Formula 1 Zooms into Russia

Louder than an anti-Putin protest: that's the sound level that will be coming out of the Russian resort city of Sochi in 2014, when Formula 1 comes to town.

Yes, the Black Sea city of Sochi will give Russia's own Vitaly Petrov a chance to win on home soil for six years running, as the deal lasts until 2020. The "Vyborg Rocket" has won four events in his home country, after all. 

Da, zoom zoom.

It's not the first attempt to get Russia into the Formula 1 game. The powers that be have tried to bring events to Moscow and St. Petersburg, without success. (The historians among the capital city must have been flinching to see the fast-moving autos racing around a temporary oval next to the walls of the Kremlin.) 

But Sochi is a different story. The city was the scene for a demonstration event earlier this year (one that brought in huge crowds of the curious and the petrolhead varieties), and it is the site of the next Winter Olympic Games. Of course, officials have promised to postpone the first Formula 1 race until 2015 if it takes any fans away from the Olympics. How sweet.

Russia is, after all, growing in Western influence by the year. Too bad the World Football League is defunct. 

Password Overload? Fear Not, Eventually

The days of the password might be numbered.

We're not talking about open-sourcing your laptop or your smartphone here. No, we're talking about the next generation of device-protection methods.

Many IT experts are working on these sorts of things these days (and it might have something to do with a rise in forgotten-password service calls). Among the not-so-sci-fi methods being bandied about in certain circles are the already gaining traction voice recognition, the physical-meets-computerized digital signature, and the super complicated continual verification based on typing.

You'll notice that none of those was the iris scan or the fingerprint match, both of which lend themselves to dastardly deeds in spy movies. That just suggests all kinds of pain that we don't need to think about when we're using our eyes to read words and hands to surf the Net. But I digress.

Voice recognition we are already familiar with: Your device would recognize your voice and unlock itself. This wouldn't be merely a couple of syllables, though, if we're talking high security. No, you'd probably have to talk a fair bit, saying random things so the computer could judge your patterns of speech and pronunciation (maybe even your grammar!). But that would be all right: Your device would definitely know it was you.

The digital signature is an interesting variation on a theme. We're not talking about a scan of a written signature stored and then brought back out to sign off on important documents in work or other financial circles. No, this would be your logging in by signing your name on a touchscreen and the device matching what it has on file. (So you would have to put one on there originally.) In this case, it's probably better to use your signed name rather than a random word or phrase because (or so the theory goes) your signature would be similar most times out. (And the system wouldn't care how illegible it was, which is definitely a bonus for some people.)

The most involved method would be a secondary one, most likely — a system that tracks what and how you type and feeds back into a protection system that could conceivably log you out after a certain period of time if you're not typing like yourself. Again, we're not necessarily talking about grammar or punctuation skills here, although that could be an early indicator; no, the system would look at things that are more sophisticated, such as whether you hunt-and-peck or touch-type and how fast you type and, closely related perhaps to that, how often you hit the Delete key.

It's all exciting times ahead for device protection. You'll still have to remember all of those passwords for awhile yet, but you'll probably be able to forget them along about the time you're forgetting where you put your car keys anyway.

Car Theft Foils Alleged Shoplifters

File this one under "The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight."

Two people accused of being shoplifters were themselves the victim of an alleged crime when they returned to their vehicle and found that it had been "handled." Yes, this dastardly duo who stand accused of stealing vastly important items such as batteries, makeup, and (wait for it) energy bars, found their getaway rather compromised when their getaway car wasn't in much shape for getting away.

But wait, there's more: The person who these two alleged pilferers appealed to for help — a passing motorist — was, in fact, a police officer, who took their statement — noting that they reported the theft from the vehicle of a car stereo and amplifier, some cigarettes, and a drum machine. And when the pair were done telling the officer all they knew about that, they got a citation for shoplifting from the very nice policeman, who was in the neighborhood because he was parked in the lot outside the supermarket from which the two allegedly stole the host of lightweight items.

We don't yet know what the officer bought at the store. Presumably, that's in the police report. And why he didn't see the car break-in remains to be seen … or not.

Clothes That Clean Themselves Just Around the Corner

I've just got some time back, and I'm ready to spend it.

Not sure about you, but I do a lot of my own washing. Yes, I put clothes in a washer and sometimes in a dryer, but I'm the one who puts the soap in, waits for the clothes to get clean, and has to wear other clothes while I'm waiting. (The laws of civility require me to wash my clothes.)

Now, however, comes word that engineers in China have developed a fabric that cleans itself, so you don't have to. I can see the advertising slogans proliferate from that one simple sentence.

