This whole thing pretty much blows me away. Manchester University released the results of a study on “Gold Farming” and it pegs the profits of the whole venture at about $500,000 per year.

From the start of the 21st century, a new form of employment has emerged in developing countries. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet it has been almost invisible to both the academic and development communities. It is the phenomenon of “gold farming”: the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games. China is the employment epicentre but the sub-sector has spread to other Asian nations and will spread further as online games-playing grows.

Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on “Gold Farming”: Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games

BBC news talks about the study and says that Gold Farming employs about 400,000 people world wide who make about $145 (£77) a month. Simply amazing stuff.

“I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry,” said Professor Richard Heeks from the University of Manchester who wrote the report.

“In a way that is still true. It’s just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands.”

In many online games virtual cash remains rare and many people turn to suppliers such as gold farmers to get money to outfit avatars with better gear, weapons or a mount.

Some gold-farming operations offer other services such as “power levelling” in which they assume control of a player’s character and turn it into a high-powered hero far faster than the original owner could manage themselves.

Source

This type of stuff and the fact that it would consume most of my life is one reason why I try and stay away from these games. The fact that you can hoin and thousands of people out there are cheating or paying to get ahead just blows the whole “have fun” aspect of it for me. What are your thoughts on this stuff. I’d love to know.

Doctors are using it in rehabilitation.

According to this article, in the Seattle Times, playing certain Wii games mimics the same motions used to strengthen muscles during rehab. Patients who use it are so engrossed in the games they forget the pain.

Who’d have thought? Next week, maybe someone will use it to discover an end to hunger, or a beginning to world peace.

South Korean Kong Il-Keun’s team cloned cats after modifying a gene to change their skin colour.

One of the cats glows red under the ultraviolet light

The two Turkish Angora cats now glow red when exposed to ultraviolet light. The scientists believe the process could be used to develop treatments for human genetic diseases and could help reproduce rare animals.

To clone the cats, Kong’s team used skin cells of the mother cat. They modified its genes to make them fluorescent by using a virus, which was transplanted into the ova. The ova were then implanted into the womb of the donor cat. Four kittens were born but two died during the caesarean section.

Source

I want one! It’s all for reasearch to help people and not to be trendy, but still… I wonder if they could do mini weiner dogs?

The Env Bike is only a prototype at this point, but someday if it goes into production we’ll have a stylish Streehawk-type bike capable of reaching speeds upto 50 miles per hour. It’s powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that’s replacable and the only emission is water that clean enough to drink. Sweet!

Check it out at the official site.

Envbike

In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility.

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.

Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather’s spacesuit–think more Spiderman, less John Glenn.

Source

Now however, she’s submitted her DNA and it’s been tested with suprising results.

The blood DNA from this Puerto Rican woman has yielded analyses so unusual and interesting that the physician involved is now interested in meeting the subject for further study. The DNA is possible in humans but is very rare.

Ms. Garcia claims that she is the offspring of an alien encounter. The Doctor is not interested in the UFO/ alien phenomena he wants answers as to why her DNA has such rare qualities.

The Canadian - Scientific evidence suggests Puerto Rican woman is an Extraterrestrial-Human hybrid

Venusian Woman Here on a Mission

Omnec Onec was raised on Earth a normal little girl, but around 1990 figured out that she was a Venusian and lived without a physical body on an astral plane on Venus. In fact she lived in the Venus town of Teutonia.

Wait…does the astral plane have towns? Nevermind.

From the Temple of History she learned of the long-term monitoring of Earth by scientists from many planets and of the nature of life on all of these planets. Earth, the youngest of the planets in this solar system, is plagued by the imbalance caused by its singular Moon, which works an alternating influence on people as it moves through the heavens. The other planets are organized into a Brotherhood of Planets and their monitoring of Earth includes the era of ‘Atlantis’ and ‘Lemuria’. The different races of earth have ties to the inhabitants of the various planets.

Also from The Canadian The case of Omnec Onec, an alleged ‘Venusian’

Filmmakers and researchers on Monday unveiled two ancient stone boxes they said may have once contained the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but several scholars derided the claims made in a new documentary as unfounded and contradictory to basic Christian beliefs.

“The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron and scheduled to air March 4 on the Discovery Channel, argues that 10 small caskets, called ossuaries, discovered in 1980 in a Jerusalem suburb may have held the bones of Jesus and his family.

One of the caskets even bears the title, “Judah, son of Jesus,” hinting that Jesus may have had a son, according to the film. The claim that Jesus even had an ossuary contradicts the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven.

CBS News - Documentary Shows Possible Jesus Tomb

Despite the school re-seeding the area, the penis has turned up on satellite image search engines because a photo was taken before the new grass could conceal the appendage.

It’s a prank that will now live on forever. I wonder how long until the viagra spammers start using it in emails? I’m also waiting for some 30-foot breasts to show up one day. It will happen. Mark my words.

GuardianUnlimited - Schoolyard penis seen from space

Dragon Skin is a ceramic disc body armor that can stop the AK-47’s 7.62mm round.

Spiked - Future Weapons - Dragon Skin

2. Water drains backwards in the Southern Hemisphere due to the Earth’s rotation

3. There is no gravity in space

4. Humans use only 10 percent of their brains

5. Eating a poppy seed bagel mimics opium use

6. A penny dropped from the top of a tall building could kill a pedestrian

7. Adults don’t grow new brain cells

8. Chicken soup can cure the common cold

9. Yawning is “contagious”

10. Lightning never strikes the same place twice

There’s 10 more. Have look.