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Yo-ho-hoes and a bottle of rum

I finally got around to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest last night, and I have only one gripe: cross-dressed Keira Knightley and the swampy voodoo priestess aside, where are the women? (I know, the headline was way too easy.) Pirates 1 had a feisty female pirate, but no such luck here. I want to see someone like Cheng I Sao, who's featured in our current issue: Cheng I Sao was eventually responsible for nearly all the piracy in the [South China Sea] and her fleet exceeded the size of... READ ON

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Stem Cells Successfully Create Sperm

Â Scientists have now turned miceÂ stem cells into sperm and have successfully fertilized eggs and produced offspring with those sperm. This is a very exciting step toward one day allowing an infertile man to have his own biological children. A New Scientist article talks about the research that's being done by a team in the UK (are we shocked that it's not American research?). Stem cells were extracted from early mouse embryos, and coaxed into becoming sperm by manipulating the environment... READ ON

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Now that's "Must See TV!"

So I was watching NASA TV over the weekend, live, through the link I just provided. It's amazing how many hours you can waste watching astronauts do the MOST mundane things. Astronaut #1: "Okay, Bill, I'm going to move to your left now"¦ here I go"¦ okay, I'm moving to the left with this pipe thingy in my hand." NASA TV Voice: (Whispering like a golf broadcaster) "He's moving to the left with a pipe thingy in his hand"¦" Me: (Yelling to my... READ ON

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Things could get ugly

Since I can't enter the Ernest Hemingway Lookalike pageant -- I mean, I assume it's no girls allowed -- I'm thinking about indulging my competitive spirit elsewhere, on MySpace. My very favorite self-styled mock-newscaster studbucket, Ze Frank, is running a contest to see who can create the world's ugliest MySpace page. (Even before the contest started there was a lot of competition.) If you think you can out-awful Ze's own creation and 144 others at last count, you've got three days... READ ON

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Czech Please!

Two of my favorite historical events have occurred in Prague. I love reading about the Velvet Revolution, just because I think it's amazing that Vaclav Havel and his playwright cronies managed to sweep away communism in a completely bloodless coup. I also love the Defenestration of Prague, not only because defenestration is a GREAT word (to defenestrate means specifically to throw out of a window), but also because according to Britannica, when Czech Protestants threw three officials out of a... READ ON

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Watch us get Fatter

Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The CDC and MSN worked together toÂ create a fascinating animated bit about the rise of obesity in America. Check out this link to watchÂ us all get fatter. It would be cool if they could make this show results in real time so that I couldÂ see the map change as I finish this piece of pizza. Â ... READ ON

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Out of Africa, and now back in

According to this article in The Guardian yesterday, a new book has been published to help Africans understand the Bible. Called the "Africa Bible Commentary," the 1,600-pager, "provides explanations of verses from all 66 books of the Bible, using local proverbs and idioms to make reading relevant to African eyes while remaining true to the scriptures. More than a decade in the making, the book has been put together by 70 scholars and theologians from 25 countries, and represents a range of Protestant... READ ON

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Very special relativity

It's been 51 years since his death, but Albert Einstein still makes for good gossip fodder. Yesterday, there were new revelations from his personal correspondence: He discussed his many affairs with his second wife and stepdaughter, was "fed up" with his own theory of relativity, and lost most of his Nobel money -- which should have gone for child support -- in the Great Depression. The Boston Globe has the best rundown: Before he and Mileva married, they had a daughter, Lieserl, who was given up for... READ ON

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Science that matters

Assuming you've already read the Most Important Question of the Day (because jeez, if it's that important shouldn't you already have read it?), you may also be interested in this tidbit I came across while researching our upcoming cover story on "The Future": NASA is building a warp drive -- powered by antimatter, just like the one beloved of Trekkies -- to take us to Mars. Some antimatter reactions produce blasts of high energy gamma rays. Gamma rays are like X-rays on steroids. They penetrate matter and... READ ON