What's behind this door?

On September 27th on live television a robot will ascend a small 210 ft chamber and use radar and a tiny camera to uncover a mystery that is thousands of years old. In 1993 another robot ascended the 8 inch shaft in the Great Pyramid at Giza and found at the end a stone blocking it's path which became known as the "Gantenbrink Door".

The story of that initial discovery and the ensuing controversy is chronicled by archeologist Robert Bauval who has been following the story on his site.

In the year 2020...

Is this a peak at the future?

The same year, Congress passed the Sarcasm Act, which made it a high crime to ridicule, mock, deprecate, belittle, disrespect, defame, revile, damn with faint praise, or second-guess the president or any of his aides or officers in any way.

Random Joke

Two guys are chatting in the locker room after a workout, and one says to the other "Okay, let me ask you a question. If you could have sex with any woman, living or dead, who would it be?"

The second guy thinks for a moment, and then says "Hmmm. It would have to be Britney Spears, dead."

Tasteless

I feel horrible for finding this funny. (via gammatron)

Failing Poorly

Cryptography guru Bruce Schneier explains why humans are the most important piece of any security system and why our new antiterrorism efforts are unsound. (via ND)

Pushing Tin

Compelling minute by minute story of the how the skies were cleared of aircraft on September 11th. (via Metafilter)

Viking Comics

If you've ever wanted to know the fascinating history of Iceland but don't like things like 'books' and 'words', you can read the Cartoon History of Iceland.

Beware the Old Ones

Tales of the Plush Cthulhu is a slide show that tells the story of what happens one day in Stuffed Animal Land when a new creature appears. (found on Metafilter)

Don't Forget

The Memory Hole uncovers the truth that They try to bury. (found on Metafilter)

Bush sat on a plan to eliminate al-Qaeda for eight months

Time magazine explains why US intelligence failed, why warnings weren't headed, and why plans weren't put into motion. They imply that had Gore taken office, the plans would have been executed.

By last summer, many of those in the know-the spooks, the buttoned-down bureaucrats, the law-enforcement professionals in a dozen countries-were almost frantic with worry that a major terrorist attack against American interests was imminent. It wasn't averted because 2001 saw a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national-security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat.

An aggressive campaign to degrade the terrorist network worldwide-to shut down the conveyor belt of recruits coming out of the Afghan camps, to attack the financial and logistical support on which the hijackers depended-just might have rendered it incapable of carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks. Perhaps some of those who had to approve the operation might have been killed, or the money trail to Florida disrupted. We will never know, because we never tried. This is the secret history of that failure.