They could be the world’s smelliest magnets. Grazing cows tend to face the North and South Poles, claims a new study of 308 herds made using Google Earth satellite photos.

The ungulate’s orientation suggests that they, like migratory birds, sea turtles and monarch butterflies, tune into Earth’s magnetic fields, says Hynek Burda, a biologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Even the greenest of cowboys knows that cattle in a herd tend to align themselves in the same general direction, and researchers have argued that’s because the animals are basking in the sun or clumping together to stay warm. Yet in the 10,000 years since humans domesticated cattle, their geomagnetic orientation has gone unnoticed, or at least unrecorded, Berda says.

I’ve been trying to reconcile the App Store with my beliefs on “how things should be” ever since the SDK was announced. After all this time, I still can’t make it all line up. I can’t question that it’s probably the best mobile application distribution method yet created, but every time I use it, a little piece of my soul dies. And we don’t even have anything for sale on there yet.

This was insane; the thunder was by far the loudest I’ve ever heard. Props to Jason for snagging these pics.

Wearing a red dress and pigtails, Lin Miaoke charmed a worldwide audience with a rendition of “Ode to the Motherland”. But the singer was Yang Peiyi, who was not allowed to appear because she is not as “flawless” as nine-year-old Lin.

Good stuff in the comment section too; some funny, some informative. Had to double-check the URL - yes, it is actually slashdot. Hmm… I wonder if all the clutter commenters have moved over to digg, so now slashdot is good again?

Actually, it’s surprising that it made it onto the store in the first place. I think that was either one of two things: a slip-up in Apple’s review process (which would be a bad sign) or (more likely) a PR move. The PR move plays out like this: Unless they…

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Testing to make sure my Delicious to blog feed is still working with the new Delicious release by sharing this story about the…