1178: Just after sunset, according to the English monk and chronicler Gervase of Canterbury, five monks watch the moon explode into flames.

Gervase said the observers were looking at a new crescent moon when the upper part "suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out … fire, hot coals and sparks…. The body of the moon, which was below, writhed … throbbed like a wounded snake."

Since the timing appears to have been about right, what they may have seen -- according to at least one astronomer -- was the asteroid impact that led to the creation of the lunar crater Giordano Bruno. Others doubt this theory, because there is no historical record of the subsequent meteor shower that would have been visible following a collision of this kind.

What the monks may have actually seen, the current thinking goes, was the explosion of a meteor that, from their vantage point, was passing in front of the moon.

The crater, incidentally, was named for the Italian philosopher, priest and cosmologist Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake for heresy in 1600, during the Roman Inquisition. Bruno is considered an early martyr for science, perhaps the first. The crater named for him measures roughly 14 miles wide and is located on the far side of the moon.

Gervase -- who was ordained by Thomas à Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170 -- is remembered mainly for his Chronica, an ecclesiastical history of Canterbury. Gervase died in 1205.

Source: Various

Cookbooks are a lot like Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games. They contain seemingly rigid rules that, in practice, require a certain amount of adaptation for your own tastes.

So how come cooking gets its own TV channel and role-playing games don't even get a show on G4? Maybe the population at large doesn't want to pretend to be a half-elf. Maybe RPGs take more imagination than most people have.

Download audio files and subscribe to the Alt Text podcast.

However, it just might have something to do with the role-playing community. If geeks talked about cookbooks the way they talk about RPG books, the results would not be pretty:

Posted: 12:15 a.m. by LordOrcus I'm so mad that there's a new edition of The Better Joy Cookbook out. Thanks for making my old copy obsolete, you greedy hacks! For five years now, my friends have been coming over for my eggplant Parmesan, and now I'm never going to be able serve it again unless I shell out 35 bucks for the latest version.

Posted: 12:42 a.m. by Kathraxis Hey, I have a question! When you preheat the oven, can you start it before you measure out the ingredients, or do you have to do it afterward? Please answer quickly, my friends and I have been arguing about it for four hours and we're getting pretty hungry.

Posted: 12:48 a.m. by Goku1440 I found an awesome loophole! On page 242 it says "Add oregano to taste!" It doesn't say how much oregano, or what sort of taste! You can add as much oregano as you want! I'm going to make my friends eat infinite oregano and they'll have to do it because the recipe says so!

Posted: 1:02 a.m. by barrybarrybarry I can't believe I spent 35 dollars on a cookbook that doesn't have a recipe for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When I buy a cookbook, I expect it to tell me how to cook. And don't tell me to just make a PBJ myself, I'm not some sort of hippy artist pretentious "freeform cook."

Posted: 1:08 a.m. by jvmkanelly Where are the recipes for chatting with friends while cooking? Where are the recipes for conversation over the meal? When I throw a dinner party, I want it to be a PARTY. I guess the idiots who use the Better Joy Cookbook just cook and eat in stony silence, never saying a word or even looking each other in the eye.

Posted: 1:23 a.m. by LordOrcus Hey, guess what? They're coming out with The Better Joy Book of Hors D'oeuvres. It just goes to show that the publishers are a bunch of corporate greedheads who care more about money than they do about cooking. Is it too much to ask for a single cookbook that contains all possible recipes?

Posted: 1:48 a.m. by specsheet Hey, everyone. I can tell just by reading the recipe that if you prepare eggs benedict as written, the sauce will separate. My mom always said the other kids made fun of me because they were jealous of my intelligence, so I must be right. Everyone who's saying that they followed the recipe and it came out perfect is either lying, or loves greasy separated hollandaise sauce.

Posted: 1:52 a.m. by IAmEd As I have pointed out MANY TIMES, several of these recipes contain raisins, and I, like most people, am ALLERGIC to raisins! And before you tell me to substitute dried cranberries, I will reiterate that I am discussing the recipes AS WRITTEN. I do not appreciate your ATTACKING ME with helpful suggestions!

Posted: 2:12 a.m. by Herodotus I just have to laugh at the recipe for Beef Wellington. In Wellington's day, ovens didn't have temperature settings! And pate de foie gras certainly didn't come in cans. It's like the authors didn't even care about replicating authentic early 19th century cooking techniques!

Posted: 2:17 a.m. by LordOrcus I have read the new Better Joy Cookbook and I am devastated to my very core. Their macaroni and cheese recipe, the very macaroni and cheese I've been making since I was in college, has been ravaged and disfigured and left bleeding on the page. Where once it contained only cheddar cheese, now the recipe calls for a mix of cheddar and Colby. It may contain macaroni, and it may contain cheese, but it is not macaroni and cheese. This is a slap in the face and a knife in the gut. You have lost me, Better Joy Cookbook. I would bid you goodbye, but I wish you nothing but the pain and rage you have delivered unto me.

