The largest known volcanic eruption in human history, 74,000 years ago, was at Mount Toba in northern Sumatra.   Researchers believed this cloud of millions of metric tons of volcanic ash and sulfur set off a volcanic winter which included a thousand years of cold climate and perhaps a human genetic 'bottleneck' which may have reduced our species to just a few thousand mating pairs.

Other hypotheses have believed it may have been other volcanoes and they were even responsible for the demise of neanderthals.   

Hypocrisy or irony? Attorneys for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have argued his address should not be disclosed because of privacy concern, an odd sentiment from a fellow who argues that 'there is no proof' anyone has been or could be killed because he disclosed their names in sensitive military documents regarding Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's often the case that when the situation is personal, feelings change.

District Judge Howard Riddle of the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court was having none of it, though, and Assange's mansion whereabouts were disclosed to the court.

Here is the pic from the Daily Mail:

Yesterday, William Trubridge did something we might think is insane and many thought impossible - a dive of 100 meters on a single breath and without assistance at Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas.

That's right, he held his breath and went straight down - no fins, no weights, no airbag back up and a depth of three times what is considered safe.

Madness.   You can't even see the surface at that depth so you are running out of air but you have to know how to get there fast and without creating embolisms in the blood due to rapid decompression.

I confess, I haven't played World of Warcraft, though I did enjoy Warcraft and Warcraft II.   Persistent online games can be tough to find time for when you have a career but Blizzard has the best business model ever - they charge you for the game and they charge you to play it and for that they have my respect.   Yayyy capitalism.

Others don't seem to mind having to buy a game you can't play without a monthly fee , since Blizzard is claiming its World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion sold-through more than 3.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of release.

Art detectives took a look at the "Mona Lisa" using magnification techniques not available to Leonardo da Vinci himself and say they have found,  hidden in her pupils, tiny letters and numbers.

And they were placed there by da Vinci, they say.

Said Silvano Vinceti, president of Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage

The downfall of WikiLeaks, aside from the eccentric personality of its leader, is that it lost its way, increasingly focusing on the US and ignoring the 140 actual dictatorships in the world where dissidents are risking their lives to get information out.

Former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg feels there is a place for a disclosure group not bent on attacking one country and so is launching OpenLeaks.    It will also be different in that it isn't about attention for the founder, instead being solely a platform for submitting the data.  The actual publication will be handled by others.

Sure, this isn't science but neither is The Onion and we link to things from there also - hey, the entire concept of a Cool Links section is to link to things outside science without becoming one of the kookier supposed science blogs groups that mainly ridicule religious people and bash Republicans.

December's total lunar eclipse is the only total eclipse of the moon of this year and in the Western Hemisphere it will begin on Dec. 21 at 12:29 a.m. EST (9:29 p.m. PST on Dec. 20) as the moon begins to enter Earth's penumbral shadow.    

Skywatchers won't notice any changes in the moon's appearance until about 45 minutes later when shading will become evident on the upper left portion of the moon's disk.   

The 72 minutes of the total lunar eclipse will be visible from North and South America, northern and western Europe, and northeast Asia, including Korea and much of Japan. Totality will also be visible from the North Island of New Zealand and Hawaii. 

Own a company in Venezuela?  If you are one of the few successful companies left that hasn't been nationalized, you won't be much longer because they are getting too much rain.

The recent rains have left 70,000 people homeless, mostly in the coastal area where millions live in hillside shantytowns and have had mudslides ruin homes.

Wait, isn't Venezuela an OPEC nation?   And rich as all get out?  Indeed they are, so it seems odd that Chavez blames other capitalists - the ones making him rich - for rain yet doesn't spend any money to get his people out of cardboard boxes.