Buried over two miles beneath the East Antarctic Ice sheet lurks Lake Vostok — an isolated body of subglacial water, removed from the rest of the world for more than twenty million years. Now, Russian researchers are just a few meters of ice away from entering an environment unlike any we’ve ever seen… at least, not here on Earth.

via Russian scientists prepare to explore the most alien lake on Earth.

Interview: Keith Perkins.

YEARS on Vimeo on Vimeo

via YEARS on Vimeo.

Maybe if we all said ‘maybe’ more often, the world might be a nicer place.

–Robert Anton Wilson

via RAW Week: Pope Bob Remembrance, by Rev. Ivan Stang – Boing Boing.

SPOEK MATHAMBO – CONTROL from spoek mathambo on Vimeo.

A beautiful video directed by Pieter Hugo, and a great take on Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control by Spoek Mathambo

…30 brand-name companies paid a federal income tax rate of minus 6.7 percent on $160 billion of profit from 2008 through 2010 compared to a going corporate tax rate of 35 percent. All but one of those 30 companies reported lobbying expenses in Washington.

Another report, by Public Campaign, shows that 29 of those companies spent nearly half a billion dollars over those three years lobbying in Washington for laws and rules that favor their interests. Only Atmos Energy, the 30th company, reported no lobbying.

Public Campaign replaced Atmos with Federal Express, the package delivery company that paid a smidgen of tax — $37 million, or less than one percent of the $4.2 billion in profit it reported in 2008 through 2010.

For the amount spent lobbying, the companies could have hired 3,100 people at $50,000 for wages and benefits to do productive work.

The report – “For Hire: Lobbyists or the 99 percent” – says that while shedding jobs, the 30 companies are “spending millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists to stave off higher taxes or regulations.”

These and other companies have access to lawmakers and regulators that are unavailable to ordinary Americans.

via The corporations that occupy Congress | David Cay Johnston.

This phenomenon, known as “temporal cloaking,” is the latest addition to a world that once existed only in children’s literature and science fiction — a place where objects are invisible and events are unrecorded.

via ‘Time cloak’ hid event in experiment, physicists say – The Washington Post.

Sander’s 282-page book is brimming with little tips that will help you “nudge toward less awful.” Here are a few of my favorites:

* Keep a handy “charity box” for tossing in things that you don’t use but aren’t trash.

* Write down your top goals, save them as a text file, and set your web browser to display the goals as your home page.

* Instead of looking at your email when you start work for the day, spend 30 minutes on a high-priority project.

* Turn your hanging clothes around so the hooks point toward you. When you wear something, replace it on the rod by turning the hanger around (point side away). After one year, get rid of all the clothes with the hangers still pointing toward you.