- - -

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to go by the Secret Service code name "Infinite Oregano."

Global warming. Faltering economies. Dwindling resources. Mankind has finally set in motion environmental, political and social policies that will surely destroy the world as we know it.

Not everyone will fall. Those who survive will roam the scorched wasteland to fend for themselves against the predatory undead while scavenging what they can to survive. The end of days is at hand, and the only question is this: What will you drive when it all comes tumbling down?

Click through our reader submissions to see your best bet for survival.

Left:

Toyota FJ40

The FJ is Toyota's answer to the Jeep CJ, and flame wars between fanboys of the two vehicles will continue long after the apocalypse begins. The consensus is the Toyota will take more abuse -- a big plus when roaming the desolation -- but it's harder to fix when something goes sideways. Fortunately, it's a Toyota, so you'll break before it will.

Intimidating mass to frighten zombies? Check. Absurd ground clearance to crush your foes? Check. Room for several crates of black-market MREs and barrels of pilfered fuel? Check. When it comes to planning for the apocalypse, those Germans know their stuff. But this Benz-built beast gets a paltry 13 mpg, so you're going to spend a lot of time scavenging fuel.

The Ural Patrol has two-wheel drive, it climbs like a goat and damn near everything on it can be repaired with a hammer, a screwdriver and duct tape. If it was good enough for the Russian armies, it's good enough for post-apocalyptic road warriors.

Roam the wastelands in style! The Concept T has a heads-up display to keep you focused on the zombie horde ahead, the ground clearance to handle those who don't get out of the way and a stop speed of 140 to escape the inevitable attack. The challenge will be getting one -- you'll have to break into the smoldering remains of VW's HQ to snag it.

The Dingo will haul 3.5 tons of looted bounty; it's more heavily armored than a bank vault and it comes with your choice of a 7.62mm machine gun or a 40mm grenade launcher. As if that weren't sweet enough, it's got air conditioning! Global warming? What global warming?

Go ahead and laugh. Unicycles aren't very fast and you can't carry much, but they're cheap, they're reliable and you won't have to scavenge fuel. What's more, with both hands free you'll have no trouble firing your rocket-propelled grenade.

Ubiquity is a desirable quality in an Apocalypsemobile, and Jeeps are everywhere. What's more, their questionable reliability means abandoned Chrysler dealerships will have tons of parts. The closest that most Jeep-owning poseurs come to off-roading is parking on the grass -- so let the zombies fight for the new ones while you hit the local frat house and score a gently used model that's probably never even seen dirt.

"Last of the V8 Interceptors, eh?" Not everyone is lucky enough to be an Aussie ex-cop with access to a garage containing one of these, but if you're handy with the steel you might be able to smoke the guy who is. This down under Ford Falcon-based muscle car, complete with hood-popping blower, is not exactly easy on the fuel, but if you're rolling in the original Apocalypsemobile, you've probably got what it takes to score a few gallons from anyone in the wasteland.

Unfriendly survivors trying to keep you out of their water source? No problem: They're going to have to do a little better than that jerry-rigged wall of salvaged timber and corrugated steel if they want to keep you out. When you absolutely, positively need to kill everything between here and the horizon, it's tough to beat the Stryker. If you want one, you might start in Iraq. Most of these eight-wheelers are serving over there.

The VW Beetle is the Swiss Army knife and Timex watch of cars -- you can do anything with it and no amount of abuse will kill it. When Armageddon comes and the last man falls, the only thing left will be the cockroaches and the Beetles.

These are tough times for any industry that burns a lot of fossil fuel or emits a lot of carbon dioxide, and the air travel business does both. The airlines never gave it much thought before, but with sky-high oil prices and mounting concern about global warming threatening not just their bottom line, but their existence, they're getting serious about reducing the industry's carbon footprint.

"They’re definitely in bad shape," says John Scholle, an economist with Global Insight. "And going forward, things look bleak."

It is against this backdrop that executives from the U.S. commercial aviation industry gather later this week in Washington D.C. to plot a new course.

The Air Transport World Eco-Aviation conference marks the first time the industry has come together on such a large scale to talk about the environment. The conference underscores the severity of the issues facing commercial aviation and the need to begin addressing them collectively and quickly.

With airline passenger growth rates and aircraft emissions expected to double by 2020 and 2030, respectively, time is of the essence.

Rising fuel prices have airlines around the world hemorrhaging money, and losses could hit $6.1 billion this year. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are threatening to crack down on emissions. And environmentalists are lining up against an industry that, like the automakers before it, has long considered environmental responsibility an afterthought.

Commercial aviation has seen tough times before, experts say, but never before has the challenge been so great and the prospects so grim.

