Seattle Post-Times

The end of chairlift conversation as we know it

I no longer ski because it would cost too much to buy boots that don't wreck my widening feet, but now I don't have to. There's a robot that can ski for me, and it will never complain about boots that pinch.

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• Skiing robot developed by Slovakian researchers (telegraph.co.uk)

The space program: We planned it with the apes

National Geographic reminds us that 50 years ago NASA sent monkeys into space and returned them safely to Earth, a couple of years before the first manned flights. The first mammal to orbit the Earth was a chimp.

At the time, we thought they were animals. Today we know that their DNA was 98 percent human.

Here's to Ham (above) and all the rest memorialized in this NG photo gallery.

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• New Panel Will Review NASA's Shift in Spaceflight (nytimes.com)

Reverse engineering

This is just awesome. This guy has built an Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, based on a few parts found by archeologists.