How does it happen? Well, they used titanium oxide, a dye that would be familiar to people who read the labels on tile sprays and other household cleaning products. With a special mixture of TiO2 and Chinese ingenuity, the fabric can, once exposed to sunlight, remove dirt, food stains, lipstick and makeup, and even T-shirt designs that you've thought better of since you bought the shirt — OK, so maybe that last one is a bit far-fetched.

But this self-cleaning shirt is not. It works, and it removes odor, too. Yes, this magic concoction takes away the smell as well, so you don't have to. We so live in a magical world right now. 

This latest release builds on similar announcements in 2004 and in 2008. What's different now? The deodorizing factor, for one thing. The increased visibility, for another. 

Not long from now, you'll be able to take your clothes outside and say to them, "Clean up your act" — and they will.

No word yet on how long the self-cleaning process will take. Maybe it's a bit more time than we think. Still, it can't be as long as it takes for one week's worth of washing to finish. That takes hours.

A Cat Worth $13 Million? There's an Heir of Truth about That

We're just going to have to get used to it. Tommaso is richer than we are. Tommaso is richer than all of us put together.

Tommaso is not some previously unknown heir to the Silvio Berlusconi fortune (although that might be dwindling a bit these days). Tommaso is not even a bambino. 

No, Tommaso is a cat.

An Italian woman, Maria Assunta, who had inherited a large fortune when her husband, died turned around and, at age 94, having no children, left the money to the cat.

The money in this case was a collection of properties in Rome and Milan, a bit of land in Calabria, and a pile of cash. In all, the total is $13 million.

You have to hand it to some people. They know how to go out in style.

According to Stefania, the nurse who cared for Mrs. Assunta in the last weeks in her life, the woman was devoted to the cat, which she had rescued from the streets of Rome. She tried to leave the money to an animal welfare group but couldn't find one to her satisfaction. So the cat got all the money.

So, Stefania and Tommaso are living somewhere in Italy, their location and last names undisclosed — hers for privacy reasons and his because he never had one.

A cat with $13 million? Now that's a lot of catnip.

But Tommaso isn't the world's richest pet. He's not even close. That honor belongs to Gunther IV, a German shepherd who inherited $124 million from his owner, a German countess, when she died a few years ago. Gunther, being a resourceful dog, has invested wisely (including in an apartment once owned by Madonna) and is now worth $372 million.

But Tommaso isn't the world's second-richest pet. No, that distinction is held by Kalu, a chimp whose owner left him what is now a fortune of $80 million. 

Tommaso's $13 million seems quite paltry compared to what Gunther and Kalu can bring to the table. (Now that's a sight I'd like to see.)

Maybe we're looking at a new opportunity for Forbes or Fortune here: The Pet 100.

Hard Times Mean Pay Cut for the Queen

Someone save the Queen. She's taking a pay cut.

One of the consequences of the austerity measures put forth by Parliament recently is a reduction in the annual amount paid to the Royal Monarch. Slated to last for several years, this legislation will, among other things, delay some repairs scheduled or otherwise needed for the royal palaces and put into doubt the rather sizable amount of annual funds needed to sustain the still-glamorous lifestyle of the New Kids on the Heir-to-the-Throne Block, William and Kate (otherwise known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge). No doubt their wedding had something to do with this current downsizing, but never mind.

So on to the numbers. The Government has changed the way it allocates funds for the Royal Monarch, and it's now 15 percent of the profits made by the Crown Estate, during a two-year period. That's nowhere near what it used to be, and the Queen is NOT getting any younger. If you feel inclined to prop up the Royal Treasury, you can certainly visit one of the long list of Royal-held properties and make sure you spend a lot of tourist dollars.

But actually, the Queen is moving with the times. She is getting less, just like workers in the United Kingdom are. The general feeling of austerity shared by many a U.K. worker in these heady days of record number of bank bailouts and national bankruptcies is indeed felt by the Queen, so much so that her annual income in 2010 was a mere 32.1 million pounds. 

However does she survive on such a pittance? Why, in the early 1990s, when all was boom and none was bust, the Queen pocketed more than twice that amount. If this trend continues indefinitely, she might well end up a pensioner and have to borrow books from the library like everyone else.

Come to think of it, there might be something in this, for if the common people see the Queen standing in line and buying produce at the supermarket, they might feel more kindly toward her and the appearance she has to keep up. Besides, you don't hear much from the Queen anymore these days unless it's a solemn occasion or a state dinner or something incredibly A-list like that. She hasn't had a thing to say about the News of the World, now has she? (Maybe she thinks they're somehow still listening.)

But never fear: the Royals are on to it. Word out of Buckingham Palace is that the Royal Family is working on new revenue streams, which do not, repeat, DO NOT include reality television. Too bad. Keeping Up with the Windsors has a nice ring to it.