Topping the conference agenda is determining how big a role government should play in regulating aviation-related emissions. This is an issue of mounting importance now that the European Union says airlines must join its carbon trading program and with environmentalists petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate aircraft emissions. It is, they say, the only way to get the airlines to clean up their act.

"Market mechanisms for cutting pollution won't work," says Danielle Fugere of Friends of the Earth, the group that filed the petition.

The airline industry disagrees, of course, and says it has increased fuel efficiency 110 percent since 1978. It also claims to have reduced emissions 4 percent between 2000 and 2006, despite a 12 percent increase in passengers and a 22 percent climb in cargo. "Airlines are already motivated to reduce fuel burn and the resulting greenhouse gases as much as possible," says Nancy Young, vice president of environmental affairs for the Air Transport Association.

Much of that progress has come by replacing outdated planes with more fuel-efficient models. The industry has long counted on technology to reduce fuel consumption and says advancements in engine designs, composite materials and airframe construction will make tomorrow's airliners leaner and greener. "Less weight equals less power," says Ernest Arvi, CEO of aviation consultancy The Arvi Group. “Less power equals less fuel, and less fuel equals less pollution.�

Perhaps the biggest example of the trend is Boeing's much-delayed 787 Dreamliner, which uses composite construction to produce an aircraft the company says is 20 percent more fuel efficient and produces 20 percent fewer emissions than similarly sized aircraft. Pratt & Whitney promises similar performance improvements from its geared turbofan jet engine.

But even the most fuel-efficient airplane relies on fossil fuel, an increasingly expensive commodity. Jet fuel recently topped $150 a barrel, a price for which no airline has a business plan. That's got them pushing hard to develop biofuels. Virgin Atlantic recently made a test flight of a Boeing 747 fueled by a mixture of kerosene and biofuel derived from coconut and babassu oil. But the emphasis is on algae, led by Boeing's recent commitment to the alt fuel and efforts by JetBlue and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to turn pond scum into fuel.

Christopher Surgenor, editor of GreenAirOnline, says algal fuel is the most promising alternative because "It has the right properties for a jet fuel and can be produced in comparatively large quantities." But others say it's too early in the game to pick a winner, and Arvi warns that narrowing the research to one field "is self-defeating. It stifles innovation."

For all the advancements in engines and airframes, the system we use for moving all those planes around is stuck in the 1940s. Airlines say replacing the radar-based air traffic control infrastructure with a satellite system would reduce fuel consumption and cut emissions by 10 to 15 percent while making the business of getting planes in and out of airports more efficient. Adopting a more efficient means of approaching airports -- called "continuous descent approach" -- would further cut fuel consumption and emissions while also reducing noise.

As promising as these ideas appear, don't look for them at your local airport anytime soon. "Next generation aircraft will begin to arrive in two to three years, but modernized air traffic control is at least a decade away," says Scholle, the analyst from Global Insight. He's even less optimistic about alt fuels. The economics needed to make it work just aren't there. "We’re at least five years away from alt-fuels being anything but a publicity stunt," he says.

And that is exactly what critics call the commercial aviation industry's push to clean up its act -- a publicity stunt. "The only reason they’re having this thing is so it looks like they care. The industry is positioning itself to look like it's addressing environmental issues, so the government doesn’t do it for them," aviation consultant Mike Boyd says of the upcoming conference. Critics said the same thing when Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Atlantic, hailed his company's experiments with biofuels.

But the industry and its defenders say there's more than green washing going on here, and to suggest otherwise is both cynical and shortsighted. "Those of us working in aviation are no different than anyone else," Arvi says. "We care about the environment and we want a clean planet. We just don't want the industry to get ruined in the process."

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Is reading someone's genetic code the same thing as practicing medicine? That issue has always loomed over the nascent direct-to-consumer genetic-testing industry, which includes such well-known names as 23andme, Navigenics, and DeCodeMe.

It has become very real now that California public-health officials have ordered 13 online companies to immediately stop offering their services in that state.

The companies offer genetic tests that look for DNA mutations associated with a higher risk of developing heart trouble, dementia, or other maladies. Some critics have said that the science behind some of these tests is relatively new and may be incomplete.

Others say the tests are dangerous because they can identify risk factors for some conditions that have no treatment, such as Alzheimer's disease.

The California Department of Public Health contends the services violate medical-testing rules that require a physician's involvement and proof that tests produce a valid medical result.

The real issue, however, may be as much about turf and how society will react to this new technology as patient safety.

Companies offering the tests have made a point of sidestepping doctors, insisting that consumers have a right to know the information coded in their genes. They also have said that the results they deliver are informational, not diagnostic.

Bypassing traditional medical outlets is an important issue for these companies, since much of the medical establishment hasn't yet embraced widespread genetic testing. Traditional health-care providers tend to be skeptical of the usefulness of the results.

That skepticism would not bode well for a business model that depends on them to be the gatekeepers for ordering these tests. Requiring a doctor's approval also seems overly paternalistic to many believers of the Web 2.0 ethos of free access to personal information.

