The raw MOLA data are measurements of elevation, resolving features down to about 600 meters in size. The data do not reveal individual rocks, nor do they show the position of the Sun. NASA makes the data available for scientific and artistic endeavors, but lays no claim to the accuracy of the results.

Veenenbos converted the data into a useable format and fed it into a software program called Terragen, which generates the landscapes.

Because no one knows what Mars was really like, Veenenbos rendered several scenes -- some with water, some with ice, some depicting a warm and dry surface. In some of the renderings, he included colors such as green, purple and yellow to represent life.

We asked the artist to imagine standing on the surface of Mars a few billion years ago and tell us what he sees.

"Yesterday the Kasei River meandered calmly through the valley," Veenenbos reports. "But today an exciting catastrophic event takes place near the outlets. I stand on the steep-walled canyon of the Kasei Valles and look down 1 mile. Vast, muddy floods of water caused by groundwater eruptions in the Tharsis Montes region flow into the basin of the Chryse Planitia. I guess that the quantity of the floods exceed 10,000 times that of the Mississippi River."

The Saturn V overall is in poor condition. Various external surfaces have suffered exfoliation of coverings and corrosion of internal and external structures. There is also a strong indication of moisture buildup within the vehicle.

Mold and plant growth on and in the vehicle indicates both excessive moisture collection and poor drainage throughout the rocket. Small animals have found shelter inside and are responsible for acidic debris and damage.

The whole "Target: Terror" thing is: "Oh my God, they're striking the Golden Gate Bridge!" There's another mission where they're taking over the Los Alamos Nuclear Test Facility and there's a third mission where they're invading an airport. The final mission is inspired by the Sept. 11 hijacking where there was a flight that went down in Pennsylvania and we really don't know what happened. There was obviously some heroic action and it never made its target. There's always the speculation: Where was that going? Was it going to the White House or to the Capitol? The final mission is a hijacking very similar to that where the plane is headed for the White House and you've got to stop it. That's the game in a nutshell.

Roman gladiators were overweight vegetarians who lived on barley and beans, according to a scientific study of the largest gladiator graveyard discovered.

Analysis of the bones of more than 70 gladiators recently found near Ephesus, the Roman capital of Asia Minor, puts paid to traditional Hollywood images of macho carnivores with the physique of boxers.

The mention of potential harm sends shivers down the spine of complementary practitioners. They feel that their approaches are so much safer than anything that mainstream medicine has to offer. In many cases this may be true, in others, however, not. Safety, I would argue, is far too important to leave to conjecture; we need evidence. Even relatively minor side-effects of, for instance, a herbal medicine, weigh importantly if the potential benefit is small or uncertain. In other words, the ultimately relevant question is, does complementary medicine generate more good than harm?

The answer cannot be found without a commitment to and investment in rigorous and independent research. One reason why the evidence in complementary medicine is so often inconclusive, or at best promising, lies in the fact that few trials have been properly funded. I estimate that for every 100 trials in conventional medicine fewer than one exists in complementary medicine. My unit is generally seen as the best supported one of its kind in the UK, but we too struggle when it comes to conducting clinical trials. Less than 1% of the UK's research budgets go into complementary medicine research.

The former Soviet Union was arguably the all-time king of creating cities in barely hospitable parts of the Earth that economics, geography, and plain human decency would suggest should just be left alone. During the Soviet era, cities were developed in the middle of nowhere in order to extract mineral wealth and to ensure that everyone in the country had a job (productive or otherwise). As a result, according to The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, 23 of the world's 25 coldest cities with populations over 500,000 are in Russia. The maintenance of the massive Soviet misallocation of people and industrial plant constitutes an enormous tax on the Russian economy today.

Some cities never shake the feel that they shouldn't exist at all, or at least in their gussied-up form. Yamoussoukro, despite?or perhaps because of?its ridiculous white elephant monument to Christianity, has a hollow and vacant feel to it. Islamabad, which was built in the 1960s to replace Karachi as the home of the apparatus of Pakistani government, is modern, meticulously planned, and rigidly zoned?and as dull as ditchwater. Brasilia, pedestrian-unfriendly and pockmarked with monstrous concrete government buildings in various states of decay, lacks a human touch. And many cities in Siberia have a post-economic-meltdown surreal artificiality about them.

Known as the "sword in the stone," the Tuscan "Excalibur" is said to have been plunged into a rock in 1180 by Galgano Guidotti, a medieval knight who renounced war and worldly goods to become a hermit.

[...]

Galgano was thrown by his horse while passing Montesiepi, a hill near Chiusdino. There, another vision told him to renounce material things. Galgano objected that it would be as difficult as splitting a rock with a sword. To prove his point, he struck a stone with his sword. Instead of breaking, the sword slid like butter into the rock. Galgano once again became a recluse, isolating himself by the sword's side. There he remained until he died in 1181.

[...]

If the sword really dates to 1180, decades before the first literary reference to the "sword in the stone," it would support the theory that the Celtic myth of King Arthur and his sword Excalibur developed in Italy after the death of Galgano.