Have you heard the news that the U.S. Mint is planning a series of one-dollar coins depicting each and every one of our deceased presidents?

The mint hopes the presidents will succeed where Susan B. Anthony and then Sacagawea failed. Each year starting in 2007, it will release four presidential coins, beginning next year with George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The mint intends that the first coin should be available by next President’s Day.

I dabble a little at coin collecting — like a good trend-follower, I jumped on that state quarter bandwagon a few years back — and I personally like the idea of replacing the one-dollar bill with more durable coins. However, if the suits running the Mint really think this idea is going to be the one “to wean Americans off the dollar bill and onto dollar coins,” I’ve got a whole jar full of Sacagaweas they can have as a gift. People are set in their ways. The only way we’re ever going to get folks to make the switch to coins is if the government just stops issuing the bills. I read somewhere that the one-dollar bill has lifespan of only about eighteen months, so within two years, more or less, of a hypothetical discontinuation of dollar bills, all that will be available will be the coins. Voila, we’re weaned.

Of course, there is the problem of every vending machine in the country needing to be reconfigured. And then there’s the matter of a whole lot of presidents not really deserving their own coin. While I’m sure the Reagan fans will be thrilled that their boy finally gets his due, does anyone really want a Richard Nixon dollar? Or a Woodrow Wilson or Ulysses S. Grant, neither of whom is exactly held in high esteem by history? No, I think this particular scheme could’ve used some more work…

One of my stranger interests — fueled, no doubt, by seeing Highlander and various Hollywood swashbucklers in my younger days — is swords. I love a well-choreographed swordfighting scene, and the weapons themselves are often (though not always) beautiful pieces of craftsmanship that verge on genuine art. (I’m talking about actual historical swords now, not the flimsy “decorator” models you can buy for 50 bucks at the state fair.)

If you start to explore the history of swordmaking, it doesn’t take long before you run across a mention of Damascus steel. Blades made of this substance could supposedly do things you routinely see in movies but which seem too far-fetched to happen in real life, such as cutting a piece of silk in mid-air, or slicing through other, lesser swords or even stone without losing their edge. The knowledge to make true Damascus swords was lost centuries ago, and today their rumored abilities have the air of legend about them. Like all good legends, they make for good stories, but they’re pretty hard to believe in the bright sunshine of everyday life.

Except some researchers think they may have figured out the truth behind the legends, and that truth has a surprisingly 21st Century quality to it. According to an article over at National Geographic.com, German researchers have discovered bundles of carbon nanotubes and nanowires in a Damascus blade made in the 17th Century. These tiny molecular structures are known to be immensely resilient; the scientists believe that layers of them in a blade with softer steel in between results in a unique combination of strength and flexibility. In other words, the stories about Damascus swords could be true.

There are skeptics, of course, who believe that the nanostructures are probably not unusual in well-made blades, and that modern steels far outperform the ancient Damascus metal. It’s an interesting finding, nevertheless; I’ve heard of nanotubes, of course, but I’ve been under the impression that they were entirely synthetic and only recently created. Maybe those ancient craftsmen knew more than we give them credit for, eh?

Brian Greenberg is linking to an article that notes yet more promising results from stem-cell research:

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Wired.com is reporting that scientists at Johns Hopkins have had encouraging results in an experiment involving stem cells and rats stricken with ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which is a degenerative neurological condition. The scientists injected stem cells into the spinal cords of the rats; not only did the stem cells develop into functional nerves that linked to the rats’ existing nervous system, but the new cells also resisted the disease until the rats died.

You may recall that I’ve had some first-hand experience with this disease. I’m realistic enough to know that we’re still a long way from any kind of stem-cell therapy for ALS, let alone a cure, but this is nonetheless a very, very welcome development. I’d like nothing better than to see this shit eradicated in my lifetime…

You’re looking at one of the most awesome photographs I think I’ve ever seen… that big mass of thingies that look like titanium ping-pong balls (and which reminds me of the starship Fesarius from that old episode of Star Trek) is the tip of a tungsten needle, supposedly the sharpest object made by man, under extreme magnification. So extreme, in fact, that each of those little ping-pong balls is in fact an individual atom. That’s right, this is a photograph of freakin’ atoms. I find that simply astounding… almost as astounding as the fact that the technology to take these photographs has been around since 1951. Isn’t science amazing, kids?

The photo originated here; details of the technique used to take the photo are here.

If WMD-shaped computers don’t make your pulse race, how about tales of lost airplanes pulled from watery graves?

The photo above shows the remains of a vintage B-25 bomber, one of those lumbering old birds that I love so much, recovered from South Carolina’s Lake Murray. More photos can be found here. A little googling reveals that there was an Army Air Corps training base near Lake Murray during the war, and several of the lake’s small islands were used for target practice. B-25s saw a lot of action during World War II (most famously in Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo shortly after Pearl Harbor); several of them apparently ended up on the bottom of Lake Murray due to training accidents, although the exact number is disputed. This particular aircraft was recovered in September of last year.

Here is a page that provides a good overview of the Tokyo raid, B-25s over Lake Murray, and the salvage of this particular plane. From this page, you can go to a detailed news article on the salvage, and here is another, more extensive collection of photos.

In this day and age, when there are no blank spaces left on our maps and it seems like everything of interest has already been discovered, invented, or marketed, it thrills me to know that there are still treasures like this waiting to be found and people who want to go looking…

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the weekend’s headlines: the last American survivor of Titanic has died at the age of 99.
Lillian Gertrud Asplund was five when the great ship went down; she lost her father and three brothers in the disaster, while her mother and a fourth brother made it into the lifeboat with her. Curiously for a woman of her generation, she never married, and, unlike other survivors, she rarely spoke about what happened on that cold night in the Atlantic.

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