Super-Smart People Rule the Earth

Rubber Ducks Elf (GNU Free Documentation License)

An FBI agent who posed as a cybercriminal named for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character talks about how he helped bring down a worldwide network of identity thieves, got a rep as a most-wanted spammer without having to spam, and dealt with all the egos in the world of Internet thugs.

Also in today's links: swimming in chemicals, rescuing frogs and more.

• A 16-year-old won NASA's Space Settlement Competition with a design for a colony made up of a series of spinning rings, which can be individually sealed off. His proposal encompassed everything from how colonists would be selected to what they'd eat (meat grown in tubes -- ew).
• The fabulously named new book Slow Death by Rubber Duck (subtitle: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects our Health.) sounds like a Supersize Me with chemicals instead of fast food. The authors abstained from exposure to chemicals from off-the shelf products, then binged, and measured the results.

Related Articles

	Forget Telepresence! Smellepresence Is Here At Last
	FYI: Why Do Ducks Have Orange Feet?
	National Forensic Canine DNA Database To Help Combat Dogfighting

Tags

Science, Missing Links, M. Farbman, cloned meat, identity theft, links, missing links, nasa, space news, volcanoes
• "Global warming" may go the way of the ice caps -- or at least that wording might. Politicians are searching for just the right turns of phrase to sell environmental policies to the public.
• Scientists have gathered the first footage of an underwater volcano erupting, as well as the shrimp adapted to live by these volcanoes.
• Another volcano -- this one on the Caribbean island of Montserrat -- wiped out part of the habitat for the mountain chicken frog. (Guess how the delicacy got its name.) Then along came a fungus to further afflict the endangered species, forcing scientists to airlift the frogs to safety.