JFK Portrait Discovered at Garage Sale

So you're at a garage sale, and you have a gut reaction that something on offer has more to it than immediately meets the eye. What do you do? If you're like Pam Dwyer, an Arizona woman, you pay a few dollars, get the knick-knack, and wait till you get home to investigate your hunch.

Dwyer certainly did that, and in between a picture of a horse and the frame it was in she found a portrait of John Kennedy. Yes, that John Kennedy, the one with F for the middle name, the President one.

Not too many of those are left lying around, certainly not hidden behind random horse pictures. Not too many of the ones that are left lying around are done by a forger, either. Yet that's what Dwyer found when she researched the artist, who did time for writing forged checks.

While behind bars, the "creative writer" took up stained glass windows and, apparently, drawing. Somewhere along the way, he produced the portrait that Dwyer found tucked away in a homely frame on offer in a garage.

An appraisal listed the value at between $2,500 and $5,000. She plans to sell.

Honest: Kitten Rescued from Inside Lincoln Statue

No doubt using up a few of its potentially nine lives, a kitten has managed to stay alive inside a statue of Abraham Lincoln long enough to be emancipated from its self-made trap.

The kitten, all of 3 weeks old, scurried its way into a replica of the Lincoln Memorial at the Clermont (Fla.) Presidents Hall of Fame but then got stuck. Museum officials scratched their heads as to how the kitten could have possibly gotten trapped inside the statue, but no doubt a small hole was available somewhere and the nosy kitten got stuck in — literally.

Anyway, the Humane Society and the local fire department were soon on the scene and had drilled a hole large enough for a person. A fire fighter dropped down inside the statue, retrieved the kitten, and delivered it back into the real world.

The kitten was hungry and dehydrated after being stuck inside the statue for three days. A local veterinarian took the kitten away for nursing duties but planned to put the adventuresome young feline up for adoption.

John Zweifel, curator of the museum, planned to adopt the cat and call him, what else, Abe.

Dutch Engineers Touting Glow-in-the-dark Highway

I like this idea of a glow-in-the-dark highway. It saves all kinds of things like money and lives.

So some Dutch engineers have come up with a scheme to make driving at night a whole lot easier, via a "smart highway." See, the outside lines on the highway glow by themselves, no high beams needed. I would say that you wouldn't need your headlights at all anymore, but I'm not sure the Dutch designers would agreed with that proposition, especially in the light of road safety and all. Still, it couldn't hurt to have more nighttime road lighting that doesn't come from another driver's high beams.

Another fun feature of the proposal is that it posits painted lines that could display snowflakes when the road is, well, snow-covered, or icicles when the road is icy. Now wouldn't that be useful information to have, if you hadn't figured it out already given the driving conditions.

But wait, there's more: The interior lines, dotted or otherwise, would recharge by soaking up sunlight. It's all part of a dynamic, user-friendly roadway that could even recharge using under-road coils powered by the very vehicles going by overhead. In the same energy-saving vein, the road "lighting" would switch to low-light mode when traffic ceases.

Tests are expected in the Netherlands next year. I'm hoping that we are en-light-ened soon.

Robotic Car Comes in 2nd on Track

Here we go again. Human bests, computer for now. Have we learned nothing Garry Kasparov? (He couldn't beat a computer, and now he's taking on Vladimir Putin. Good luck to him.)

The story is this: A robotic car developed at Stanford's Center for Automotive Research (which has the handy acronym of CARS) just lost out to a human-driven car in a test at the aptly named Thunderhill Raceway (which sounds like it belongs in a Bond movie anyway). The three-mile course had its share of twists and turns, 15 of them, in fact, ——and the guy driving the other car undoubtedly had lots of practice on the course, so the humans probably stacked the deck.

The result was that the human won, finishing in slightly less time than the robotic car. The victim of human deck-stacking this time around was Shelley, an autonomous vehicle kitted out quite proudly and loudly with a bevy of sensors that transmit road position, tire grip, and all manner of other necessary information to the computer-in-charge, so the car can effectively make real-time, split decisions about how to move the wheel and how much to stomp on the brake and things like that.

