Vanishing books, a secret passageway make a heist fit for a novel in France: a real-life locked room mystery is finally solved.
When over a thousand priceless books and illuminated manuscripts, some weighing up to five kilograms, began vanishing from a locked room in an eighth century monastery, police were stumped. Investigators worked for nearly two years to catch the thief as the books continued to disappear from the library of the Mont Sainte Odile monastery in the Alsace region of eastern France.
[via BookNotes]
Calendar Converter: a Javascript tool that will convert dates between different calendar systems. [via abuddhas memes]
Weapons of Precise Destruction: on how the armed unmanned warplanes which have been getting a workout in Afghanistan could be turned to assassination.
Saddam Hussein has not been seen publicly for the past year. He did not attend his recent 65th birthday celebration, despite the fact that young girls were dressed as suicide bombers--a sight that he must have hated to miss. But he has good reason to fear the outdoors. A Predator may be lurking there, patiently waiting for its intended prey--him.
[via Red Rock Eater]
Allchin: Disclosure May Endanger U.S.
A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed.
So, Microsoft admits that their code is so buggy that disclosing those bugs could pose a risk to the country. Is writing that code a crime? Is selling it? Is failing to fix it? Is using it in a military context? [via Red Rock Eater]
Ice reservoirs found on Mars: The Mars Odyssey's Gamma Ray Spectrometer has found large quantities of ice beneath the surface of Mars. This isn't the first find of water on Mars (and it seems there may have been photographic evidence as far back as 1980), but the volume found in this discovery could be significant for the possibility of life and the support of future manned exploration.
Inside Venezuela's Failed Coup: a look from April at the two day coup in Venezuela.
The last week witnessed a gigantic military crisis affecting the highest levels of command of the armed forces, which was able to get the president out of Miraflores Palace, put him in a situation where he was prepared to resign, and ready to fly to the largest island of the Antilles [Cuba]. But what seemed to be a lightning strike into the heart of the Fifth Republic went out of control in less than two days, and before the week was over, the roles were reversed.
But the most surprising thing about the entire drama is that, during the 48 hours of high tension among the various factions, there was not a single armed confrontation. Not a single shot was fired. Over the course of these two days about 20 officers played a huge game of chess, a war of persuasion, and the main chessboard was to be found on the fifth floor of the old Ministry of Defense building.
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