Jim Kardach is in the Bluetooth Hall of Fame, his foray into the technology began in the mid-90’s while at Intel he was tasked with bringing to market a new short range PC radio network standard.

At EETimes, Jim writes about some of the behind the scenes details when Intel, Nokia and Ericsson joined forces to develop a single network standard as opposed to their own short range radio technologies. And it sounds like deciding on the name may have been the most challenging aspect!

Link to the article.

In the pic above you can clearly see King Harald Blatang (Bluetooth) in this ancient rune stone with one of the earlier versions of a laptop and mobile phone, wishing we would expedite in delivering this wireless technology.

The wreckage of a pirate ship abandoned by Captain Kidd in the 17th century has been found by a research team diving in shallow waters off the Dominican Republic.

Amazingly it was only 70ft off the shore and in 10ft of water, makes you wonder why it took so long to find it.

Lets wish the research team good luck in the plunder they find.

Link to LiveScience.

Did you see the 2 hour Nova special recently on the Intelligent Design (ID) debate? It revolved around an historic Federal case that pitted Creationists against Darwinists in 2004, basically it was the “Scopes Monkey trial” all over again as religion tries to find its way back into public schools in place of, or to be considered side by side with, scientific evidence and reason.

The Dover trial was the latest in a long line of court cases involving the teaching of evolution, but it was exceptional in that it was the first case that tested the legality of teaching Intelligent Design in a science class. The decision at Dover determined that ID was unscientific and fundamentally religious.
That’s not to say that the Discovery Institute and other ID proponents have packed up and called it a day; instead, they seem to simply be changing tactics.

Ars Technica takes a look at these changes in tactical rebranding, if you have an interest in this debate from either side you should read this article.

You can watch the Nova program on ID that includes reenactments of key testimony during the trial, they broke it up into 12 chapters.

How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries?

MapsOfWar has a really cool Flash based map video showing where and when the dominant religions started and their ebb and flow over time across the planet. If you’re a history geek you’ll like this, see 5000 years of religion in 90 seconds.

Link to the History of Religion Video/Map.

I guess you could say that as far as craters are concerned, Vredefort is the “Big Man on Campus”.

Vredefort crater is the oldest and largest verified impact remnant on the planet, located in South Africa about 100km from Johannesburg. To the untrained eye it may not appear at first blush to be a crater, more of an interesting collection of hills.

It’s believed that about 2 Billion years ago a 10km wide asteroid impacted this site that left us with a crater that has a diameter of roughly 300km (186 mi). The impact struck with so much force that first the ground heaved, then melted granite, the granite flowed and solidified.

Another somewhat unique feature about this particular site is that it’s one of the few multi-ringed craters on planet, this feature is normally seen elsewhere in the solar system like the Moon for instance.

You can view this for yourself on GOOG’s map.