This Week in the Future, February 22-26, 2010

This Texan junkie is both sad and happy. Happy because he’s on the way to kicking his destructive addiction using non-habit-forming synthetic opiates newly derived from scorpion venom. And he has a prototype of Darpa’s dream Terminator arm, which is a good thing to have. But he’s also sad because he may now never own a Hummer to match his aspirational tattoo, and because his home state’s government stole his child’s blood for military research. Only in the future!

Here are some of our favorite stories this week:

• The Hummer is Dead
• DARPA Orders Smart Robotic Terminator Hands for a Better Tomorrow
• The World’s Largest Airplane Graveyard in High Resolution, Now On Google Maps (inspiration for our junkie’s opium den’s wallpaper)
• Texas Secretly Gave The Blood of 800 Newborns to DNA Database
• Obama Pledges $475 Million to Rescue Great Lakes
• Scorpion Venom Could Make a Safe Alternative to Morphine

This Week in the Future, February 22-26, 2010: The T-Shirt

Win this shirt! Leave a comment (any comment) to put your name in the pile; we’ll randomly choose and announce our winner right here. And, if you just can’t wait that long, you can buy the shirt for yourself here. Good Luck!

Until next time. Enjoy our past weekly illustrated roundups here.