In the past, the state public-health department has laid out five criteria for direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies:

Is there a California licensed physician involved?

Are tests being authorized by a California licensed physician?

Does testing include pre- and post-test counseling?

Are tests being conducted at CLIA Certified [federally approved] labs?

Are the tests validated?

The answers to these questions vary by company, and some of the questions are being debated as to exactly what they mean.

All three of the biggest providers—23andme, Navigenics, and DeCodeMe—conduct their tests in labs that have been federally certified, for instance, but do not offer counseling. One, Navigenics, says it uses doctors to process orders.

The question of what is meant by a "validated" test is also open to debate. The tests are all "valid" in that they usually provide accurate information about one's genetic makeup—that is, whether one has a particular base (adenine, cytosine, guanine, or thymine) at a particular spot in their genetic code.

But most of the tests have not yet been through rigorous testing with human trials to confirm their accuracy and validity as predictors of risk factors for disease.

California's move comes several weeks after its health department said it was investigating consumer complaints against online-testing sites. Karen Nickel, chief of laboratory field services for the California Department of Health, recently told Forbes: "The tests have not been validated for clinical utility and accuracy, and they are scaring a lot of people to death."

New York State has also written to several online genetic-testing firms warning them they are not in compliance with similar laws in that state. The companies have suspended operations there as they hold discussions with authorities.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services plans to hold hearings in Washington next month to investigate online genetic testing. The hearings could lead to federal regulations.

As society sorts through the promise of this technology, doctors, hospitals, and other powerful economic and political stakeholders are likely to join the debate. Public-health bureaucracies also will continue to weigh in if they feel that these tests are a danger to the public.

Eventually, the stakeholders will come together, as they should, to forge a new mandate. What exactly this new DNA regime will look like will depend on all parties working together to insure what I believe should be three criteria for genome-wide genetic testing:

Individuals have freedom of access to their personal genetic data.

A system of trials and approvals be implemented that insure the validity of genetic tests and risk factors.

Doctors and other experts have a vital role in the analysis of disease-oriented information and should use it as part of an overall diagnosis for a patient's health.

Balance is the key here, as in so many debates about markets. Overregulation can squelch innovation; under-regulation may lead to commercial abuse, consumer confusion, and distrust of these tests.

Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our summer photo contest, we here at the Photo Department couldn't stand by and let some of our faves fall by the wayside. The following are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.

Our next bimonthly photo contest is squares. Show us your best photographic ode to this classic shape. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

Golden Summer
Submitted by nuc

Photographer's comment:
"summer @ crete" :

Jumping Into a Seapool -- Sydney, Australia
Submitted by John Murray

Photographer's comment:
"jumping into a sea pool in Sydney, Australia" :

Swim & Run, Rest & Sleep
Submitted by S Sova

Photographer's comment:
"A girl is resting on a dock by a lake after a long day of swimming and playing." :

No Boat
Submitted by Christoph Vandewiele

Photographer's comment:
"Taken with a Canon 30D Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/400) Aperture: f/10 Focal Length: 17 mm ISO Speed: 400 Exposure Bias: 0/3 EV Flash: Flash did not fire"

Telephone Lines
Submitted by Thomas

Photographer's comment:
"Telephone lines on a summer’s evening." :

Waiting for the Return
Submitted by Wesley Furgiuele

Photographer's comment:
"Chasing the waves back to the ocean, and running from them in turn." :

Southern California Backyard Weenie Roast
Submitted by Madistella

Photographer's comment:
"Taken directly before I packed my belongings" :

St. Louis Lightning
Submitted by Justin

Photographer's comment:
"Canon 30d sigma 10-20 bulb exposure (not sure how long) This picture was taken from inside a friend's garage. It was quite a show. :

Me and Max
Submitted by Alex

Photographer's comment:
"Me and max." :

Post Summer Showers
Submitted by Seth Binsted

Photographer's comment:
"The sun illuminating through after an intense summer shower."

Classes are ending, vacation plans are depleting offices around the country and attention spans are evaporating in the sun. It's summer once again, and in case you forgot why you were so stoked on it last year, our readers have chosen 10 photos to remind you. Over the past two weeks of voting we've received many truly excellent submissions, with these 10 superb photos gaining top ranking among voters. Andrew Brooks won the contest with Sunset Over Wheatfield at left. Mr. Brooks will be receiving a subscription to Wired magazine and a digital picture frame for his desk.

Since we had so many great photos that we think should've received more votes, we've also compiled a Wired.com Editor's Choice Summer Photo Gallery.

Our next twice-monthly photo contest is squares. Show us your best photographic ode to this classic shape. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

Sunset Over Wheatfield
Submitted by Andrew Brooks

Photographer's comment:

"Late summer 2006, in the south of England."

