What are the big questions that will shape the coming year? We asked figures from science, politics, business and the arts for the issue that will dominate their field in 2007

Absolute must read with some fantastic questions at the Guardian.

Let’s wrap up the year with some Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkins previously. (via digg.)

It was only a matter of time, but now Saddam Hussein’s execution has gone live on the Internet. It’s on Google Video, but I won’t link to it because I’ve got morals.

It’s strange that the world of YouTube and Google Video, what could once have been deemed the online equivalent of “You’ve been framed” minus Jeremy Beadle, has now become the home of snuff movies.

One wonders what it says about modern society that the most searched for video over the past 24 hours has been someone’s execution.

A call for a NSFW HTML attribute is gone into in depth here. What’s the point of that? NSFW (wikipedia) stands for Not Safe For Work, and is used commonly enough on various websites to indicate that a link or content you might be about to view contains stuff you wouldn’t want to be caught looking at while in work - for example pornography, violence etc. So having NSFW as an HTML attribute would mean that in the actual code presenting the web page, your browser would be able to tell that the link/image/text was NSFW.

The attribute has several exciting implications for content creators and site visitors:

1. Content creators can now apply the attribute to hyperlinks. Visitors will be able to configure their browsers to warn them, or stop them, before continuing on to URIs flagged with the attribute. Additionally, search engines will be able to use the proportion of flagged links to a URI as a better means of filtering results.
2. Content creators can now apply the attribute to image tags. Visitors will be able to configure their browsers to block display of images flagged with the attribute.
3. Content creators can apply the attribute to paragraph tags, div tags, or any other block-level element.

Doing so will indicate that the enclosed content is not safe for work. Visitors will be able to configure their browsers to block display of just the content enclosed by the flagged block-level element.

Nice idea. More here. (via.)

Fantastic scan of a page from the Usborne Guide to Computer and Video Games from 1982 on what games will be like in the future. Check it out here. Nicely accurate too for the most part. And you can have a look at all the pages from the book here.

Saddam Hussein will be executed before 6am Saturday Baghdad time (3am Irish Time), a senior Iraqi government official said tonight.

That this is going ahead is a failure of our collective humanity. Irish Examiner click. 1,400+ news stories.

Update: Saddam Hussein Executed.

Update 2: I’m glad to see this:

“The European Union has a very consistent stand … on opposing the death penalty and it should not have been applied in this case either – even though there is no doubt about Saddam Hussein’s guilt over serious violations against human rights,” Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja of Finland, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said in Helsinki.

That’s from here.

Previously: Saddam Hussein Sentenced to Death.

Late to this, but it’s worth it.

Wait, the Jessica Simpson one is better:

Regular readers will know we love wikipedia, and now its been confirmed.

As for mentioning the term Wikipedia, certain bloggers demonstrate undeniable affinity with the site. Bloggers most likely to mention Wikipedia include popular and influential authors, as well as ad-supported blogs maintained by established niche-publishing networks.

And TCAL is fourth on the list. Nielson buzzmetrics press release. (via.)

Looking for more cool astronomy pics after our earlier post today? Look no further than the top 10 astronomy pics of 2006, some fantastic stuff in here, and good explanations of why they’re good too.

That dot in the center of the image is the Earth. It’s us. Cassini was nearly one billion miles from us when it took this image, orbiting a giant ball of gas as exotic and alien as any place we can imagine. From such a terribly removed location, the entire Earth is reduced to a single point of light, just one among an anonymous many as seen from our robotic proxy as our generation, for the first time in all of history, seeks out our neighborhood and takes a really good look.

That’s why this is the best astronomy image of 2006. And it’s one of the best of all time.

Kill all the zombies. Arrow keys, space bar, weapons use 1 to 8. The rooms.

So what happens if you have two mobile phones, and you use the first phone to ring one garda station and the second phone to ring another garda station and you hold the two phones together to “talk” to each other?

Listen over at gingerpixel.com. Anyone know where this originates from?

Like that classic Chinese takeaway prank.

Supporters of cloning livestock have maintained for years that meat and milk from cloned cattle look and taste the same as food that comes from animals made the old-fashioned way.

On Thursday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took that claim a step further by issuing a report that concludes cloned animals are as safe to eat as ordinary livestock. The FDA’s official risk assessment could clear the way within the next year for approval of food products from cloned animals and their offspring.

Cloning Jessica Alba still not possible say scientists. Full story.

Looking for a new wallpaper?

Some pretty impressive images from Space.com.

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

Full Article

…now for something a little more accurate:
Grand Canyon Wiki

Two hour flights to the other side of the world may seem like a scene from a science fiction movie; but the technology is in place, and a plane that can do just that is currently in development.

Great stuff, no word on the lift through the center of the Earth yet, but who knows what those crazy scienticians will do next. Full article.

Is online at apple.com. Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer teaser trailer.

Defend your world from attackers by drawing lines. Soon all wars will be fought this way. Deflector.

Low-fares airline Ryanair has lost its battle to win control of an internet domain name from a disgruntled former customer, according to a ruling issued by a United Nations panel in Geneva today.

Michael Coulston of London set up a website in July under the domain name www.ryanaircampaign.org which is critical of Ryanair’s business practices.

News story. Ryanaircampaign.org.

The Bosnian Pyramids (first mentioned on TCAL in October 2005 and then again last June) are back in the news, this time in the shape of a Register article.

At 267 metres tall, the Pyramid of the Sun blows the Egyptian opposition into the weeds. If that wasn’t enough, it is simply one of a number of pyramids located in the same region - there are also the Pyramids of the Sun, the Dragon and, most recently discovered, Love.

These revelations are not simply about who has the biggest bragging rights for historic civil engineering projects. Structures like these take colossal man power to create – estimates for a single Egyptian pyramid run into tens of millions of man hours.

Check out the full article or bosnianpyramid.com for more info.

From the awesome BBC doco “Hiroshima”. See CGI effects bring this disaster to horrifying life.

Thanks Derek.