Barack Obama’s trip to the war zones has definitely scored a few points. Many analysts were saying that this was a great photo op, but the other side of the coin is that McCain has been making hay from the military and foreign affairs perspective.

The toxic slopfest in consumer products continues, with high lead levels found in lipsticks including Dior Addict. Dozens of others are also affected. Quantities of lead found are double the FDA level, in the case of the Dior product.

Now here’s a first. Healthmap is able to produce a map of disease incidences, around the world, and track, in real time, about 95% of them. That’s a lot faster than existing systems, and could be a huge asset if there’s ever a global pandemic.

It’s getting crowded out there. Since the de-planet-ing of Pluto, astronomy has been piling on the new stars with planets, and now we’ve got a new non-planet in the Solar System, too. The guy that discovered it is pretty pleased, too.

According to theory, inflation, ironically, and the reaction of US motorists in driving less, is the reason for oil’s drop in price. Given that oil is the main driver, excuse the pun, for inflation, it’s interesting logic.

It’s called the essay mill, and it’s been a part of life in the academic world for too long, in many people’s opinion. Academic paper writing has been called plagiarism, but strictly speaking, it’s not even that.

The US isn’t the only place with a few housing issues affecting it. The UK housing market has been hit by a triple whammy of lender problems and exposure to the US mess, credit crunch and prices.

Some legislators aren’t too happy about the bailout for Fannie and Freddie. Treasury Secretary Paulson is proposing unlimited backup for the two punch-drunk corporations, and the Congressional questions are "How much", and “Why?” What, can’t you g

There are two decision making functions in the human brain. There’s the prehistoric, fast thinking, not very accurate one, and the “reasoning, intelligent” one. The ancient one is for emergencies. The other one was probably on special somewhere.

Ed Wilson is one of the world’s top, perhaps the top, scientists, in the study of ants. He’s a real field worker, too, not hanging around in the paneling like some. He’s also a writer, with opinions. How dreadful.

Miles Franklin was one of the first Australian female authors to make any sort of impression on her era, and she did it with My Brilliant Career. It’s a book which has survived very much on its literary merits.

It’s a measure of the sensitivity of the war that the nine US fatalities incurred in the Taliban attack against a post in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province are enough to spark talk about major new deployments. Afghanistan is suddenly fashionable.

OK, so the words “Microsoft” and “subtlety” aren’t synonyms. Yahoo’s rejection of the current sledgehammer-like offer, however, has shown a few wrinkles that weren’t entirely obvious before. Carl Icahn is now a player, as many suspected.

Pope Benedict has arrived in Sydney tonight, and World Youth Day is ready to start. The tourists have been pouring in, the city’s traffic has been rerouted, and the retailers are whinging about the effects on their business. The acronym is WYD SYD.

An Iguanodon could have had a better day back in the Cretaceous. But for paleontologists, it couldn’t have got much better. Everything about the dino’s death, even the plants, scavengers, pollen and micro fossils have been preserved.

Freelance writing is one of the legendary tough rides of a career. Or it’s supposed to be. The net, however, is generating a steadily rising demand for writers and quality. That’s creating some very strange situations for writers and buyers.

Finish an article, blink, and your entire knowledge base gets turned over five seconds later. This is about the creation of an artificial DNA molecule, from nearly all artificial materials. Not join the dots with existing amino acids, like a month ago.

Mars may have been caught red-sanded (sorry) with some telltale clues to its early chemistry. There’s a mineral called jarosite which might finally give some definite answers to a bit of biochemistry which has been driving geologists and biologists mad.

A protein called HS1 has been found to be the trigger for a range of immune cells called Natural Killer (NK) cells. The protein may be able to control immune responses to disease. It’s also potentially useful for autoimmune diseases, including diabetes.

Gruesome statistics by the bucketload are coming from the US housing sector. 252,000 homes are in foreclosure of some kind. That’s 1 in every 501 homes in the country. An unholy mix of falling property prices and rising payments is causing the carnage.