Hurry, We're Almost There!
Submitted by Chumdinger

Photographer's comment:

"Running to our favorite swimming spot on Maui, Hawaii."

Secret Secret Garden
Submitted by Eric Cabahug

Photographer's comment:

"Come inside and let's play."

Summer Fishing
Submitted by Matt H

Photographer's comment:

"A net fisherman at Majuro in the Marshall Islands ending the day with the sun setting across the lagoon."

Playing in the Ocean
Submitted by Jacob Maentz

Photographer's comment:

"Two children playing in the water at sunset."

Watering the Dog
Submitted by CM

Photographer's comment:

"Boy feeding the dog some water."

The Best of Nightmares
Submitted by Hanna Eliasson

Photographer's comment:

"Took this one shortly after seeing Terry Gilliam's fantastic movie Tideland and becoming very inspired by the surrealistic yet rural moods of it. (I also took the title from the movie.) The scene is just outside of Grimeton in Swedish landscape Halland."

The Serve
Submitted by Aaron Young

Photographer's comment:

"Volleyball in Newport Beach, California."

Kenyan Sunset
Submitted by Mat Hayward

Photographer's comment:

"The best summer I ever had ...."

Cool. Down.
Submitted by Bosh

Photographer's comment:

"A description is required, but none will be provided :)"

1867: British surgeon Joseph Lister performs the first surgery under antiseptic conditions. Death rates would plummet, but you should still be thankful you were born in the 20th century and not the 19th.

Lister was raised in a Quaker family and attended University College, London, because Britain's other universities required an oath of loyalty to the queen and the Church of England. While an assistant surgeon at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in Scotland, he befriended his boss and married the boss's daughter, Agnes Syme. As the daughter and wife of surgeons, she knew plenty about the subject and became a lifelong associate in her husband's research.

Surgery at the time was a pretty dangerous affair. Anesthesia had been introduced in the preceding decades, so patients were more comfortable during their operations and amputations. But post-surgical death rates ran 40 to 50 percent because of infection from "hospitalism," or "hospital disease," infections like septicemia.

Hospitals were notoriously unclean, but scientists were just beginning to make the connection between hygiene and infection. Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis had discovered by 1847 that the simple act of obstetricians washing their hands in a chlorine solution could cut deaths from childbed fever from 10 percent to less than 2 percent.

But revolution, political unrest and hostile opposition from the medical establishment prevented widespread knowledge and adoption of the lifesaving practice. Lister had not heard of Semmelweis.

Lister became surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1861 and immediately tried to do something about the high surgical mortality rate. With gangrene and other festering infections, surgical recovery wards certainly smelled bad enough, but Lister discarded the prevalent notion that "bad air" caused the infections. He theorized that a "pollen-like dust" might be settling in the wounds.

Then he read Louis Pasteur's 1865 report that living microorganisms cause matter to ferment and eventually rot. Lister saw how Pasteur's research connected to his own work. Microbes cause matter to putrefy. Wounds smell of putrefaction. Perhaps keeping the microbes off the wounds could prevent the deadly hospital infections.

Lister had also read how authorities in Carlisle, England, were using carbolic acid (phenol) to treat smelly sewage. That not only reduced the odor but reduced disease among both cattle and humans.

Bingo! If you're a genius. Or maybe just a solid scientist and dedicated physician in the right place at the right time. Lister was clearly the latter and perhaps the former, too.

Why not treat wounds with dilute phenol? Why not clean surgical instruments with dilute phenol? Why not even spray a phenol aerosol into the air of the operating theater?

Lister experimented on amputation patients at his hospital starting in 1865. Meeting with success, he widened the use to the setting of compound fractures, where a bone breaks through the skin with concomitant high risk of infection. By 1867, he performed a full surgical procedure.

Lister reported on his successes in 1867 in letters and two important scientific papers in The Lancet, "On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscesses, Etc., With Observations on the Conditions of Suppuration" and "On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery." His 1867 reports acknowledged both Pasteur and the Carlisle work.

Lister reported that his surgical wards had remained free of sepsis for nine months. Between 1864 and 1866, Lister lost 46 percent of his surgical patients. From 1867 to 1870, he lost "only" 15 percent. By 1877, he'd dropped the death rate to 5 percent.

Lister's antiseptic practices met some resistance at first, but their success argued volumes, and they soon caught on wherever modern medicine was practiced. Queen Victoria made Lister a baronet in 1883 and elevated him to the peerage as Baron Lister of Lyme Regis in 1897. He was also one of the dozen original members of Britain's Order of Merit. Further honors include having both a pathogenic-bacterial genus (Listeria) and an antiseptic mouthwash (Listerine) named after him.

When King Edward VII came down with appendicitis two days before his planned coronation in 1902, the royal doctors consulted Lister before performing surgery. The king survived, and was crowned six weeks later. Edward VII later thanked Lister: "I know that if it had not been for you and your work, I wouldn't be sitting here today."

