Three of the best

Think I will revert back to being a links blog again, nothing seems to get done here.

Just the best three of the stories I read yesterday:

1. A Modular Robot That Puts Itself Back Together Again – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com

This is an amazing graphic that makes you want to scream, "Transformers are HERE!"

2. How U.S. Removed Half a Ton of Uranium From Kazakhstan – washingtonpost.com

When you read a best-seller next year, or see a super-hit Hollywood film a year after that, remember this- you found it here before anyone else did:


On a snowy day in December 1993, just months after Andy Weber began his diplomatic job at the U.S. Embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan, he met with a tall, bullet-headed man he knew only as Col. Korbator.


"Andy, let's take a walk," the colonel said. As they strolled through a dim apartment courtyard, Korbator handed Weber a piece of paper. Weber unfolded it. On the paper was written:


U235


90 percent


600 kilos


Weber did the calculation: 1,322 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough to make about 24 nuclear bombs. He closed the note, put it in his pocket and thanked the colonel. After several months of patient cultivation of his contacts, Weber finally had the answer he had been seeking.


The piece of paper was a glimpse into what had become the most urgent proliferation crisis to follow the collapse of the Soviet Union: the discovery of tons of nuclear materials left behind by the Cold War arms race, much of it unguarded and unaccounted for.


This is the story of Project Sapphire, the code name for an early pioneering mission to secure a portion of those nuclear materials before they could fall into the wrong hands.

A gripping read.

3. Ardipithecus: We Meet At Last | The Loom | Discover Magazine

This is serious stuff, but it wouldn't hurt you. The story of a fossil that pushed back our ancestry by more than a million years- also, Chimpanzees are not our parents.

That's a relief, right?