This is 21-going-on-6-year-old Valeria Lukyanova (links to her Ukranian Facebook-y thing with literally 10,000 more photos of Little Ms. Vain). Valeria always dreamed of being a real life Barbie doll. And now, after numerous surgeries, she’s finally realized her dream AND CAN HOPEFULLY MOVE ON TO ACTUALLY DREAMING ABOUT SOMETHING WORTHWHILE. Wow, of all the dreams in the world to come true of course it’s squandered on the girl who wants to look like Barbie and not everybody hoping for a cure for cancer. “That little bitch.” *pointing* That girl said it, not me!

Source: Geekologie.

The U.S. Army is dedicating millions of research dollars into discovering building helmets to allow soldiers to telepathically communicate with one another on the battlefield.

The technology, which seems like something out of a science fiction novel, would use electrodes to pick up code words that soldiers were thinking.

Those codewords would then be transmitted back to a computer where the soldier’s position and message- telling, for instance, that it is safe to progress towards a target- which would be transmitted to their peers in the field.

Rumors that army intelligence was determined to use mind control technology to their advantage have been milling around for decades, and have been shrouded in a mix of truth and fiction.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958 and was dedicated to expanding the Department of Defense’ technology usage, some of which included state-of-the-art, and top secret, research into the mind.

Delving more into the fiction side of things was the book, and later George Clooney movie, called The Men Who Stare At Goats which depicts the use of New Age concepts, like mind control, used during interrogation exercises in the last three decades.

Now, new details are emerging about the very real $4million research project being conducted across the country on the Pentagon’s dime.

Based largely out of University of California-Irvine, in conjunction with labs in Philadelphia and Maryland, scientists are trying to improve so-called ‘synthetic telepathy’ so that it could be used in a battlefield.

At this point, they have set their sights on 2017 as the year when their plan may turn into silent action.

So far, 45 per cent of the commands that are transmitted from one volunteer to another- like ‘call in helicopter’ or ‘enemy ahead’- are correct. That statistic is expected to improve.

According to a soldier quoted in Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, many of those people who will be the ones utilizing the technology are on board.

These days we learn warfare through video games and shoot with plastic weapons,’ the unnamed soldier said.

‘One week it’s science fiction- the next it’s on the front line. If it means I don’t have to listen to my sergeant’s voice one more day, then bring it on.’

Others, including civil rights activists, take the opposite view, bringing up concerns about a possible infringement on civil liberties if the technology were to be misused.

For the time being, the research is being focused on learning and applying the short military-based codewords, and not individuals private thoughts and deep secrets.

CONTINUED at The Daily Mail.

A Nasa satellite has provided jaw-dropping pictures of a huge ‘storm’ brewing under the sea.

The swirling mass of water – which measures a whopping 93 miles wide – has been spotted off the coast of South Africa by the Terra satellite on December 26.

But there’s no need to alert international shipping, or worry about the poor fish that might find themselves in an endless washing cycle – the body of water poses no threat.

Indeed, it is more likely to create life by sucking nutrients from the bed and bringing them to the surface.

The sea storms – which are better known as eddies – form bizarre whirl shaped shapes deep beneath the ocean’s surface.

This counter-clockwise eddy is thought to have peeled off from the Agulhas Current, which flows along the southeastern coast of Africa and around the tip of South Africa.

Agulhas eddies – also called ‘current rings’ – tend to be among the largest in the world, transporting warm, salty water from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic.

Agulhas eddies can remove juvenile fish from the continental shelf, reducing catch sizes if one passes through a fishing region.

The bizarre phenomenon was spotted when the Terra satellite was conducting a routine natural-colour image of the Earth. …

Source: The Daily Mail.

Pictures of cats dressed in wholemeal, plain and multi-seed bread are popping up across the web, being promoted by blogging sites and posted on Twitter.

It’s the latest ‘internet meme’, a term used to describe a trend which spreads quickly across the web, to emerge following last year’s planking craze.

A Facebook group has also been set up encouraging people to upload their snaps for the breading community to look at.

Thousands are discussing the new phenomenon across the internet which looks set to take off in a big way. …

Source: Metro.

We may never know what made the purple squirrel of Jersey Shore purple, but experts don’t doubt that it really was a squirrel of a different color.

“It’s not typical, but it’s not impossible,” said Harold Cole, a warden with the Pennsylvania Game Commission who investigated the case.

Percy Emert, a resident of the town in central Pennsylvania, said he and his wife caught the squirrel on Sunday in a trap, using peanuts as bait.

“At first I thought somebody around here was playing tricks,” he said. The family took pictures of the animal in its cage and posted them on Facebook. Then, on Tuesday, they set the squirrel free.

CONTINUED at MSNBC.

A Petco groomer cut off part of a puppy’s ear and then tried to cover it up by gluing it back on, claims its devastated owner.

Grandmother Gladys Kapuwi, who is now suing the firm, claims she took Pomerian-Maltese mix Dodo to Petco in Hawaii for a grooming but was left horrified when the puppy was returned with a piece of its ear missing.

She told the HawaiiNewsNow website: ‘[She] was dried, bloody, was dry blood, everything.

‘I noticed that at home, so when I took her to the vet, the doctor had told me it looked like they tried to glue it back.

‘I couldn’t believe what they did. I started crying because this is our baby, too, you know.’

In a separate case another pet owner Estelle Green claims she picked up her dog to find that the its nails were cut too short and bleeding.

Both dog owners are now suing the Petco with Mrs Green’s husband Michael Green prosecuting both cases.

Both claim groomers at the pet shop mutilated their dogs.

CONTINUED at The Daily Mail.

Reminder: We posted Daft Punk’s “Derezzed” from Tron Legacy as Performed by Just 5 Floppy Drives a month or so ago here.