And perhaps you or I could say the same thing.

Source: Various

Six and a half minutes.

That's how long it took me to create my first kooky, adorable critter using the Creature Creator for Spore, Will Wright's new sim game due out this fall. I started off with a default "body" -- a sort of shapeless lump of virtual plasticine -- and used the mouse to pull and stretch it around a bit. Then I added a head, and spent a few seconds smooshing that back and forth, first trying out a long-nosed look, then crushing it down to a pig-like snout.

A pig! A freaky mutant pig! Hey, I liked that idea.

Within seconds, I'd added a couple of legs to the body, and figured out how to push them downward so they seemed suitably stumpy; then, a couple of hooves and Bambi-like eyes later, I was done. My little virtual pig stumbled around the screen, grunting and oinking while I admired my work.

And like I said, it took only six and a half minutes.

Think for a second about how remarkable this is. When it comes to art and design, I am your Average Joe. I have only rudimentary sketching and visualization skills, and precisely zero experience with CAD software that animators use to craft Pixar-like animals. Yet in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee, I had created a completely awesome-looking 3-D creature.

Spore's Creature Creator, in other words, is doing something quite interesting and unexpected: It's de-skilling 3-D design.

I say de-skilling in the positive sense. What I mean is that Spore is democratizing the art of 3-D design.

We probably shouldn't be surprised by this effect, because videogames have been de-skilling the world for decades now. Games propagate technology stealthily, quietly and gradually taking all sorts of skills that only pros used to possess and spreading them across the population.

Think about the whole concept of using your mouse to navigate files and icons on your computer. A mere few decades ago, this task -- using a physical interface to manipulate a virtual one -- was so opaque and weird that only computer-science pros could grasp it. Then videogames came along and, in barely a few years, trained an entire generation of kids worldwide in eye-hand-machine coordination. Steve Jobs' original Macintosh would have been DOA without videogames; they de-skilled the art of mouse manipulation.

There are dozens of other examples of this. Role-playing games have trained millions of gamers in highly complex resource and inventory control. Basically, they've made screwing around with databases fun. Or think about conducting a big raid in World of Warcraft, where you need to deploy virtual team-management skills and diplomacy worthy of the Cuban missile crisis. Previously, this was the concern of only very high-level employees at multinational corporations -- but now 13-year-old kids are doing it.

Wright is the undisputed reigning master of creating games that contain subterfuge training. Ever wonder how The Sims became the world's top-selling game of all time? It's not because people actually play it. Most longtime Sims fans quickly tire of creating families.

No, what hard-core fans love is The Sims' elegant "house-design" engine -- which they use to painstakingly craft sprawling, monster homes, customized to the level of individual tile patterns they hand-draw in cracked versions of Photoshop. The Sims isn't a game: It's the world's most popular architectural CAD package.

Now Spore is going to do the same thing to the world of 3-D characters and the sort of work regularly produced by Pixar.

In a sense, the word de-skill might be misleading, because in reality two forces are moving in opposite directions. Games increase the skill levels of gamers while, at the same time, showing software makers how to make tools easier to use. With their "play around and see what happens" interfaces, today's DIY creativity software titles -- from GarageBand and Photoshop to Final Cut Pro or even MySpace and Facebook -- are all children of videogame design. Their creators realized that making interfaces fun to use and playful will inspire more people to create things.

Now, let's be clear: I certainly don't believe that Creature Creator, a free trial edition of which will be available for download Tuesday, is going to make someone employable at a 3-D design house. De-skilling doesn't happen that abruptly.

But what Spore will do, very subtly and quietly, is to begin changing the way people interact with 3-D culture. 3-D art will suddenly seem less opaque and more understandable. The next time you go to an animated movie, you'll see the onscreen characters as a series of design decisions. You'll notice the exaggerated length of the legs, or perhaps the way the eyes are set -- because you'll have experience doing this yourself.

And pretty soon you'll find yourself thinking: "Yeah, I could do that."

- - -

Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines. Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection.

A square isn't just four right angles, it's a frame of mind (pun intended). We want you to run with this subject and show us the most interesting squares in your world.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best squares photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us city blocks littered with picture frames -- barn doors and window panes. Wrap us in a quilt and push us across a checkerboard into the heart of New York City. Think outside the box, but show us the box too. Get it? We don't. Show us the way.

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Collapsing banks and constricting credit markets have compelled many newly risk-averse investors to scurry for the sidelines. But not Eric Rosenfeld and his merry band of 50 angel investors in Portland, Oregon.

His Oregon Angel Fund recently raised about $2 million—more than twice as much as it did last year—and is eagerly scouting for promising young tech companies to invest in. "We see more checks being written, more companies being financed," said Rosenfeld, who is also a managing partner of Capybara Ventures, a Portland venture capital fund.