Yes, We Could Live on That Planet (Maybe)

Let it roll off your tongue: exoplanet.

That's the new buzzword, the one you're going to hear a lot about in the next few weeks and decades. NASA have confirmed the existence of what very well could be a habitable planet elsewhere in the universe. (The word exoplanet is short for extrasolar planet, meaning one that is outside our own Solar System.)

The planet is Kepler-22b. It is 2.4 times as big as Earth and orbits its "sun," which is very similar in size to our Sun, once every 290 days. The temperature very near the planet's surface is estimated at 72 degrees Fahrenheit, or 22 Celsius. (The average near-surface temperature of Earth is 59 Fahrenheit, or 15 Celsius.) 

NASA confirmed the planet's existence through data collected by the Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,300 more potential planets since launching in 2009. Kepler has the largest camera ever sent out of Earth's orbit, with a staggering 95-megapixel capability, so it sees an entire night sky's worth of images that other telescopes just can't bring into focus.

This is not the first exoplanet to be thought habitable, of course. European astronomers have announced the discovery of two others, although those orbit stars that smaller and cooler than the Sun, so the planets are thought to be less likely candidates than Kepler-22b.

One thing that astronomers are not yet sure of is the composition of the exoplanet's surface: Is it gaseous, liquid, or rocky? 

There's one way to find out for sure, and that is to go there. But be warned: Kepler-22b is 600 light-years away. Using current technology, you wouldn't make it there in time to appreciate anything you discover. One of your descendants would, though. Even traveling at light speed, the journey would take 600 years.

Never Mind the Reality of Santa: It's the (giving) Thought That Counts

Here we go again: Another very public figure has denied the existence of Santa Claus in a very public way and has been made to suffer the consequences.

A TV news person made the "announcement" on the air, on a 9pm newscast, and the other news person on air at the time responded immediately with a reference to Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character of Charles Dickens's timeless classic A Christmas Carol. 

Well, the TV station was flooded with angry comments, especially from parents, some of whose children were watching TV at the time. So the TV news person got back on air and apologized for her carelessness. But the damage was done.

Or was it?

Seems like this happens several times a year. America is a big country, the planet has other big countries with lots of parents and children and television news people, and the Internet is a very vast place. News spreads fast, and it won't be the last time this year that someone makes a similar assertion.

Yet these people are missing the point. We can certainly debate the existence of the fat man in the red suit whose toy-delivering skills are said to be second-to-none, but the point isn't whether the physical existence of Santa Claus is proved or disproved. No, the real point is what Santa represents: hope for happiness. That's it, really. 

So many people get all wrapped up (pun intended) with what to get who and it becomes all about the gifts themselves instead of all about the reason by the gifts. We give people gifts because we love them or we like them or we work with them or we know them slightly or they have given a gift, or, most noble of all, we want to help. That's the spirit of Santa Claus, the thought behind the giving. All the rest is just window dressing.

In the words of the New York Sun in 1897:

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Rocket Engine for Sale ... Wait, Not Really

You have to wonder how these things happen, really. I mean, surely NASA has a spreadsheet somewhere of all of their rocket engines, past and present, and their whereabouts. There can't be that many, can there? And yet, in the 2011 year-end Inspector General's report is an item about an RL-10 rocket appearing for sale online.

The sale price would have been enough to keep most people away (unless they had a spare $200,000 to drop on what would be just one of many parts), so maybe that's not a whole lot to worry about, right? Well, not exactly, because the person who bought it would still have an engine powerful enough to jet a Saturn rocket into space (or a long way over land), which is why the Feds got involved and tracked down the "owner" before he or she could unload the engine for a good price.

Given that no one will be going to the Moon anytime soon, it's probably an academic argument, except that the engine is actually covered by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation because it could be used to make a missile. So suddenly it's no laughing matter. This is certainly not U.S. v Progressive, in which even though the Supreme Court upheld the magazine's right to publish a step-by-step recipe for making an atomic bomb, the theory was that the full set of ingredients would be so cost- and law-prohibitive that it wouldn't matter who had that bomb-making recipe. No, this kind of engine could be used to transport a very large payload of weaponry, which is these days all too common and all too easily bought.

NASA isn't commenting on who took the engine, or how or why. It's probably enough for the rest of us to know that they were quick to react. But it is a reminder that the free market nature of the Internet, vast as it is, can harbor some devastating and dangerous things.

No email for you ... and you and you

Fighting spam can take many forms. One drastic method is banning internal email altogether.

That's exactly what the CEO of a French IT company has done, saying that the company's 74,000 employees working in 42 countries will have to eschew emailing coworkers in favor of instant messaging, a Facebook-like interface, or plain old face-to-face (which could include teleconferencing, of course).

