Friday Links: August 6

Game - The Dreamerz: Solve puzzles to get the parts to fix the dream machine. [link]

Mystery man keeps showing up in the background of British news shows. [link]

Nifty idea for DIY light fixtures. [link]

Stargate: SG1 theme for metal heads.

Ryan Reynolds is a bit freaked, but handles his new Green Lantern fanboys well. [link]

In the upcoming 10th and final season of Smallville Clark FINALLY gets the damn suit. [link]

I can now get my TomTom GPS to use voices from Star Wars. Check out their "Making Of" videos. [link]

Interview with the guy who beat the government to decoding the human genome and, more recently, reprogrammed some bacteria. [link]

Transcript of dialog between computer peripherals. Potentially NSFW ads. [link]

Robotic Ent. (or something) [link]

The first several pages of the "kids" book "All My Friends Are Dead." [link]

An article about a Republican Congressman who lost his primary to a Tea Party candidate and his experience with the Tea Partiers. [link]
The Bush Administration spent 8 years shooting the GOP in the foot over and over again. The Tea Party is the infection setting in.

This is how science is done. This article talks about an experiment by the Templeton Foundation, a group that pays scientists gobs of money to say that science and religion may be compatible. The experiment was to show that praying for the sick does help. This article talks about the experiment and how it wouldn't be acceptable in middle school science classes. There's no controls. No double blind or even single blind trials used. Just bad science. This kind of analysis is done by someone, usually lots of someones, anytime some research results are announced. It's there to help honest scientists who miss something, it's there to gut con artists, and it's there to make sure we get things right. [link]

There was a polio outbreak in one of those places we lump together as "formerly Soviet". It's been put down. How? Rapid deployment of vaccines. [link]

Sky diving, armor plated, dogs with X-Ray vision! [link]

Google figured out that they don't know what to do with Wave either. [link]

Fun with bad disk drives.

A working engine we don't quite completely understand. [link]

Remember Biosphere II? It's not looking so hot. [link]
Think they'd sell it to me?

Just listen to the bit about the railroads. You have my permission to skip the rest.

Nightingale floors. Good for keeping assassins away or keeping the kids from sneaking out after you go to bed. [link]

And, finally, the proposition that made it so gays couldn't marry in California (a.k.a. Prop 8) has been ruled unconstitutional. Here's selected experts from the judge's ruling. [link]