Considering the power of brand in today’s economy, it’s no surprise that Wired predicts the next product to become nothing but brand is cellular service. MVNOs buy airtime wholesale from staid brands like Sprint or Verizon and resell it to consumers looking for a company that appeals to their lifestyle. Given the abysmal customer service and infuriating marketing practices of most big carriers, I’d jump to an MVNO in a minute if they just focused on treating their customers right.

Ray Kurzweil in a brief article for Scientific American sketches the near future landscape of drug development and medical treatments, deliberately designed and carefully engineered.

These Amnesty International outdoor advertisements create the illusion of transparency by juxtaposing scenes of torture onto bus stops and street scenes. It’s an interesting use of photo montage and an ironic reversal of the usual purpose of photoshop wizardy. Rather than retouching reality to insulate us from it, it manipulates reality to bring us into contact with it.

No, not a flying saucer or black obelisk – think further away and much, much bigger. The Hubble telescope spotted what first appeared to be a supernova back in late February, but as time passed it kept getting brighter while emitting an unfamiliar spectrum of radiation. Cosmologists aren’t ruling out a supernova, but it doesn’t seem to fit the standards of the ones they’ve seen before. But just in case, may I be the first to welcome our new galactic overlords…

At long last, serious scientists are taking a proper hard look at ways to produce fuels without using mineral oil. Biodiesel is a popular choice, because the engines to use it in are well understood and widely available. A team at Iowa State University have a safe and efficient method that works in the lab, and are working to scale the process up to industrial levels.