Rosenfeld and his fellow angels—private high net-worth individuals who fund start-ups and small companies—are hardly alone. Despite limits on their ability to cash out their investments—a downturn in initial stock sales, tighter credit at banks, and a decline in mergers and acquisitions—many angels say they are still willing to invest.

The Angel Capital Association recently surveyed 145 angel group leaders to ask whether they believed the number of investments and amount of funding would increase this year; nearly 55 percent of respondents said yes.

Speaking for themselves, association members said the number was even higher. About 81 percent said their group intended to invest in three to nine companies this year, compared with 77.5 percent the year before. A full 12 percent said they planned to make 10 or more investments in 2008, almost double the number in 2007.

What's more, the total being invested by the estimated 258,000 angel investors in the country is growing, albeit at a slower pace. The number grew 1.8 percent, to $26 billion in 2007, according to the Center for Venture Research in Durham, New Hampshire. And the number of entrepreneurial ventures that received funding in 2007 went up 12 percent, to 57,120.

Those figures, of course, were from before the recent credit crunch. There is no data for 2008, but Jeffrey Sohl, director of the Center for Venture Research, said the amount of angel money invested this year should be comparable to 2007.

At the same time, angels are also treading more carefully—asking tougher questions, choosing later-stage companies, or investing smaller amounts. And they're more likely to invest in businesses and industries with track records of success.

Still, becoming an angel remains an attractive alternative for many wealthy investors, particularly because the usual alternative investments, like stocks and bonds, are less welcoming these days. And many angels say that they still see plenty of investing going on.

John May, managing director of the New Vantage Group, a Vienna, Virginia, firm that runs several angel groups, for example, said that deal size at his organizations is the same or bigger than in the past—and members are itching for more opportunities.

Take James Hunt. A member of Active Angel, one of May's groups, Hunt already has stakes in about 12 companies, and plans to invest "less than $100,000" in another five or so companies this year.

Ian Sobieski, managing director of the investment group Band of Angels, in Menlo Park, California, said he generally makes one to two investments a year and expects to do the same in 2008. Band members put money in 12 to 14 new companies in each of the past four years.

In some cases, angels say they're investing because they haven't taken much of a hit or don't have their cash tied up in previous deals. In others, they're looking for alternative places to put their money.

"The stock market isn't that attractive. Real estate isn't that attractive. Bonds aren't that attractive," says Rosenfeld. "Angel investing offers people a different option."

They also tend to take modest positions. Sobieski said that most angels only invest a tiny part of their total portfolio—no more than 5 percent—in new ventures.

Many angels also get a boost from organized angel funds like Rosenfeld's. His two-year-old enterprise pools $25,000 to $50,000 contributions from members and invests in about four companies each year.

Other groups, like Active Angel, also aggregate money from members, but investors are allowed to opt out of investments they don't like.

In either case, there's safety in numbers, since fellow angels help with due diligence on companies and tend to seat one of their own on the board. "I know there are extremely competent investors who are watching out for my interests," says Hunt.

While not new, spreading the risk through pools also encourages more angels to stay in the hunt for the next big thing in parlous times like these. Many, of course, are doing so more cautiously than before. Average total deal size in 2007 dropped to $450,000 from $500,000 in 2006, according to the Center for Venture Research.

They're also most likely to invest in what they consider to be "surefire" areas, including green technology, and Web 2.0 applications like social networking sites.

In addition, safer, established businesses are attracting more interest, especially those run by founders with previous entrepreneurial success.

When angels do look at start-ups, they are raising their standards. Former Google executive David Scacco, for example, invested in 10 firms and said he expects to do about the same in 2008—with a difference. "I'm holding them to a higher bar," he says.

That means considering only businesses with at least a working prototype or, in the case of Web enterprises, those that can show increases in the number of users.

Recently, for example, Scacco said he turned down a suitor with what he considered to be an interesting social networking application, because it wasn't up and running; as recently as last year, Scacco added, he wouldn't have been deterred by the fact the service hadn't launched yet.

Scacco said he also spends more time questioning companies, meeting three or four times with managers over a period of three or four weeks, compared with the two or so get-togethers he held before. And he conducts more of his own market research. It also helps if a business already has a prominent backer. Early this year, Gregg Smith, C.E.O. of Acuity Mobile, a two-year-old company that provides marketing messages on cell phones, closed on a major round of funding.

While he can't reveal the total amount, 25 percent of it came from two angel groups and the rest from Navteq, a Chicago-based digital mapmaker. One angel group made its offer contingent on Navteq's public commitment. The other waited until after the deal was actually signed.

Ultimately, as financing for new ventures from private equity plummets, angels expect to be in an increasingly stronger bargaining position. Angels report asking for such favorable terms as additional equity if certain goals aren't met or more warrants to buy shares at a specified price.

