Here's why you should never bet against Japanese innovation.

At right, Japanese Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe feeds himself with the assistance of "My Spoon" during a demonstration of healthcare robots in Tokyo on Nov. 10. People with disabilities can operate a joystick with their jaw, hands, or feet to direct My Spoon to their mouth.

My Spoon has undergone rigorous research and development, which seems to have paid off. It won a Robot of the Year award in 2006.

Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Approximately 2,500 sheep took to the streets of Marseille, in southern France, on Nov. 9 as part of a demonstration of breeders and shepherds who are protesting the crisis in the ovine sector and demanding more government assistance.

The banner reads:"Barnier, go to the end …; Sarko, think about us!!" (Michel Barnier is France's agricultural minister, and Sarko, of course, refers to President Nicolas Sarkozy.)

The above is an aerial view of a humongous portrait of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, sculpted in gravel and sand by American artist Jorge Rodriguez Gerada on a Barcelona beachfront, on Nov. 3. The project is called Expectation, and it required a civil engineering firm, a topographer, machinery for clearing the area, and gravel as a filler, among other things.

Information provided with the photo says:

The outsize scale allows the artist to allude to the global impact on the eve of his [Obama's] election. It both embodies the immense sense of hope felt by Barack Obanma's [sic] supporters and raises a mirror to reflect the source of that hope.

Photo: LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images

In celebration of its 10th birthday, Google is making the Web, circa 2001, available this month. (For technical reasons, 2001 was the earliest version of its index that it could make available.)

Here are some fun findings I came across while playing with the site, which proudly announces "Search 1,326,920,000 web pages":

ForeignPolicy.com. At the time I searched, there was an AIG advertisement at the top of the screen that declared, "The greatest risk is not taking one." (I guess bailed-out AIG took that statement to its extreme.)

Barack Obama. The name gets 672 results, the first to his page at the Illinois Senate.

John McCain. The first link takes you to the "Straight Talk America" site left over from his 2000 presidential campaign.

Iraq war. It gets 17,600 results, with nine of the first 10 referring to the Iran-Iraq War. (No. 10 is to the "Iraq War Drinking Game.")

Facebook. The second link that pops up takes you to a page that says, "The facebook is only accessible to people on the Harvard network."

What kind of antique jewels have you come across while playing with the 2001 Google? Feel free to comment below.

Lara Tomlin for FP

If global warming, weapons of mass destruction, or an asteroid eliminate human life on Earth, all will not be lost. Stephen Colbert's DNA will be there to save the human species.

Next month, a digitized copy of Colbert's DNA will be sent to the International Space Station as part of "Operation Immortality," a project of video game designer Richard Garriott. In the event that humans cease to exist, aliens can use the DNA to resurrect Homo sapiens.

Colbert, the satirist who was the winning write-in candidate in FP's "World's Top Public Intellectuals" poll, says he is now even closer to his "lifelong dream" of being the floating fetus at the end of the 1968 science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Unsworn Industries

If you've ever had a burning desire to have your voice projected through a megaphone in Norway, today is your last chance.

This summer, a group of artists erected a 23-foot-tall, wind-powered "telemegaphone" on top of a mountain in western Norway that overlooks the village of Dale and a scenic fjord. Dial 47 90 369389, and your voice will be projected through the telemegaphone and across the scenic Nordic landscape. Sing, yell, yodel, pontificate. Better yet, play a concerto.

Today's the last day, however. Tomorrow, Sept. 6, the telemegaphone is being turned off -- deer season is commencing.

A new BBC series called Britain From Above looks absolutely stunning. Using satellite technology, the producers have created interactive, dynamic maps of the country's modern migrations -- everything from watching a sped-up version of the hundreds of ships that pass through the English Channel each day to tracking the routes of London taxis through GPS signals. The resulting dance -- around one another, off crowded thoroughfares -- is fascinating to watch. Check out the teaser below.

Bhutan -- Land of the Thunder Dragon -- is on the cutting edge when it comes to postage stamps. It has a stamp on a CD-ROM, roughly 4 inches in diameter, seen in this image. The CD plays a video on the history of the country's kings. Other philatelic highlights from Bhutan include 3-D stamps and scented stamps, as well as stamps printed on steel, silk, and extruded plastic.

Want to buy the stamp? Check out the "Marketplace" tent at the 42nd annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, held through June 29 and again from July 2 to 6. In addition to its exhibition on Bhutan, the event has programs on NASA ("Fifty Years and Beyond") and Texas ("A Celebration of Music, Food, and Wine").

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

This cork-filled life preserver from the Titanic, which sunk in 1912, will be sold at auction house Christie's annual ocean liner sale in New York next Wednesday. The life preserver, one of only six known to exist, had been kept by a family in Nova Scotia since it was found -- allegedly by a farmer at the Halifax shoreline soon after the tragedy. Christie's expects it to go for 30,000 to 40,000 pounds ($59,000 to $79,000); the auction house sold another one last year in London for 61,000 pounds ($120,000).

This just might be the coolest vending machine of all time:

Michael Keferl of CScoutJapan reports:

Pushing the button on the vendor won’t exactly pop out a car, but it does dispense a branded tube containing pamphlets on the new models, dealer information, and a sheet of Smart Car stickers featuring the available colors.

Not quite as cool as an actual car vending machine, but ingenious nonetheless. I'm still waiting for MIT's Media Lab to roll out its long-hyped stackable cars, though.

(Hat tip: TreeHugger)

Via Kottke, the latest in Japanese innovation: machine-readable tombstones:

Behind doors on the tombstone that can be locked is a QR code -- a square code read by mobile phones that can link to Web addresses. Grave visitors can use the code to access images and photographs of the person while they were alive. [...] In addition to images of the deceased, people can view a greeting from the chief mourner at the funeral and browse through the guest book. They can also make entries using their cell phones.

