Happiness in Honesty

As the planet warms and ice sheets melt, sea levels are rising worldwide. During the last century, the oceans rose about 5-9 inches, according to the EPA, and sea levels could increase by up to 5 feet by 2100, threatening 180 U.S. coastal cities. But in some parts of the world, entire countries are at risk of vanishing beneath the seas.

How nations are coping with rising seas

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Functional Beauty - not only is this a spectacular aesthetically pleasing design, but the thermal mass of the pool on the roof keeps the house cool in the summer and warm at night. Design Boom has an interview with the designers including some great photos of the construction process.

A World Without Us - people frequently talk about “saving the planet” when in fact it’s not the planet that needs saving, just the pesky humans inhabiting it. As a case-study on that point, National Geographic had a recent update on the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear event. Surprisingly, even with high levels of radiation remaining in the area, nature is doing better now than when people co-inhabited the area. The planet will do just fine without us.

Strange Objects in Space - check out this top 10 list of strange objects which have traveled to outer space. If there is intelligent life out there and they find some of this stuff, they will definitely think of humans as thoroughly alien …

Mars Destinations: Ophir Chasma - During its examination of Mars, the Viking 1 spacecraft returned images of Valles Marineris, a huge canyon system 5,000 km, or about 3,106 miles, long, whose connected chasma or valleys may have formed from a combination of erosional collapse and structural activity. This synthetic oblique view shows Ophir Chasma, the northern most one of the connected valleys of Valles Marineris. For scale, the large impact crater in lower right corner is about 18.5 miles, or 30 km, wide.

Ophir Chasma is a large west-northwest-trending trough about 62 miles, or 100 km, wide. The Chasma is bordered by high-walled cliffs, most likely faults, that show spur-and-gully morphology and smooth sections. The walls have been dissected by landslides forming reentrants. The volume of the landslide debris is more than 1,000 times greater than that from the May 18, 1980, debris avalanche from Mount St. Helens. Theongitudinal grooves seen in the foreground are thought to be due to differential shear and lateral spreading at high velocities (Image Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS).

Dolphins, Aliens, and the Search for Intelligent Life - How do you define intelligence? SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, equates intelligence with technology. Others suggest that intelligence isn’t just the acquisition of technology, but the ability to develop it and integrate it into society.