What might trail bike riding along the tip of mountain ridges, if it happens, be called? Extreme trail riding?

I’ve not had too much experience with general anaesthetics, except to know one minute I’m in a hospital theatre and then – instantaneously it would seem – in a recovery room. While what happens in between is a complete void as far as I’m concerned, much of the process also elude medical professionals.

But though doctors have been putting people under for more than 150 years, what happens in the brain during general anesthesia is a mystery. Scientists don’t know much about the extent to which these drugs tap into the same brain circuitry we use when we sleep, or how being anesthetized differs from other ways of losing consciousness, such as slipping into a coma following an injury. Are parts of the brain truly shutting off, or do they simply stop communicating with each other? How is being anesthetized different from a state of hypnosis or deep meditation? And what happens in the brain in the transition between consciousness and unconsciousness? “We know we can get you in and out of this safely,” Brown says, “but we still can’t quite tell you how it works.”

Sending cameras attached to weather balloons to the upper limits of Earth’s atmosphere for fun is nothing new, but two seventeen year olds living in Canada, deciding to be a little bit different, added a LEGO figure to their self made space probe.

Having a garage, or dedicated space, to park our car is something most of us take for granted, even if we may be thankful for such a facility. But trying to park a car when we’re effectively competing with other drivers for a space, say at a shopping centre, can say a lot about us.

After 36 years, Shoup’s writings – usually found in obscure journals – can be reduced to a single question: What if the free and abundant parking drivers crave is about the worst thing for the life of cities? That sounds like a prescription for having the door slammed in your face; Shoup knows this too well. Parking makes people nuts. “I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain,” he says. “How to get food, ritual display, territorial dominance – all these things are part of parking, and we’ve assigned it to the most primitive part of the brain that makes snap fight-or-flight decisions. Our mental capacities just bottom out when we talk about parking.”

Might films that have been nominated for an Academy Award this year stand a better chance of winning were their movie posters to more accurately reflect their subject matter?

Update: “Pure art” truthfully sums up The Artist? It sure does.

If diplomacy is doing and saying the nastiest things in the nicest possible ways, then a repertoire of euphemisms is essential for anyone whose intent is to be diplomatic.

Euphemisms range promiscuously, from diplomacy (“the minister is indisposed”, meaning he won’t be coming) to the bedroom (a grande horizontale in France is a notable courtesan). But it is possible to attempt a euphemistic taxonomy. One way to categorise them is ethical. In “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell wrote that obfuscatory political language is designed “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”. Some euphemisms do distort and mislead; but some are motivated by kindness.

Taking photos that bear a strong resemblance to other works may land photographers in hot water, should the outcome of a recent court case in the UK set precedents elsewhere.

The case, heard at the Patents County Court in London on 12 January, could have serious implications for photographers, according to photographic copyright expert Charles Swan, a lawyer at Swan Turton, who said: ‘His honour Judge Birss QC decided that a photograph of a red London bus against a black and white background of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a blank sky, was similar enough to another photograph of the same subject matter to infringe copyright.’

Identical twins can tell the rest of us a lot about ourselves, especially so perhaps identical twins who have been separated at birth but have gone on to live incredibly similar lives.

The story began with the much publicized case of two brothers, both named Jim. Born in Piqua, Ohio, in 1939, Jim Springer and Jim Lewis were put up for adoption as babies and raised by different couples, who happened to give them the same first name. When Jim Springer reconnected with his brother at age 39 in 1979, they uncovered a string of other similarities and coincidences. Both men were six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds. Growing up, they’d both had dogs named Toy and taken family vacations in St. Pete Beach in Florida. As young men, they’d both married women named Linda, and then divorced them. Their second wives were both named Betty.

True, false, or a conspiracy? There’s only one way to find out.

A crowd-sourced collection of photos taken from aeroplanes… in a word, spectacular

And on the subject of high attitude – to be precise, very high attitude – photography, Blue Marble is a composite image of the Earth, made up of many photos taken by the “Suomi NPP” satellite, a few days ago. See the also the full size version (warning: this is massive).