Why? Spam, apparently.

The company says that of the 200 email messages each employee receives, on average, each day, the percentage of spam is higher than that of business-related (18 to 10). To fix that, the company is on an 18-month journey into email withdrawal. The policy is six months old, and progress is such that the number of internal emails has dropped by 20 percent.

A company spokesperson clarified that the target was internal emails, not emails to clients. This would suggest that the move has more to do with using internal technology — which would not be accessible to spambots. Still, it's a bold move to make for the head of an IT company.

This CEO is Thierry Breton, of the company Atos. A former finance minister, he cheerfully announced that he has not sent one email since becoming the CEO in late 2008. He expects his employees to (eventually) follow that example. 

Yawning? That's to Keep Your Brain from Overheating

You've seen them — the yawners. You're talking and they're listening and then they just yawn, as if what you're saying is the most boring thing they've heard in a million years — or at least in the last 10 minutes. You jump to a conclusion and then get incensed that they think what you're saying is so uninteresting, when what is really happening is that they're acting out of self-preservation. 

No, it's not to keep from keeling over because of boredom — it's actually to keep their brain cool. So says a study in the December issue of Medical Hypotheses. See, a group of scientists got together and spent a whole lot of time thinking about yawns and what they mean and why people experience them and other important things like that. These scientists discovered that people used their sinuses as a sort of bellows, to get cooler air into the brain so it didn't overheat. Your brain, like any other computer, needs a relatively cool temperature in order to process properly.

Think about what happens when you yawn. Better yet, do it. What do your cheeks do? Your mouth is open a bit wider than normal, your sinuses are open a bit more as well; and even though you might appear to exhale, you're also making it possible for cooler air to get into your brain through your sinuses. (Presumably, if you're snotty because your nose is stuffed up, it takes a wider or a longer yawn to get that brain cooled down enough to keep functioning.)

It's the maintenance of proper brain function, apparently, that precipitates the yawn. So the next time you see someone yawn, don't think that you're boring them. You could be having quite the opposite effect — you could be stimulating their brain so much that it's overheating.

Hare It Is: the Eyes of the Future are Here Today

We've seen this before, back in the '70s. Rabbits stormed across the countryside, making it hell for the people who happened to live there. It took a hell of a lot of effort to contain those big furry beasties, and I'm sure that sound-thinking people everywhere don't want a repeat of that hellish performance (no matter how hellishly bad that movie really was).

Not sure this technology would lead to that sort of thing, but you never know, especially with our big-eared furry friends.

Actually, if it's rabbits on the loose, I'd much prefer ones like Harvey or even that giant wooden one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, since that one caused only one fatality in the end. Mind you, the Rabbit of Caerbannog (the one with "big, pointy teeth") was a different matter entirely, but that's beside the point, really, isn't it?)

Anyway, back to the future — or the present, as the case may be — because a group of well-meaning scientists have actually gone and strapped small-pixel displays onto the eyes of rabbits to see if the poor little bunnies could survive the experience. (How would you like it if a group of people in white coats strapped you down and pasted a tiny camera onto your irises? Wouldn't feel too good, now would it?

Or would it? Maybe it would. Maybe it did. After all, we don't have the tapes of what the rabbits said after this was all over. They might have enjoyed it. And the things they might have seen!

They probably didn't see much more out of the ordinary than lights, actually, since the device wasn't large enough to show important things like letters and numbers. That comes later, in the human-sized version, which the scientists swear will be used for nothing so much as monitoring for glaucoma. 

Yeah, right. Anyway, I'm sure that we're years away from any sort of "rabbits rampaging round the countryside" scenes on TV, unless the Lepus return. As for when those scientists get around to making good on their promise to test this sort of thing on humans? Well, we shall wee whether we have time to prepare for the day when someone says, "I'll be back" — and means it. 

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a multicopter

How many propellers does it take to lift a man off the ground? The answer is 16, apparently, if Thomas Senkel is anyone to put stock in, and he obviously is because his multicopter did indeed get off the ground for an entire 90 seconds, which is much longer than Wilbur Wright was in the air at Kitty Hawk. 

It's been more than a century since, of course, so we should be a bit more advanced in our human flight technology. And we are, sort of, with working jetpacks and things. We certainly have more than our fair share of airplanes and helicopters and mass transportation devices. We even have a flying car. But we're a bit lacking in the personal flight category, until now.

Senkel, from Germany, demonstrated his device and its successful maiden flight recently. He used a simple joystick to control the craft, which runs via an electric fly-by-wire system.  The number of blades, 16, is enough to give anyone pause, but you need that many to get enough lift and do enough balancing to make sure that the person doing the flying doesn't end up head-over-heels in a ditch somewhere.

