If willingness to consider science fictional solutions is a mark of how seriously people are starting to take global warming, then I guess the idea of a cloud of two foot wide sunshades at the L1 Lagrange point means that some people are very serious indeed. I hope that idea doesn’t interfere with the flying windfarms in any way.

Research has revealed that MDMA, the club-drug which is best known as Ecstasy, may actually live up to another of its nicknames, ‘the love drug’. It turns out that E promotes the release of oxytocin, the hormone that helps emotional bonding between mothers and their babies. Rumours of research into whether or not new mothers suddenly start enjoying unlistenable music and wearing flourescent clothes during the post-natal period are completely unfounded.

A recent addition to the space tourism queue was one of the few living physicists to become a household name, and in a week and a half or so Stephen Hawking will be taking a ride on the notorious ‘Vomit Comet’ for a taste of low- and zero-gravity before the real thing. If the idea of a wheelchair-bound genius in orbit seems a little strange, though, why not compare it to the cognitive dissonance produced when someone lets you know that Congress has been discussing the Singularity. Interesting times.

When a court of law decides a chimp should be granted equal rights in parity with humans, that’s when. The decision hasn’t been made yet, of course, but we can rest assured that whichever way the decision ends up going, and awful lot of people aren’t going to like it. I wonder if anyone has asked the chimp how he feels about it? [SlashDot]

Imagine a world like the one in the Mad Max movies – a world where people take mortal risks to obtain precious hard-to-get resources. Now look at the real world – and wonder how many more people are going to be seriously injured or killed while scavenging for copper? [TechDirt]