The Diamond Planet

astronomers: weve found a planet made of diamond

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon...i.e a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own sun."

"-appears to be merely five times the size of Earth"

That is one big ass daimond.

Two New Pixar Movies

pixar unveils two new original films

At the D23 expo in Anaheim, California, Pixar unveiled 2 new films for the coming years:

What if that life-changing asteroid missed Earth? Director Bob Peterson’s hilarious tale depicts a world where dinosaurs never went extinct.

From director Pete Docter comes an inventive new film that explores a world that everyone knows, but no one has seen: inside the human mind!

Though no more details, pictures, or videos are out, I'm actually looking forward to seeing where they go with these ideas.  Especially the one with dinosaurs.

Bullet Proof Skin

bullet proof spider silk skin

Using spider goat, an awesome concept by themselves, to get the same proteins as spider silk, these scientists are creating a fiber 10x stronger than steel.  They then mix that with skin and are using it to stop bullets.

Still just being tested on small scale right now, but damn if that isn't awesome.

New Blade Runner

Ridley Scott ready to direct new version of seminal sci-fi film Blade Runner

While initially thinking of a new Alien movie in the original concepts of his upcoming film Prometheus, Ridley Scott is now looking to direct and produce a new film in the Blade Runner franchise.

No details release yet, but I'm already moist at the prospects.

Libertarians Shipping Off

silicon valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands

Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."

I love this idea.  What could possibly go wrong in a society designed after the ideals of Ayn Rand?  It's not like there are any sci-fi stories which portray this sort of situation.

And if it does fail, it gets rid of these people for the rest of us.

Clients From Hell

"The dog on the homepage isn’t sexy enough. Find me a sexy dog."

 

"I don’t want people in Mexico to see the website. I got myself into a little trouble down there, and I can’t let any of the authorities know where to track me down. Just MAKE SURE you don’t send it to Mexico, okay? Do this for me, guy."

 

"We want the design to be intentionally confusing to show how complicated the concept is."

Clients From Hell

A hilarious website that shows just how truly incompetant and what assholes clients and employers can be.

Gene Therapy Destroys Cancer

scientists successfully destroy cancer with gene therapy <- link to article

I thought this was an amazing idea and am glad to see that it has worked so far.
Apparently, these researchers modified the white blood cells to attack cancer cells to such a degree that it can actually cause a tumor lysis syndrome, where your body is affected by losing too many cancer cells at one time.

Gene therapy has had a few mishaps in the past, but this looks like a very interesting theory and I really want to see how this goes from here.