This being the 21st Century, the multicopter is computerized, with onboard devices calculating the exact rotation speed needed to get man and machine up off the ground and hovering in the desired direction. And, just like a helicopter, this one-person device goes up and down to take off and land.

Is it a vision of the future? Probably, if only a precursor. Check out the video here.

Oh no! Another Photo from Mars

So the latest news out of NASA is that they have this photo of sand dunes shifting in the wind.

That's their story. I have my own theory, and it involves a few nightmares.

This latest photo comes from the data banks of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been tooling around the surface of the Red Planet for about six years now. So I guess there's some comfort in that, since if Mars were full of marauding monsters, that poor little orbiter might have been shot down by lasers by now.

I think that's what has happened to the poor little rover that disappeared, actually, since we don't hear much from it anymore these days. It could very well be that the Martians have advanced sufficiently to be able to pick up a giant foot and squash a little robot roaming around the surface of the planet but that the Martians' technology hasn't advanced to Wells-ian heights just yet.

But back to the new photo: It's shifting sands, NASA says, so something is shifting the sand. NASA says that wind is doing the shifting and that wind on the planet's surface must be stronger than previously thought. Right, or something is causing that wind, like a giant monster-driven armored vehicle, oozing exhaust and creating its own tunnel as it marauds about the surface, looking for tiny little robots to crush.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more concerned I am with this photo. Not sure about you, but I think I see something in that photo. Is that really shifting sand, or is that a giant eyebrow? For all we know, we could be looking at a Godzilla-sized Martian monster taking a nap. It sure looks like a face. Remember the famous one (right)?

It's a good thing I'm writing these things down, so I can forget them when I go to bed. You've done that, haven't you — been consumed during the night by thoughts so scary or cumbersome that you have to write them down in order to forget them and go back to sleep? That's my plan, anyway, so I don't have nightmares about invaders from Mars. I'll let you know how I go. Check the posting time on my next blog post.

Dubai in the Diamond Business

I have to say that I'm happy to hear that Dubai is finding some modicum of success in the diamond business. I mean, that oil supply won't last forever. It might take them a bit long, though, to catch up to the Diamond Planet.

The UAE are reporting that Dubai's diamond trade topped $25 billion in the first half of 2011, a 55-percent increase over the 2010 first-six-months total haul. It's important to note, however, that the dollars increase was mostly due to a price increase. But still, the country did see an increase in production nonetheless.

It's a tough business, diamonds. Other countries already do it really, really well. But what Dubai lacks in experience it's willing to make up for in price attractiveness. See, the Russian dealers slap a 23-percent duty on their shipments, along with an 18-percent value added tax. Yes, you know the diamonds and good and ready to be worn or, more probably, kept under glass and lock and key and armed guards. But that's a lot of money to pay for something that Dubai merchants would happily offer you at just a 1-percent duty. Surely what you miss out on in terms of confidence in quality is more than made up for by the drop in overall number of dollars you spend, right? After all, how much of that Russian tack-on is really going back into the diamond production business?

Dubai is also trying to muscle in on Mumbai's territory, building its own diamond boiling center in an attempt to bypass the traditional pathway through India that most diamonds have to follow. And why not keep the precious stones at home until they're ready to be shipped? Which brings to mind the fact that most of those little (or perhaps large) stones are leaving the borders of the country for their final destination, rather than remaining at home. The same can be said of India, of course, but I would think Dubai would want to supplement its rich oil barons' families' wealth with a few more stones and few fewer luxury hotels. Then there's the fight against tradition, which holds that many rich Middle Eastern types are in love with their gold (to the extent that there are gold vending machines). 

So much uphill battle to fight, yet the UAE — and Dubai in particular — certainly have the will and the wherewithal to keep at it until they get it, whatever it in the end may be.

Shine on indeed.

Woman Gets Stolen Bike Back, by Stealing It Herself

Sometimes, the vigilante wins. 

Seems a Boulder, Colo., woman came out of a sports bar one night, expecting to find the bicycle that she had left on the sidewalk while watching a university football game, and discovered that the bike had been stolen. What to do?

Well, the woman might have gotten mad, but she certainly got even.

This woman, who at 25 is definitely is in the new wave of social media and Internet technology-savvy generations, went to Craigslist and found her bike. She knew it was hers because the "owner" had posted a photo in which she recognized the telltale handlebar tape and water bottle holder of her black Trek road bike.

Putting her detective hat on, the woman responded to the posting, seeking a test ride. The "owner," a man, granted the woman a test ride, and the woman took off — taking her bicycle back in the process.

