When Egyptian scientists performed the first CT scan of the mummy of Tutankhamun, they turned up a key clue: Bone fragments from the pharaoh’s first vertebra, near the skull, were not coated with embalming fluid. This indicates the break occurred after the king was dead and is unrelated to his demise after all.

Also, a second clue was found by examining a major fracture in Tut’s left thigh bone. The femur had a thin coating of embalming resin around the break, indicating that Tut had broken his leg just before he died and that his death may have resulted from an infection or other complications. Another possibility is a fat embolism that could have acted like a clot to cause a heart attack.

Read the Seattle Times for all the (not so) gory details.

Remember the classic coin-op game Asteroids? Below is a screenshot of the original. Well now you can relive the game but with a twist! In this version *you* are the asteroid, out for revenge against the spaceships trying to avenge your brethern destroyed in the original 1979 classic. Asteroid’s Revenge is a flash based game hosted on Games Cheat Codes.

This game has pretty much all of the look and feel of the original, you turn and apply thrust to the asteroid the same way you did with the ship, your goal of course is to destroy the ships! The fun will last for about 2 minutes before it gets old, but if you were a fan of the original you at least have to try this out for that long (I didn’t see the UFO in that time, please let me know if you do). Enjoy!

Unsolicited e-mails continue to plague Europeans and account for between 50 and 80% of all messages sent to mail inboxes. Yesterday, an EU Commissioner called on their governments to step up their fight against spam, spyware and other illegal online activities and implement EU rules to improve Internet safety. Duh.

An EU report found that only two EU nations — the Netherlands and Finland — were making progress with enforcing the 2002 law to crack down on spam.

Here’s the last piece of news that is not surprising:

The biggest culprit of EU spam remains the United States, which accounts for 21.6% of spam coming into the 25-nation EU. China is the second-biggest producer with 13.4%, while EU member France is third with 6.3%.

[Read the AP wire for more details]

The AP wire is reporting on medical geeknews tonight:

“At least 120,000 Americans a year suffer strokes because of a common irregular heartbeat - one that’s on the rise, hard to treat and can shoot deadly blood clots straight to the brain. Now doctors are experimenting with a new way to prevent those brain attacks: a tiny device that seals off a little section of the jiggling heart where the clots form.”

[Read more at Townhall.com]

I’m using the Tech Preview version of Outlook 2007 at home. This version is pretty good at identifying junk e-mail (i get about 20-30 a day depending on how generous the spammers are feeling that day). I’ve always wished I could help the effort of refining the junk mail filters, especially for the few pieces of junk that make it through to my Inbox.

Well now I can. Microsoft has a new plug-in “Junk E-mail Reporting Tool” for Outlook 2003 and 2007; it allows you to report junk mail to Microsoft and its affiliates for analysis to help them improve the effectiveness of their junk e-mail filtering technologies.

It’s a quick and simple MSI you can get from here, note that it does *not* require a WGA check. After install, there will be a new icon on your toolbar, simply highlight the offending message, click the icon and the message will be forwarded to abuse@frontbridge.com with the offending mail as an attachment so the good guys can read the header as well.

Note that Frontbridge merged with Microsoft earlier this year to help form some of the security features of Exchange Hosted Services.