In yet another example of the continuing Nipponification of the United States please see iPod vending machines. What’s next, hamburgers?

The San Francisco Ballet will be performing a dance to music assembled by seismograph, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake.

Simson Garfinkel wants you to leave paper behind and embrace open standard digital file formats. Yeah, I know, the paperless office is so 1990s, but Garfinkel makes a reasoned argument that formats like JPEG and PDF will be readable for a long time.

Two supermassive black holes are on a collision course in the cluster of galaxies called Abell 40. That would beat Nascar crashes any day.

Considering that a single cross-country flight puts an amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere roughly equal to the annual output of all of its passengers cars combined, it’s surprising that the environmental impact of plane travel is often overlooked. For that reason, I’m happy to report that there are people out there working on the problem: Robert D. Hunt in this case, with his gravity-powered plane that ostensibly can fly without the use of fuel. Further, the design of the plane grants it some of the benefits, such as VTOL and hovering capability, previously available only to zeppelins (no, the Osprey and Harrier don’t count).