Mario Livio tossed his car keys in the air.

They rose ever more slowly, paused, shining, at the top of their arc, and then in accordance with everything our Galilean ape brains have ever learned to expect, crashed back down into his hand.

That was the whole problem, explained Dr. Livio, a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute here on the Johns Hopkins campus.

A decade ago, astronomers discovered that what is true for your car keys is not true for the galaxies. Having been impelled apart by the force of the Big Bang, the galaxies, in defiance of cosmic gravity, are picking up speed on a dash toward eternity. If they were keys, they would be shooting for the ceiling.

“That is how shocking this was,” Dr. Livio said.

It is still shocking. Although cosmologists have adopted a cute name, dark energy, for whatever is driving this apparently antigravitational behavior on the part of the universe, nobody claims to understand why it is happening, or its implications for the future of the universe and of the life within it, despite thousands of learned papers, scores of conferences and millions of dollars’ worth of telescope time. It has led some cosmologists to the verge of abandoning their fondest dream: a theory that can account for the universe and everything about it in a single breath.

After Years of Effort, Dark Energy Still Puzzles Scientists - NYTimes.com

Waltzing microbots are all the rage at Duke University.

Researchers there today said they made microrobots shaped something like a spatula but with dimensions measuring just microns, or millionths of a meter pirouette to the music of a Strauss waltz on a dance floor just 1 millimeter across. In another sequence, the devices pivot in a precise fashion whenever their boom-like steering arms are drawn down to the surface by an electric charge. This response resembles the way dirt bikers turn by extending a boot heel, researchers said. The researchers said they have also been able to get five of the devices to group-maneuver in cooperation under the same control system.

Dancing microrobots waltz on a pin s head | NetworkWorld.com Community

But science is so much more than its technical details. And with careful attention to presentation, cutting-edge insights and discoveries can be clearly and faithfully communicated to students independent of those details; in fact, those insights and discoveries are precisely the ones that can drive a young student to want to learn the details. We rob science education of life when we focus solely on results and seek to train students to solve problems and recite facts without a commensurate emphasis on transporting them out beyond the stars.

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that s been unfolding for thousands of years. Science needs to be taught to the young and communicated to the mature in a manner that captures this drama. We must embark on a cultural shift that places science in its rightful place alongside music, art and literature as an indispensable part of what makes life worth living.

It s the birthright of every child, it s a necessity for every adult, to look out on the world, as the soldier in Iraq did, and see that the wonder of the cosmos transcends everything that divides us.

Put a little science in your life - International Herald Tribune

My best guy friend is sitting across from me as I type this, playing footsie with me under the table. We ve been friends for 10 years, since college, and we ve grown closer with age. We can talk for hours about things big and small; we can also sit comfortably in silence. He makes me laugh, always, but has sincere words when I need a lift.

It s the perfect relationship. Except, of course, for when we split ways and I go home, try to mentally decode the meaning of footsie and then turn to my roommate or my sister or anyone who ll listen and say, UGH! WE RE SO PERFECT TOGETHER, WHY AREN T WE DATING?! And other sane things like that.

Pop culture abounds with examples of friends who ve navigated or attempted to navigate the path to romance. Think Friends, in which Monica and Chandler get together. And Little Women, when Laurie longs for childhood pal Jo March. Or, most famously, When Harry Met Sally . . ., which explores the muddy waters of sexual tension to determine if, in fact, men and women can be friends.

Just Friends? - washingtonpost.com

The tendency of 'uneducated' people to compress the number scale for big numbers is actually an admirable way of measuring the world, says Philip Ball.

Why we should love logarithms

They're clunky, dirty and can't access the internet, yet every year thousands of people buy typewriters when they could probably afford a computer. Why?

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Why typewriters beat computers

Of the 564 members of the assembly present for the vote, only four voted to keep the monarchy.

The group met all day in a convention center to reach the agreement and even continued to work after the facility was bombed.

Two apparent bombs damaged the building about 8:20 p.m. local time, said a CNN journalist covering the meetings.

There were no reports of injuries, and the group was back working within 10 minutes of the blasts.

Even though the meeting went late into the evening, a small procession of people could be seen celebrating outside the convention center when the news of political transition was announced.

There was no immediate reaction from the palace, which has rarely commented on political developments in Nepal since King Gyanendra was forced to end his royal dictatorship and restore democracy after widespread protests two years ago.

The country's former rebels, the Maoists, then ended their 10-year communist insurgency and in April won the most seats in the assembly, setting the stage for the end of Nepal's monarchy.

Wow. Three years ago I thought of crossing over into Nepal from India, and the Maoists and the King were killing people. Now the Maoists are elected to run the government. Democracy in action.

Nepal abolishes monarchy - CNN.com

Artist Beryl Cook, known for her colourful and comic paintings of larger-than-life ladies, has died at the age of 81.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Painter Beryl Cook dies aged 81

It takes surprisingly few pixels of information to be able to identify the subject of an image, a team led by an MIT researcher has found. The discovery could lead to great advances in the automated identification of online images and, ultimately, provide a basis for computers to see like humans do.

New Image-recognition Software Could Let Computers 'See' Like Humans Do

Here's the set-up: one stick figure says to another, “Make me a sandwich,” only to be told, “No.” Thinking quickly, stick figure No. 1 says, “Sudo make me a sandwich,” and the once-recalcitrant stick figure No. 2 must comply.

XKCD makes NYT.

This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix