Link: Diet soda actually makes you fat

Two new studies found that diet drinks and artificial sweeteners increase people’s waistlines and increase their risk of diabetes.

Link: Near-Earth asteroid fails to destroy mankind, obliterate all living things

An asteroid “with an estimated girth as large as a garbage truck” zoomed just 7,500 miles away from Earth today, flying over the Atlantic Ocean without incident. In related news, you are still alive. Reuters, NASA JPL.

Link: New Uncontacted Group Confirmed in Brazil

    <img height="438" width="660" src="https://mostlyrealstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/june22d.jpg" />

The Brazilian government has confirmed the existence of a previously unknown group of so-called uncontacted people who have remained isolated from industrial society.
In April, the Brazilian government agency charged with protecting the country’s indigenous tribes took aerial photographs of the group’s Amazon dwellings. The photos were released June 22 by Survival International, an advocacy group for indigenous people.

CHRIS BURDEN: Metropolis II (by GagosianGallery)

A giant HotWheels track with 1000 cars!

Link: Salty geysers of Saturn’s moon Enceladus come from liquid water

We may be able to add another item to the growing list of bodies in our solar system that contain significant amounts of liquid. Jupiter’s moon Europa has long been suspected of harboring a subsurface water ocean, but recent studies have suggested that a large part of the interior of its moon Io is also molten (although that’s molten rock). Further out, Saturn’s moon Titan appears to have a subsurface ocean that allows its surface to move somewhat independently of its core. Now, researchers have found evidence that Saturn’s moon Enceladus needs to be added to this list.

Link: CASSINI MISSION on Vimeo

Images from the Cassini mission put together with music. Gorgeous!

Link: Head of UN copyright agency says fair use is a “negative agenda,” wants to get rid of discussions on rights for blind people and go back to giving privileges to giant companies

Francis Gurry, the Director General of WIPO, the UN agency that creates and oversees global copyright policy, laments the current state of WIPO, saying that the copyright agenda there:

“… tends to be a negative one. It tends to be looking at the exceptions, the limitations, and the other ways of not having intellectual property. I’m very keen to see us coming back with a positive agenda for intellectual property.”

Translation: our job isn’t to figure out how to balance out freedom of speech and access with exclusive rights for authors and investors; more copyright is always good. And the subtext is, “All those public interest groups that have got us looking at rights for blind and disabled people, exemptions for poor countries, rights for educators and archivists, and Creative Commons-style ‘some rights reserved’ issues are distracting us from the real business of WIPO: maximizing copyright’s benefit for a handful of corporate giants.”

Link: New ‘semi-solid’ battery could be new oil, revolutionize energy storage

Link: UN report: “three strikes” Internet laws violate human rights

An official appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council has released a new report on the state of online free speech around the world. In addition to calling attention to long-standing censorship problems in China, Iran, and other oppressive regimes, the report devotes a surprising amount of attention to speech restrictions in the developed world—and it singles out recently enacted “three strikes” laws in France and the United Kingdom that boot users off the Internet for repeated copyright infringement.

Link: Police vultures

German police is training three feathered detectives, appropriately named Sherlock, Miss Marple and Columbo. They will be used to find dead bodies. The article doesn’t say if they can grab a bite on the job.

Link: U.S. used ‘unmitigated gall’ and B.C. court to jail exec

The giant computer company Cisco and U.S. prosecutors deceived Canadian authorities and courts in a massive abuse of process to have a former executive thrown in jail, says a B.C. Supreme Court judge.

The point, said Justice Ronald McKinnon in a stinging decision delivered orally on Tuesday, was to derail a lawsuit launched by the former employee, and involved a series of machinations that would make a normal person “blanch at the audacity of it all.”

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/used+unmitigated+gall+court+jail+exec/4885299/story.html#ixzz1OGkpfU32

Link: Japan pensioners volunteer to cleanup Fukushima.

A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners are volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station.

They say they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young.