The woman knew where the man lived and so forwarded that information to police, who arrested the man, who admitted the theft. The man, who was all of 18, had no prior record and so was released on bond. Still, he might have learned his lesson.

The police who handled the case were possibly impressed with the woman's savvy, but they did want to make it very clear to her and to the rest of us that the outcome could have very easily been of a darker variety.

Heavens! Is That a Devil We See Before Us?

Better the devil you know …

Turns out that that famous fresco showing a key scene in the life-death cycle of St. Francis of Assisi has all along contained an extra face. A prominent Italian art historian has announced his discovery of the face of a devil-like figure hidden in the clouds of Giotto's frescos, in the Basilica in Assisi. The figure, which can be seen only by peering intently at close-up photographs of the fresco, has, according to the art historian, horns atop its head and a hooked nose and knowingly sly smile on its face.

This might be one of those Rorschach test opportunities, wherein the individual viewer sees what he or she wants to see. Still, if you squint hard enough at the clouds and hold your tongue just right, you can kind of see the outline of the beginnings of what could be something that could be construed as a figure that resembles something that doesn't quite match the overall theme of the fresco.

We're talking about something that was painted a long time ago now. Giotto worked on these things in the 13th Century. We would surely know if someone had added this impish "figure" later on, so we're left with the presumption that the artist added it himself. 

Then the question becomes why. So why, then, would Giotto have included this image but then obscured it? Was it meant to be symbolic, as if the darkness was ever there, waiting for the revered to "fall"? Was it meant to be darkly ironic, as in the silver lining of the cloud was none other than eternal damnation? Was it meant to be a Da Vinci Code-esque clue, leading to an astonishing revelation that has remained hidden all these years?

A more likely explanation, according to art historians, is that the artist was profiling none other than a person for whom he had little regard. In the same way that artists often included their patrons or contemporaries in their works (think School of Athens), the same artists might often paint as unsavory characters men or women they didn't like. So who was on Giotto's hit list?

That is another story.

That Spot Should Not Have Come Out

No good deed goes unpunished.

That's the lesson that we could take away from this latest news out of Germany, that a cleaner destroyed a piece of art worth more than $1 million because it "had a stain."

See, the cleaner, who worked for an art museum in Dortmund, was doing her job. The artwork was on loan from a private collector, so it wasn't normally in the museum. The cleaner was doing her job when she removed what she thought was a stain from Martin Kippenberger's "When It Starts Dripping from the Ceilings." The artwork consisted of a bowl that the artist had discolored by water that ran over bits of wood.

To the untrained eye, it probably looked like a stain. In fact, it was a stain. But the point was that the artist wanted it to be a stain to prove a point, whatever that was.

At any rate, the artist isn't around anymore to complain. (Kippenberger died in 1997.) He is thought by many experts to be one of the most talented artists in recent German memory. But the private collector who owns the work might do a double-take the next time a museum asks for a public viewing.

No word yet on what kind of discipline that the cleaner might face.

Gaaa! No G at the Scrabble Table

G is for gi-normous, which is how big the kerfuffle was when the letter G went missing during the World Scrabble Championships recently.

It was a struggle to get the competitors to calm down after the incident, especially since after a search on and under the playing table didn't reveal the missing tile, a referee asked the players to empty their pockets! 

Scrabble is usually such a serene game, filled with periods of contemplation and reflection, permutation and calculation. Arguments tend to center on whether collections of letters are actually words and not just some sort of Dr. Seuss concoction. But when one or both players are accused of going so far beyond the bounds of decency, things can get quite heated. 

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. No punches were thrown, no fisticuffs were threatened, not a drop of blood was spilled.

The incident definitely had an international flavor. One of the players in question was from the United Kingdom; the other player in question was from Thailand. The championships are being played in Poland — Warsaw, to be precise. Surely, no one wanted an international incident.

A larger fracas was avoided when the referee placed another G on the board.

No Reason to Fear the Future: None

I'm not the paranoid type, despite what I know you're thinking about me right now. So it stands to reason that I'm not at all worried about this little news gem: A not entirely known-about government agency calling itself IARPA is looking for a few good men and women to embody the organization's slogan "Be the Future."

IARPA, for those who really want to know such things so they can sleep at night, stands for Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. That mouthful is helpful shortened to the acronym IARPA to remind us all that it is affiliated with DARPA, the outgrowth of the U.S. Defense Department that brings us so much more than that annual competition of highly intelligent vehicles.

IARPA is hiring. And you have to really hand it to a company that can get every letter of its acronym in its logo.

