Live from the Nuke Free Zone

I only report this stuff, folks:

Hippos
don’t sweat blood, they sweat SPF 40. No, really:

The colourful secrets of hippopotamus sweat have been uncovered.
Researchers have identified the chemicals responsible for the timeless myth
that hippopotamus sweat blood…

Kimiko Hashimoto and his colleagues at Kyoto Pharmaceutical
University, Japan, revealed that hippos’ secretions are neither blood nor
sweat, but a mixture of pigments that function both as sunscreen and antibiotic.
This mixture keeps hippos’ cool and protects them from the harmful effects
of the sun.

Nanoscale batteries
may be on the market soon:

Nanotechnology could help revolutionize the energy industry,
producing advances such as solar power cells made of plastics to environmentally
friendly batteries that detoxify themselves, experts told United Press International.

One nanotech firm, mPhase Technologies in Norwalk, Conn.,
is partnering with Lucent Technologies to commercialize nanotechnology by
creating intelligent batteries, with the intent of bringing the devices to
the marketplace within the next 12 to 18 months.

Tricorders
are quickly becoming a reality:

A fairly small device is able to quickly and accurately diagnose
pneumonia and may be able to diagnose a large number of other diseases including
cancers.

Future Hi has a lengthy piece on how to
live forever or die trying:

But if revival and the aging cure are both successful, then
let’s say we figure our lifespan could be as long as 10,000 years, at which
point we expect some random cosmic accident or war will wipe us out. Even
though the civilization we are talking about probably has extensive control
over all biological processes and extremely advanced technology, let’s say
our quality of life doesn’t go much further above that which we experienced
during our prime - a steady fluctuation of peak experiences and typical days.
We also assume that one doesn’t get bored during those ten thousand years,
which shouldn’t be too hard if the civilization is developing technologically
and has plenty of new stuff to do. Many sci-fi, anime, and fantasy characters
have lifespans on this scale, and they seem to be doing fine, so how hard
could it be, right?

And for your political content today, here’s the complete
text of Al Gore’s speech at the MoveOn rally:

Neither did the administration have any scruples about using
fear of terrorists as a means to punch holes in the basic protections of the
Constitution: to create a class of permanent prisoners; to make it possible
to imprison Americans without due process; to totally sequester information
not just from the people, but from the congress and the courts - all justified
by recourse to fear.