WorldMapper does very wrong things to maps. Take a geographic map of the world, brightly color-coded by country, and warp it to deform countries based on a statistic (like miles of railway, or attended births, or population in 2300). Fascinating stuff to page through.

I must admit that I don’t entirely grasp the world transforming qualities of thing:link, a site that lets you build web pages about a thing (primarily intended for things you’ve made). I’m sure that’s my lack of imagination, it seems like it ought to be really cool.

The USPTO, demonstrating that beauracracies are not incapable of change, has announced plans to pilot a peer reviewed patent process.

The central Asian banks have been buying U.S. debt instruments in brobdignagian proportions because they’re using it as an unofficial index currency on which to peg their own currencies. That party may be ovre soon: they’re talking about establishing a new Asian Currency Unit index to serve that role. If they reduce their investment in dollars you can expect the dollar to go to hell in a hurry. Wonder if that has anything to do with the price of gold.

Scientists at the University of Texas have demonstrated that carbon nanotubes can carry electrical signals to neurons. Now they’re working on making that a two way communication.