So IARPA offers few readily understandable details on its website, but it certainly knows what it wants: to be the future. One of the other wants is another mouthful shortened to a helpful acronym: the Foresight and Understanding from Scientific Exposition (FUSE) Program. Now, even though that program title brings to mind the Future Planning Committee from In the Loop, the FUSE program is still worth worrying about because it is hugely ambitious … ambition is nothing less than a giant "data eye in the sky", the product of a million bits of information collated from traffic webcams, Google and Bing queries, targets and reports from financial markets, and random snippets of conversations recorded surreptitiously in public places during a number of weeks. I guess if you put all that together, you can build any sort of information transportation device you like and hover it in the cloud, as it were. And IARPA are doing this because they want to be ready to fight the enemies of the future, whoever (and whenever) they might be.

I'm actually shuddering as I review that previous paragraph, so let's just move on, shall we, to the Great Horned Owl Program. Now, this one sounds much better as the full name, actually, because the acronym is GHO, and the pronunciation of that one, if done properly, just doesn't bear thinking about. But the goal of this Great Horned Owl Program is to produce a silent drone. I would have thought that drones were relatively silent, given that they don't contain noisy things like people, but there you go, that's what I get for thinking out loud again, and I wouldn't want to do too much of that because I'd be overheard and my words would become part of FUSE. See, IARPA has identified as the key problem with drones the fact that they make a noise as they're approaching targets, which is probably because they contain a payload of weaponry encased in machinery and the combination of the two, when combined with the laws of physics, have no choice but to produce a sound. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good story, as Mark Twain is purported to have argued.

So, IARPA is looking for people to reprogram the cloud so it has everything everyone ever said or heard in it and keeps on building in the communications of the huddled masses and they're looking to change the laws of physics so that airborne carriers of metallicized destruction emit no sound no matter how heavy their carnage-inducing payload. The thought of both of those projects together has me reaching for the light switch so I can sit in the dark for awhile and shiver, but that's not even the half of it.

See, IARPA are looking to go Back to the Future by actually creating that device that showed Princess Leia in Star Wars. Yep, George Lucas's prescience is on display again, as the Synthetic Holographic Observation Program is on the cards and looking for funding and labor-producing volunteers, the goal being to create a synthetic holographic 3D display that can be observed and understood by people who aren't wearing a special set of goggles or able to channel The Force. The acronym for the Synthetic Observation Program, SHO, is a bit more fun because we can use it to channel Cuba Gooding Jr.: SHO me the money.

But the fact that IARPA are looking to create this sort of thing suggests to my very worried psyche that they know something that we don't, namely that the Emperor and Darth Vader are out there somewhere and the need for a Princess Leia-type message to be implanted into an R2 unit will be more current and possible than we might have first thought.

Worry is me.

Finish Marathon, Give Birth: Works for Her

You have to give it up for a woman who runs a marathon even though she's 38 weeks pregnant.

The sheer exhaustion that Amber Miller of Westchester, Ill., must have felt as she persevered through the last few miles of the Chicago Marathon puts a shudder down my spine. Her back must have been killing her, especially since she finished in an unusually (for her) slow 6 hours, 25 minutes, 50 seconds.

She took care to eat lots of food and drink lots of fluid along the way, which is good because she would have needed the extra energy after the race — when she went into labor.

Yes, the mother of one felt contractions mere moments after crossing the finish line and ended up at the hospital, enduring contractions for just a few more hours before delivering a healthy baby girl, named June, who weighed in at 7 pounds, 13 ounces.

Now, Amber didn't run the entire 26.2 miles. She had been under doctor's instructions to run only half the way, so she ran a bit, walked a bit, which is why it took her so long to finish. She finished the Wisconsin marathon earlier in the year in a time of 4:23:07. In fact, she was pregnant with June at that time as well, although the baby was only 17 weeks along at that point.

In fact, running pregnant has become something of a habit for Amber, who ran the Indianapolis Marathon two years ago in 4:30:07, while she was 18 weeks pregnant with her son, Caleb.

Distance running definitely runs in the family.

Space-age Ringtones for All Mankind

Talk about space-age technology.

You can now get historic space audio bits and bytes on your phone, in the form of a ringtone. NASA had made available a number of famous audio clips, including Neil Armstrong's famous first words from the Moon.

You know the people around you who have annoying ringtones. This wouldn't be the case for you if you could make your phone say "The Eagle has landed" every time someone rung you.

You could even set up your phone to say "Houston, we've had a problem" when you ring a number that's no longer in service. (Not sure about you, but now every time I hear that, I think of Tom Hanks.)

As portable phones get more and more cellular and more and more "smart," they get more and more back to the future of space travel anyway. (I'm thinking Star Trek here.) So it's only fitting that you can have words from space emanating from your phone.

You can find them all here.

Star Wars Planet Based on Reality

Some of our more esoterically minded folk might describe it as life imitating art. Other, more down-to-earth people might term it science fiction becoming science fact. Neither description is apt in this case.

