Space Pics, Plus Shuttle v Spider!

Bad Astronomy (a site that exposes silly pseudoscience, not promotes it) nominates its Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007. (EDIT -URL fixed!)

Also via Bad Astronomy, an apparently genuine clip from one of the cameras monitoring the recent shuttle launch attempt. Well, the clip is real enough, but I think it's safe to say the soundtrack was added later... (Warning: not for acute arachnophobes.)

Yet more coffee in the keyboard

From lolscience, possibly the worst scientific visual pun ever.

A touch too realistic!

I've been taking advantage of having access to bugshaw's PC whilst she's away to play the copy of Half Life 2 that I bought over a year ago but which our laptop turned out not to be quite up to running. It certainly lives up to the hype, and in one area its realism is almost too effective: it's actually given me vertigo.

Now, I've known people to complain of motion sickness playing some games, although it's not something I've ever suffered from. But there's one section in HL2 where you're climbing through the girders of a massive bridge, buffeted by the wind and with the sea visible far beneath you.

( Screenshot (via Visual Walkthroughs) )

It didn't matter how much I told myself it was all a computer generated simulation; there was part of my brain screaming you're going to fall...