It's not surprising, then, that a majority of angels anticipate that the quantity and quality of deals will increase this year, according to the Angel Capital Association. Says Greg Baszucki, an angel in Portola Valley, California, "If the market goes down, it will be great—a great opportunity."

That is, of course, as long as they choose the right companies.

1884: The first gravity roller coaster designed and built specifically as an amusement ride opens at Coney Island, New York. It is a commercial success and leads to the building of roller coasters all over the world.

LaMarcus Adna Thompson's Coney Island coaster, which, for a nickel ($1.10 in today's money), hurtled passengers down an undulating 600-foot-long track at speeds of up to a blistering 6 mph, would hardly be recognizable to riders of modern-day roller coasters.

Passengers faced sideways, for one thing, and the track was not laid out in a continuous loop. Like the switchback gravity railway used by Pennsylvania coal miners that inspired it, the Coney Island coaster ran point-to-point, with nothing but gravity to provide the propulsion.

The ride began atop a 50-foot-high platform, and when it reached the other end, passengers had to disembark so the cars could be switched over to the return track for the ride back to the starting point.

From Thompson's Coney Island coaster, the technology quickly evolved. Within a year, the original tracks were replaced by an oval course that allowed riders to remain seated from start to finish. The seats on this new coaster, which was known as the Serpentine Railway, faced forward in what became the standard configuration for roller coaster cars the world over.

Thompson reportedly developed his idea from the Mauch Chunk switchback gravity railroad in Pennsylvania, a coal-hauling device that, in 1827, was used to provide thrill rides to the locals when not in use to deliver coal to the town of Mauch Chunk (since renamed Jim Thorpe).

But the origins of the roller coaster go back much further, to 17th-century Russia. The earliest coasters were actually slides, carved from specially constructed ice hills outside St. Petersburg. The first man-made coaster using structural support is believed to have been built on the orders of Catherine the Great in that city's Gardens of Oreinbaum.

Roller coasters were built in other European countries as well, before catching on in the United States.

What we think of as the modern roller coaster appeared soon after Thompson's success at Coney Island. Because entrepreneurs were scrambling to make money, there was a lot of experimentation. and a lot of these rides were just flat-out dangerous.

The classic coaster was built on a wooden frame (and was referred to as a "woodie" in the business). Since all coasters rely on gravity to gain and maintain speed, track layout became all-important. The cars themselves make the initial ascent using a pulley-operated chain.

The world-famous Matterhorn bobsleds at Disneyland, which opened in 1959 almost 75 years to the day after Thompson's coaster, became the first roller coaster to use tubular steel track. This innovation allows designers to incorporate maneuvers like loops and corkscrews into the course.

The Scenic Railway in Melbourne, Australia's Luna Park, built in 1912, is currently the oldest continuously operating roller coaster in the world. Leap-the-Dips, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, is older, but stood idle for 14 years before reopening in 1999.

Source: Various

Film director Alfred Hitchcock often said people go to scary movies for the same reason we ride on roller coasters. We enjoy being scared … more or less safely. And we enjoy anticipating the fright and how we'll respond to it.

So, on the anniversary of the opening of the first gravity-driven amusement-park roller coaster, we offer a small selection of some of the world's finest -- and scariest -- rides. (Be sure to let us know about your own favorite roller coasters in the comments.)

Left: Riders seen on the new Kingda Ka roller coaster, the tallest and fastest coaster on Earth. The ride launches riders from 0 to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds before catapulting them 456 feet into the sky. Kingda Ka opened in 2005 at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.

Photo: Noah K. Murray

The Scenic Railway in Melbourne, Australia's Luna Park, opened in 1912 and is the oldest continually operating roller coaster in the world. It's also one of only two coasters in existence requiring a brakeman to stand in the middle of the train. For these reasons, the American Coaster Enthusiasts club has dubbed it an ACE Coaster Classic.

The Cyclone roller coaster hovers over the beach at Coney Island, New York, in 1978.

Photo: William Coupon/Corbis

The Dragon Khan coaster at the Port Aventura park in Salou, Spain, offers plenty of spins and loops.

Photo: Carlos Lorenzo

Enjoying the bobsled ride at Disneyland are the shah of Iran and Empress Farah (front) and their host Walt Disney with a Disneyland hostess, Donna Jackson. The shah and his wife toured the park as part of a Southern California visit in 1962.

Photo: Bettmann/CORBIS

Vild-Svinet (Wild Boar), at BonBon Land in Holme-Olstrup, Denmark, has an initial 97-degree (beyond vertical) angle of descent.

Photo: Coasters and More

The world's oldest wooden roller coaster, Leap the Dips, can be found at Lakemont Park in Altoona, Pennsylvania. It opened in 1902, but was out of operation from 1986 to 1998.

Photo: Bhakta Dano

The view is pretty good from the Dragon coaster in Hong Kong's Ocean Park.

Photo: Michele Westmorland/Corbis