This map tracks actual pirate attacks around the world. Indonesia and bangladesh are the big trouble spots these days.

“The Stanford Racing Team’s autonomous car, Junior, passed a complex driving test Thursday, making it one of the few robots in the world able to deal with the complexities of city traffic. Well, maybe small town traffic.

‘It drives like my grandma,’ exclaimed one bystander, as Junior cautiously pulled up to an intersection, turned on its blinker, waited ten seconds, and then pulled cautiously and jerkily around the curve.

Pathetic for a human — but pretty damn impressive for a completely self-contained, autonomous robot.”

“The US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear-style head to help carry injured soldiers away from the battlefield.”

“Probably not. Both that phrase and the accent that goes with it are strictly Hollywood. They originated with Robert Newton, the actor who played Long John Silver in the movies and on TV through much of the 1950s. Newton was from Dorset, in the Cotswolds district of southwest England, and the regional accent he brought to the movies included a rolled ‘r.’ Though Dorset may well have produced its share of sailors, they were hardly the only pirates out there; most seamen—and especially the outlaws on pirate vessels—were people who struck out from oppressed nations, like Scotland and Ireland, to start over on the high seas.” (Thanks kottke.org!)

“After a thousand years stuck on a dusty library shelf, the oldest copy of Homer’s Iliad is about to go into digital circulation.

A team of scholars traveled to a medieval library in Venice to create an ultra-precise 3-D copy of the ancient manuscript — complete with every wrinkle, rip and imperfection — using a laser scanner mounted on a robot arm.”