The stated goal was to improve on the utility of computer-driving cars. That's the idea, really. It wasn't about who won the race, or so the scientists say. After all, as with Deep Blue, it's only a matter of time until the computers win the race.

The race was run on Thunderhill Raceway in California between an Audi TTS that can drive itself and a racing car driver familiar with the circuit.

The human driver completed a lap around the circuit a few seconds faster than the robotic car.

The race was part of research to develop control systems that will help to make domestic cars more autonomous.

Voila! Nanotechs Turn Gold Red and Green

It's not exactly alchemy, but it's close,— maybe the modern equivalent.

Scientists in the U.K. have used nanotechnology to change the color of gold. What once had a gold tint now links red and green, to an extent.

Using principles of nanophotonics, the scientists embossed minuscule raised patterns on the surface of the gold, fundamentally altering the way the metal reacts to light. The trick is in how we perceive it, of course. To the human eye, the gold now looks like it has a reddish or greenish appearance.

The embossing was done on the magical metal of gold, but the scientists said that they could have just as easily used other more boring metals like silver or aluminum. The type of metal isn't a hindrance because the same technique would be used. It's not just red or green, either.

All of the colors of the rainbow are possible. As for the real world, the lead scientist is hopping to market the idea to those wanting to make jewelry or secure banknotes.

Family Heirloom a 4-billion-year-old Meteorite

It's not often that you find an ancient space artifact is propping up your homescape, but that's what has happened to a Kentucky couple, George and Donna Lewis. Turns out the 33-pound rock that they've been using as a doorstop is a rare meteorite estimated at 4.5 billion years old.

The date and material have been confirmed by testing done at Eastern Kentucky University. The rock is thought to be part of a known meteorite strike that created similar debris in Tazewell, Tenn., in the 1850s. Indeed, the doorstop in question was found in a cow pasture near the town of Tazewell in the 1930s and passed down two generations to Donna Lewis. Her grandfather, Tilmon Brooks, isn't around anymore to discuss the findings, or his find, but he would surely be pleased to know that he held onto something that could have great value, and not just of the sentimental kind.

The meteorite has not survived untouched. Somewhere along the way, someone painted it green. (It had been a garden ornament before the Lewises turned it into a doorstop.) That paint job hasn't diminished the rock's radioactivity, however, as George Lewis discovered when he did a hover with a metal detector.

The rock, weighing in at 33 pounds, is the second-largest known find from that Tazewell strike. The largest known meteorite from the strike weighs 100 pounds.

The Lewises' piece of space debris was on display at a recent Eastern Kentucky science fair, where several students were notably excited by the rock and its origin. The meteorite will remain in the public domain.

Bacon Barter Rolls Across the Country

Have bacon, will travel. That's the motto of a guy who seems to need a bit more publicity. He's an actor and a comedian, and I can't help but think that this just another publicity stunt, no matter how much I like the subject matter.

I have to be honest here: I love bacon. I love the smell of it, the taste of it, and the aftertaste of it. It's one of Nature's perfect foods. The fact that it is slightly less good for me than other foods I eat troubles me a tiny bit but not enough to keep me from munching on bacon strips on occasion.

But back to the traveler: So this guy has vowed to go from coast to coast on a "bacon barter," using bacon as currency to get accommodation along the way. It's working for him so far, and it will probably work for him the rest of the way because he left with more bacon than he would ever need. 

It puts me in mind of similar ventures that other brave souls could make: What about a "barnyard barter," with eggs as the currency? How about a "soda barter," with Coke or Pepsi or root better or any number of other sodas as the currency? It doesn't have to be food, after all; the currency could certainly be liquid in nature, although I would definitely draw the line at alcohol. (I could see the appeal of olive oil, but that might be a hard sell for people who aren't avid cooks or health nuts (or both).

This guy may be on to something, actually, because he's making do without money and that can be good practice for when the money runs out and the banks close and the stock market crashes and people start hoarding water and bread and …