It appears that in early 2007, researchers at the University of Alberta found that a compound called dichloroacetate, or DCA, kills cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone. DCA is common, inexpensive, non-toxic, and available at chemistry stores. CTV covered this story in January 2007.

The catch is that DCA isn't patented, so drug companies can't make any money off it. And this makes them reluctant to invest in research, leaving it to universities and private labs. I'm not much for the conspiracy theory, but it is interesting to ask why this hasn't gotten more media play.
(Via Health Salon)

A very cute picture of a spider on a frog on a turtle. You may also wish to read the children's story that sprang from this picture, or the shorter, and much better, account of the rescue.

This has been around for a while, but it can't be overstated that Johnny Lee is a freaking genius. What he's accomplished with the Wii remote in this video is mind blowing. He has a few more interesting projects on his website at johnnylee.net.

YouTube user Levinater25 found what appeared to be a glitch in the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 game, allowing Tiger to chip a shot into the hole while standing on water. He dubbed this the "Jesus shot".

In a brilliant marketing move, EA Sports made a video response to Levinator25, letting him know that it wasn't a glitch after all.

The thing to note about this isn't so much EA's video, which is awesome, but the web-savviness of the company. Responding to Levinator25's video this way was a great piece of damage control, showed the company was not going to be heavy-handed toward its users, and practically ensured the video would go viral, creating a small but effective marketing phenomenon.

APOD has a picture of the earth during a solar eclipse, as seen from the Mir space station.

Paul Hunt is a comedian and women's gymnastic coach who has some amazing comedy gymnastic routines on YouTube. As colour people say in one of the videos, you have to be very good to make things look so bad. They're literally laugh-out-loud funny, and a nice coda to the end of the Olympics.

There's a video for a floor routine and the beam, but my favourite is the uneven parallel bars. I think he's better when he has an apparatus to work on.

Not getting enough of the human Olympics? Try the addictive Dolphin Olympics.

Gizmodod says this video of slow-motion lightning is the coolest thing they've seen. And they're right -- it's pretty damn cool.

If you watch it enough, you'll see that the path the lightning takes to the ground is the same one traced out by the "feelers" at the start. Amazing.

Flickr user KCIvey has pictures of former Saturday Night Live writer and funnyman Al Franken at a fundraiser where he draws freehand a map of the US from memory while answering questions about healthcare and other topics. For the skeptics, there's also a video on YouTube of him doing the same thing. I've always liked Al Franken, and I'd buy one of these in a heartbeat.

We're one step closer to the invisibility cloak, people: researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a material with a negative refractive index which causes light to bend around it.

At the risk of changing the focus of this blog entirely to energy/alternative fuel source news, I will be pushing out a few links in that direction. Not only will this give me an opportunity to keep up on news in this area, but I feel it's important because I'm really concerned about peak oil and the energy crunch. I think there's still a window to do something about it, but North America needs a comprehensive alternative/renewable fuel program today. Everything from food production to the strength of the economy to personal freedoms are threatened by massive oil shortages, and it's questionable if we'll have the 10-15 year window we need to implement the sweeping changes necessary to prevent a sweeping society collapse.

Anyway. Onward and upward. EcoGeek has a couple of interesting posts about potential biofuels that aren't soy and corn. One plant, Jatropha (wikipedia), is being farmed heavily in India, producing nearly 10 times the biodiesel of corn and growing in areas that were previously unusable for farmland.

The other post was about camelina sativa (wikipedia), also known as false flax. While the article says there hasn't been a lot of long-term study surrounding this plant, over 40,000 acres have been planted in Montana, and the company Great Plains has been working with it for over a decade. Like jatropha, camelina has an oil content of approximately 40%, and can produce up to 100 gallons of oil per acre. It's also a good rotational crop for wheat, and can be grown in fields that would typically be left to fallow.

At Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, there is an area called the Devil's Swimming Pool that allows people to swim safely right next to the vertical drop of the falls. It looks ridiculously frightening, but is apparently completely safe.

The blog Fogonazos collected some pictures and videos from around the internet of people swimming in the Devil's Pool. Snopes also says this is the real deal.

A 25-year-old man named Israel Sarrio had his arm severed in an accident. Doctors managed to reattach it, but were forced to amputate it again once infection set in. In an effort to keep the arm alive, the doctors attached it to his thigh for nine days to ensure the wound was clean, then reattached it to his shoulder.

Sounds like bullshit -- but no. The money shot is here, but the full story, and more pictures, can be found here.

Flickr user Dean Allen has kindly posted a mouth-watering set of pictures showing how he made bacon from, uh, scratch, I guess. It's amazing, thoroughly interesting, and makes me want to go eat bacon.

The Boston Globe has posted some breathtaking pictures of Jupiter and its moons from various NASA space missions dating back to 1979. A few of the pictures try to give a good sense of just how big Jupiter is, but I don't think the human mind can really comprehend it fully. One photo, for instance, shows the Great Red Spot, saying it's 20,000 km across. The diameter of the Earth is roughly 12,756 km, meaning you could almost fit two Earths side-by-side in it. The picture itself was taken from over two million km away. Crazy.

Hotspot Shield VPN is free, and allows in people in countries from outside the US -- like me -- to access services that only broadcast to the US -- like Hulu. These kinds of broadcasting sites are really making me question the continued usefulness of my TV.
(Via Chipbit.com)

We used to make oobleck all the time in high school, though we didn't have a name for it. We just always called it non-Newtonian fluid. For creative kids, we could have done better. Part of the appeal is that it's pretty weird stuff, and it's insanely easy to make. You literally combine the cornstarch and water, and you're done -- no need to let it set, no cooling, just mix and go.

And, once you've made it, you can do some cool things. Check out this crazy video of oobleck on a subwoofer. And, because it's every kid's fantasy once you've fooled around with this stuff, this video of people playing with a whole frigging pool of it.

In preparation for the Dark Knight, Scientific American talks with E. Paul Zehr, associate professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Victoria, about the possibilities of there really being a Batman. Zehr's literally written the book on this topic. This is great stuff.

This is a very cute, very fun, and very addicting game about launching a hedgehog into outer space. Kottke managed four days, but my best is nine.

(Via Kottke)

"Are you fed up with telemarketers?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to find an easy way to annoy them?"
"Yes!"

(Via Neatorama)