From the Register:

Here's the scenario: you're in Oz's fine city of Sydney and you need to get from the Shelbourne Hotel at 200 Sussex Street to Google's headquarters across the road at 201 Sussex Street. Naturally, this being a potentially complex manoeuvre, it's probably best to consult Google Maps Australia to get the optimum route.

However, if you thought that the best way to cross a street is proceed in a straight line from one pavement to the other, think again. ...

The Google route took 10.4 kilometres to navigate.

Google estimates its journey time at 18 minutes, while the The Sydney Morning Herald reckons the ambulatory straight-line alternative as a "30-step, 30-second trip".

We should note at this point that Google Maps Australia has only been up and running since Tuesday, so we're inclined to cut it some slack on this one. Until, that is, it recommends that the best way from Sydney to Perth is via Tasmania - a suggestion which would, of course, require the use of the legendary Oz flying car.

Richard Branson, billionaire and irrepressible self-promoter, has offered a US$25 million to any scientist who can come up with a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

From the Feb. 8 Guardian:

The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.

The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.

Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"

It's not enough to worship the Earth. People must organize to force governments to make the regulatory changes necessary to fight climate change, argues David Cox in the Guardian.

The Bush administration is planning tests of some new equipment designed to detect a dirty bomb destined for New York City. Some critics think the plan is goofy.

Independent journalist Josh Wolf has become the longest incarcerated journalist in U.S. history. As of Thursday, he had served 171 days in jail.

He refuses to hand over footage he shot in July 2005 of a San Francisco globalization protest to a grand jury.