On a budget of only $148, using a weather balloon, a cell phone, hand warmers and a drink cooler, two students from MIT-- Oliver Yeh and Justin Lee-- sent a camera right to the edge of space and snapped a couple of pictures. Oh, and before you try to do this, make sure you contact the FAA or your relevant national air traffic agency to get clearance.

From CNN:

Physicist Axel Mellinger spent nearly two years traveling 26,000 miles across South Africa, Texas and Michigan and what does he have to show for it? Well, he's cobbled together a stunning 648 megapixel panorama of the Milky Way as seen from Earth, using 3,000 individual photographs. The Central Michigan University professor wants to make the image available for planetariums, as it's large enough to serve educational purposes. It even shows stars that are 1,000 times too faint to be seen by the human eye, so this is a Milky Way like you've never seen.

Oh right... I know why I wasn't invited to this wedding. Never mind. Anyway, weddings are always lovely events, lesbian weddings doubly so and lesbian gamer geek weddings quintupally so. Anli and Laura are from New South Wales, Australia, and when they decided to tie the knot, they decided to do so in true geek fashion, with a companion cube cake and their rings displayed on a Nintendo DS. I didn't have a wedding myself. Me and the mrs just went to the JoP and then took some LSD. That was a good time. But if I had had a wedding, it would be exactly like this.

This photo was taken by the Mars Global Surveyor on May 22, 2003. Every so often the planets align so that both Jupiter, Earth and the moon can all be captured in one wide angle breathtaking shot. Below is the configuration of the planets when the photo was taken. Via: Gearfuse

God damn iPhone app developers of the world-- you're just trying to eventually get me to go down to the Apple store and pony up an enormous deposit (because my credit is teh sux) for an iPhone, aren't you? Every day, there's some new awesome iPhone app, and today it's Photoshop on the iPhone.

Deep in the Carpathian Mountains live a tribe of 150 warrior women that call themselves the Asgarda. They train themselves in martial arts and the ways of medieval weaponry and idolize Yulia Tymoshenko, the icon of the Orange Revolution and leader of the Ukrainian Fatherland party.

Faye Reagan, the gorgeous freckled redhead that normally makes a healthy living being photographed and videoed doing some really, really kinky things on the internet has apparently stepped into the world of mainstream modeling, starting with American Apparel. You can see the whole (possibly NSFW) slideshow here at American Apparel and you can see other hot models wearing the same bodysuit here.

Last month, a riot at the California Institution for Men in Chino shut down part of the prison and injured about 175 inmates, some critically. The riot broke out last month and raged for four hours before guards could bring it under control. It is believed that the riot was sparked by racial tension amongst the 5,900 inmates. Yowch. Via: DJ Mick