Because I find all kinds of boob technology interesting, I'm posting this link to Maidenform's new Breakthrough Backless Bra. But the real story is how Elaine Cato set about making it because she wanted to look good in a sexy, backless dress.

Michael Moore is telling people to vote for a Democrat in the election. He also says some bad things about Clinton and some nice things about Obama:

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

The Toronto Star reports on a Canadian and Japanese team that has successfully removed gas from methane hydrate. This by itself isn't news -- the gas releases itself at room temperature. What is news is how the team has managed to get a sustained flow of gas from the material, making it usable.

Heat or unsqueeze the hydrate and gas is released. Hold a core sample to your ear and it hisses.

More significant is the fact that gas hydrates concentrate 164 times the energy of the same amount of natural gas.

And gas hydrate fields are found in abundance under the coastal waters of every continent. Calculations suggest there's more energy in gas hydrates than in coal, oil and conventional gas combined.

I'm reminded of Curtis Rist's Discover article in 1999 about how we'll never run out of oil. Hilariously, oil is now more than $100 a barrel.

Yet more reasons to hate Coke:

Dangerous levels of the known carcinogen cadmium have been found in the sludge produced from the plant in the southern state of Kerala.

The chemicals were traced in an investigation by BBC Radio 4's Face The Facts programme and prompted scientists to call for the practice to be halted immediately.

However, Vice-President of Coca-Cola in India, Sunil Gupta, denied the fertiliser posed any risk.

"We have scientific evidence to prove it is absolutely safe and we have never had any complaints," Mr Gupta said.

The BBC did their own analysis of the "fertilizer", and found out it was worthless.

Virgins! If you support internet neutrality, Tania Derveaux wants to sleep with YOU! Furthermore, she'll do it on her own dime, and she's got a pretty nice rack. The terms of service are pretty good, too. Adobe, you should think about adopting them.

(P.S. - You should support internet neutrality anyway, even if you're not getting laid.)

Flickr user Sean (Ajka_Hungary) posts a very powerful request from his step-father to please stop smoking.

Wired reports that brain scanners can now detect your free will. Freaky.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied -- whether to hit a button with one's left or right hand -- may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

Here's a fun little game that has you naming as many elements of the periodic table as you can in 15 minutes. An even better game, in my opinion, involved US presidents.
(Via Kottke)

Accelerating Future has ten futuristic materials that seem more suited to science fiction than science fact. #9 on the list reminded me of this while my jaw was dropping:

"Transparent Aluminum?"

"That's the ticket laddie."

"Oh, it'd take years to figure out the dynamics of this matrix."

"But you'd be rich beyond the dreams of averice."

"So. Is it worth something ta ya...or should I just...punch up clear?"
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Broken wall + Sense of humour = This

I didn't really find Wired's Top Ten April Fools Pranks for Nerds that interesting, but the video they posted for #3 is hilarious! I would love to see the return of creative computer viruses, and not just a bunch of code that eats data. Come on, people, that's been done to death.

Tim Harford writes in Reason Magazine about why poor countries are poor. The short answer? A corrupt government creates corruption all the way down the line.

The corruption is not only unfair; it is also hugely wasteful. Gendarmes spend their time harassing travelers in return for modest returns. The costs are enormous. An entire police force is too busy extracting bribes to catch criminals. A four-hour trip takes five hours. Travelers take costly steps to protect themselves: carrying less money, traveling less often or at busier times of the day, bringing extra paperwork to help fend off attempts to extract bribes.

The blockades and crooked police officers comprise a particularly visible form of corruption, but there are metaphorical roadblocks throughout the Cameroonian economy. To set up a small business, an entrepreneur must spend on official fees nearly as much as the average Cameroonian makes in two years. To buy or sell property costs nearly a fifth of the property's value. To get the courts to enforce an unpaid invoice takes nearly two years, costs more than a third of the invoice's value, and requires 58 separate procedures. These ridiculous regulations are good news for the bureaucrats who enforce them. Every procedure is an opportunity to extract a bribe. The slower the standard processes, the greater the temptation to pay "speed money."

It's a long article, but very informative. I really liked how he tied all the pieces together, and how surely the rot of bad government will reach into practically every aspect of its peoples' lives.

Jason Kottke has some interesting links to the New York Times and NPR on cooking with food from 99 cent stores -- including a cookbook!

To bypass the NYT registration, you may wish to use a service like BugMeNot.

CDNN ran a story on the sex life of the giant squid. And while it's interesting, it's interesting mostly for this comment here:

But having such a big penis does have one drawback: it seems that co-ordinating eight legs, two feeding tentacles and a huge penis, whilst fending off an irate female, is a bit too much to ask, and one of the two males stranded on the Spanish coast had accidentally injected himself with sperm packages in the legs and body. And this does not seem to have been an isolated incident since two of the eight males that had stranded in the north-east Atlantic before had also accidentally inseminated themselves.

(Via BoingBoing.)

The Morning News has a great post that takes famous song lyrics and puts the words in alphabetical order. I've only done half so far, because it's fun and I want to devote a good amount of time to it.

5. 9 a all american amusement an and are at baby back be beach beyond bold bones born boulevard boys break broken but cages can ’cause chrome-wheeled comb come could ’cross day death die don’t down dream dreams drive drones drop engines everlasting everybody’s feels four friend from fuel-injected get girl girls glory go gonna gotta guard hair hands hard hemi-powered heroes hide highway highway’s how huddled i i’ll i’m if in is it it’s jammed just kids kiss know last-chance left legs let like line live lonely look love machines madness mansions me mirrors mist my n never night no of oh on one ooh out over palace park place power rap real really rearview ride rider rims rips rises road ’round run runaway sadness scared scream so someday soul sprung stark steppin’ strap streets suicide sun sweat that the their then there’s these this three through till to together tonight town tramps trap try two us velvet visions walk wanna we we’ll we’re wendy were when where while whoa wild will wire with wrap you young your

Like all good on teh intarwebs, it's from the delightfully kooky mind of Matt Baldwin. (Thanks, Tamara!)

This is a really, really cool picture of Chicago at night.

I loves me some Star Wars parody. This magnificently awful (read: Sweded) version of A New Hope is a masterpiece! (via BoingBoing)

Maximum PC employs a few audio "experts" to see if compressed MP3 files make a big difference to sound quality.

With the possible exception of the USB Key that survived a washing and drying cycle, no other Maximum PC Challenge has ever surprised us as much as this one. It’s downright humiliating, in fact, that in many cases, we were unable to tell the difference between an uncompressed track and one encoded at 160Kb/s, the bit rate most of us considered the absolute minimum acceptable for even portable players.

They also come out pretty solidly in favour of variable bitrate encoding, which I'm sure is no big surprise to anyone.

Israelis are suing their government for laser cannons. It sounds like something out of science fiction, but there is a working laser cannon in storage in New Mexico, and the Israelis want it. The hell?! When did we get laser cannons?

A new study suggests that Daylight Savings Time is actually worse for the environment. Up yours, Bob Hughes. Now can we finally put this debate to rest?

"There is a reason we continue to get daylight savings under the rubric of energy conservation because as a policy, it costs individual consumers nothing and asks them to conserve nothing. So it's wildly popular," he says.

"Unfortunately, it's entirely ineffective."

Previous studies on daylight savings have had similar findings. But most have been based on simulation models, not concrete data. An exception was a study on the extension of daylight savings in two Australian territories for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, which showed more electricity used.