Mac Freedom Force, Chess origins, and a real Holodoc

Freedom Force on Mac

Apple has posted a feature article on the game Freedom Force, finally coming to Mac OS X. I always thought this would be a lot of fun.

Chess Origins and a Real Holodoc

Couple of cool items caught my eye in the current issue of Discover Magazine. The first, A Strategic Advance on Europe:

A two-inch-tall ivory chess piece, part of an ancient set, suggests that traders brought the game to Europe at least five centuries earlier than previously thought.

The second, Holodeck Meets Sick Bay:

Physicist David Nolte can peer into the body using nothing but ordinary light. To the eye, skin appears opaque because it scatters almost all incoming light. But roughly one time in a million, a particle of light naturally travels into the skin and back out without scattering. Nolte and his colleagues at Purdue University in Indiana can focus in on those purely reflected photons, revealing an image of what lies beneath.