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The Daily News is reporting that Trakr, a heroic German Sheppard that served as one of the first responders to Ground Zero during the attacks of September 11th, will be cloned. Just like a broken cell phone, BioArts International will replace Trakr, who has been come ill and disabled with age and potentially exposure to toxins at the World Trade Center site. This is just awesome! Who needs an old and limp version of a beloved pet around when you can have a shiny new one. Why stop at pets, lets clone people too! Then I can realize my dream of living forever (forever ever) by creating clones for organ harvesting, woohoo!

Read the Daily News’ recount of this twisted tale after the jump.

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Recently released photos show images of “uncontacted” tribesmen. More than 100 of these uncontacted tribes are around the world, with about half located in the Amazonian rainforests of Peru and Brazil. There is a fight by organizations like The National Indian Foundation to protect these tribes from encroachment from the outside world. Sure, why subject these folks to the modern day trials and tribulations. I am sure they are perfectly happy, but don’t you think once you start flying aircraft over them to take pictures you are encroaching on every fiber of their being? Now these poor people think giant metal birds are attacking them from the sky! Ahh, whatever, I am sure that won’t have any effect on their simple lives (You know because Orson Wells adaptation of “War of the Worlds” didn’t bug any of us “advanced” folk). Didn’t they have a Star Trek Next Generation episode about this too?

See more pictures and video.

Source: [CNN]

Don’t feel like dieing, ever? Well you just might not have to if acclaimed inventor, futurist and all around genius, Dr. Ray Kurzweil is right. Dr. Kurzweil isn’t just one of these guys that sits around talking about the potential of new technological advancements, but has been working to advance society since he was a little boy in killa’ Queens (shout out to Maspeth)! The NY Times is reporting on some of Dr. Kurzweil’s latest predictions for the future that include pills that allow you to eat all you want and not gain any wait, all energy coming from clean sources and getting to live to see the Singularity (an age where humans/machines transition into ever living beings).

Now I am known for being a bit of a pessimist when it comes to the future and advancement of technology (and ok, just about everything), but I have to say of all the wild tales I have read, Dr. Kurzweil seems to actually be able to back his ideas up. The good doctor was selling programs to IBM and raking in some serious cash by age 14 and inventing machines that could analyze and read text back for the blind back in 1976. Using his text to speech technology, that was the size of a washing machine, as an example, Dr. K predicted that by the early 21st century the technology would be able to fit in the palm of your hand. Last Thursday, he unveiled just such a device. Not only was the device the size of a cell phone, but it wasn’t even phased by shadows, marks on the page or creases.

Personally I can’t wait to be morphed into a RoboCop or Krang like cyborg, but there is one flaw in Dr. Kurzweil’s predictions, the pill that will allow people to eat all the Big Mac’s they want is sure to hurt his idea that the life expectancy of humans will grow at a faster rate then we can age. (Come on I had to be a little negative, otherwise no one would believe I wrote this)!

For the full NY Times article and to read more about the good doctor click the link below.

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Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.

Via: [New York Times]

Via www.livescience.com

As kids, most of us spent time laying in the grass, watching clouds roll by and imagining the shapes we could see in the fluffy white masses. Now, one company aims to indulge those flights of fancy by actually making “clouds” in the shapes of, well, anything, from the Atlanta Braves’ tomahawk to Mickey Mouse’s iconic head.These clouds are actually a mixture of soap-based foams and lighter-than-air gases such as helium, something like what you’d get if you married helium balloons with the solutions that kids use to blow bubbles from plastic wands.

The company uses re-purposed artificial snow machines to generate the floating ads and messages, dubbed Flogos. The machines can pop one Flogo out every 15 seconds, flooding the air with foamy peace signs or whatever shape a client desires. Renting the machine for a day starts out at a cost of about $2,500.

Designers use computer software to make a stencil that when placed into the snow machine, “cuts the foam in the exact right shape,” said Flogo inventor Francisco Guerra.

The Flogos are about two feet long and nearly a foot wide, and generally last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, depending on conditions in the atmosphere, according to the company.

“They will fly for miles,” Guerra said. “They are durable so they last a while.”

They generally bob to heights of 300 to 500 feet (90 to 150 meters), the inventors say, though they can rise up to 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) in the air.

Guerra says that Flogos are environmentally friendly as the soaps that make up the foamy shapes are derived from plants, and that eventually a Flogo “just evaporates in the air.”

“It does not pollute the skies,” he told LiveScience.

Guerra also says the floating ads are not a danger to airplanes, because flying through one is “like going through a cloud.” Nothing from the Flogo sticks to the surface of a plane, even if it goes through the aircraft’s jet engine, he said.

For more information visit www.flogos.net