Here's one that is: The Truth is out there, and we now have proof!

See, George Lucas knew exactly what he was talking about when he "placed" Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, a planet that had two suns. Lucas didn't make this up: He knew it to be true! And it's taken us this long to uncover what he has known all along.

It's not often that such a landmark image seared into the memory patterns of a few generations of people is so stunningly revisited in the realms of reality, yet here comes news of Kepler-16B, a "wanderer" 200 light-years away from Earth — a "wanderer" that is orbiting a binary pairing of stars.

This planet is closer to the stars than we are to our Sun, by about a quarter of the distance. The planet's orbit is 229 days. The planet is larger than Earth — about the size of Saturn, actually, but much more dense. The stars are smaller than the Sun: One is 20 percent as big, and the other is 69 percent as big.

Astronomers have trotted out the word circumbinary to describe this planet, but I prefer to refer to it as Lucasian.

Now, the scientists are saying that the planet is uninhabitable — at least in terms of life as we know it. But that doesn't rule out entities like R2D2 or Chewbacca or Yoda. We're still waiting for confirmation of the existence of those three, but one of them is a bit closer to reality than the other two are.

Speaking of reality and what else George Lucas knows, I think we're all right on balance if every one of his creations turns out to be science fact, since both Darth Vader and the Emperor ultimately met their fates (in similar ways, it turns out). I wouldn't mind at all if Ewoks were discovered to be real creatures, either. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that finding out that Jar-Jar Binks was a real creature would be OK with me, provided that I didn't have to spend too much time with him.

I do hope, however, that we don't discover that the Terminator films were based on reality.

The Perils of In-flight Cell Phone Use

The people in Texas certainly know how to arrest people. A rule's a rule, though, right?

A guy on a flight from Phoenix to El Paso did nothing more than disobey orders to get himself arrested. What did he do? Did he relieve himself, as Gerard Depardieu did recently? Did he try to open the exit door and jump out? Did he assault someone else onboard?

No, this guy just turned on his cell phone before it was time. Oh, and he got a tiny bit bent out of shape out of it.

But see, this is a serious offense. If everybody did this while the plane was flying, they'd create all kinds of havoc with the plane's navigational systems. That's why we have those fancy in-flight phones that charge you $900 a minute to use — they're specifically designed not to interfere with flight systems.

This guy wasn't using that in-flight phone. No, he had his phone and he was going to use it. And he wasn't going to let flight staff get in his way.

Now, most people would understand the need to keep their GPS-beaconing cell phone turned off during flight, whether they know the science or not, simply because they've been told to about a hundred times before and during the flight. But this guy wasn't having any of that. No, he was going to check his email or make a call or whatever (presumably he had forgotten about the Flight Mode setting) and the hell with anyone getting in his way.

When flight attendants' attempts to convince him to turn off his cell phone failed, they ended up having to restrain him, which probably made his case a bit worse with the El Paso law enforcement authorities who met him at the gate. Hope he chose wisely when asking whether he could make a phone call.

Diamond Planet: a Rich Goal

OK, so here's a mission that NASA could sink its teeth into — one that should recoup every last dollar spent, and also pay a boatload more.

We've discovered a planet made of diamond! OK, so I wasn't part of that we, but you get the idea. We as a species have found evidence of this heavenly body the composition of which is a heavenly substance: diamond.

Why? Well, it has to do with the star that the planet orbits. That star is a super-fast pulsar, a neutron star that, every so often, sends out cosmically gigantic blasts of energy that have, over time, worn down the poor planet's defense to the point where the carbon within has been ground down into diamond.

Weirdly, the planet is larger than the star it orbits. The planet's diameter is 37,300 miles, which is roughly five times that of our planet (so that's a lot of diamond). The pulsar, on the other hand, is 3,000 times smaller than the diamond planet. The planet is itself the remains of a star, which partly explains the size discrepancy.

And now, all that's left is diamond. So, fire up the rocket engines and let's get going! An entire planet made of diamond is worth, according to the best estimates available, a trillion trillion dollars. (And no, that's not a typo.)

All we need to do is to go there, scoop up a whole lot of the planet, and bring it back. No problem, right? Then we have diamonds galore for people to buy, sell, appreciate, and … fight over. Oh, wait, maybe it's not such a good idea after all. We'd need to sort the distribution schedule well beforehand.

Actually, we probably have time to do that, even to the extent of going through all the proper channels — the U.N. and consulting representatives of every country on the planet and such — because the star is 4,000 light-years away and it will take a hell of a long time to get there and get back. By the time the load of diamonds returns, we surely would have sorted out our differences, one way or the other.