events of this magnitude, and so I am encouraged to see the researcher in question describe this as “a crucial missing piece in the puzzle”.