Here are a couple photos:

In the United States, the Oreo cookie is a classic. Millions of American children have enjoyed dunking the sweet treat -- white cream sandwiched between two round, crisp, chocolate cookies -- in milk as an afternoon snack.

Kraft Foods, makers of the Oreo, introduced the cookie to China in 1996. But the Chinese didn't exactly take to them. So starting in 2005, the Wall Street Journal reports, Kraft engaged in a classic case of adapting a product to suit local tastes. The Chinese found the cookies too sweet, so Kraft reduced the sugar in them. China was developing a thirst for milk -- a product that traditionally hasn't been a Chinese dietary staple -- so Kraft launched a campaign, complete with Oreo ambassadors, to "educate" the Chinese on how to dunk the cookies in milk.

The most radical change was in the shape. Noticing that sales of wafer cookies were increasing faster than those of traditional biscuit-like cookies, a new version of the Oreo was created: a long, narrow, layered stack of crispy wafers and vanilla and chocolate cream, all coated with chocolate. Whoever said Oreos have to be round?

Of course, amid rising food prices and increased demand for chocolate (whose consumption in China has nearly doubled in the past five years), the success of the Chinese Oreo brings to mind the broader question of "Can the World Afford a Middle Class?," a topic recently addressed in FP and one that fans the flames of Chinese frustrations with the West.

(Meanwhile, Oreos have been trying to colonize British biscuit tins, the BBC reports.)

The world's 16th richest man -- already the proud owner of the world's longest yacht -- may soon also be the owner of the world's largest drill bit (think he’s compensating?).

Roman Abramovich, the Russian dropout turned oil tycoon, recently invested $160 million in the 19-meter-wide drill, outdoing the previous recordholder by a good four meters.

Not only has Abramovich set the record, but his colossal purchase just happens to coincide with rumors that President Vladimir Putin will propose the construction of a physical link between Russia and the United States: a 64-mile, $66 billion tunnel beneath the Bering Strait.

Abramovich has denied that his purchase has any connection to Putin's plans. But seriously, but what else is he going to do with a drill that can bore a hole wide enough for a four-lane highway?

Rumors of the tunnel come at a precarious time in U.S.-Russian relations, currently strained by the Kosovo decision, the proposed U.S. missile shield, and George W. Bush's renewed NATO membership push for former Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine.

Hopefully, all this Cold War nostalgia won't stand in the way of a great bicontinental highway. Just imagine the road trip possiblities -- you could park your RV in Red Square.

With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination entering the homestretch, more and more people are talking about superdelegates, who may be crucial in determining whether the party's choice will be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But what are these superdelegates? Who gets to be one? Are you as confused about them as I am?

Rick Klau, an employee at Google, took on a personal project to help clarify things. He set up SuperDelegates.org, a wiki-style Web site that not only tells you how the Democratic Party's superdelegate system was developed, but also lists who all 795 of them are and whether or not they've pledged their vote to Clinton or Obama. Even cooler, Klau has done an overlay on Google Maps, so you can see where they're from and whether they're still undecided or are leaning toward one of the candidates. Check it out here.

Via Lee Sigelman, a brilliant collection of maps used to display quantitative information:

United States

Burkina Faso

European Union

The artist is Icaro Doriaa, a talented young Brazilian with the magazine Grande Reportagem in Portugal.

UPDATE: Tim Ogden of Beyond Philanthropy writes in with some questions about the data behind these flags:

I thought the flags were really cool too -- then I started thinking about the numbers behind them. While I have not doubt that some are accurate several flags caught my attention as being dubious:

1) Brazil: the flag indicates that a huge percentage of the population is living below $10/month, which would be well below the $1/day threshold. According to Globalis sourcing the "UN Common Database (WB)" the population of Brazil living at that level in 2001 was 8.17%. Since Brazil has experienced quite rapid growth since then, one can only presume that this figure has fallen since then. The flag would indicate that the figure would be above 30%.

2) Burkina Faso: According to the WHO, the under-5 mortality per 1000 live births is 192. A tragically high number to be sure, but nowhere close to the figures that one would guess at from the flags. [...]

Just looked up the numbers for Angola to determine that there really is a problem:

According to WHO, malaria infections is 2002: 1.5 million
According to UNAIDS, HIV infections in 2005: 240,000

According to flags, 1.5 million = 240,000

It's still a cool idea, though.

RUD14ME? That's the question people in the United Arab Emirates who covet the vanity license plate with the single digit "1" must be asking themselves. The "1" license plate is going up for auction and is expected to end up as the world's most expensive license plate. The number "5" has already sold for a record $6.75 million. I guess those willing to plunk down millions for a vanity plate have the philosophy that U LIV 1S.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has just officially unveiled its plans to build the world's first carbon-neutral city. Situated on Abu Dhabi's desert outskirts, "Masdar City" is designed from the ground up to be the first completely environmentally sustainable city and a hub for renewable energy research. The UAE's rulers hope Masdar will eventually house at least 1,500 businesses and 50,000 people, powered by solar and other renewable energy sources.

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images

Residents will be able to get by on foot, despite the region's blistering climate, thanks to architectural techniques that promote shading and help generate cooling breezes. Stops for the city's solar-powered "personalized rapid transport pods" will be no further than 200 meters apart. Lord Norman Foster, the founder and head of the architectural firm in charge of the Masdar development, said the project "promises to set new benchmarks for the sustainable city of the future." Is he right? Is the project even viable?

Ann Rappaport, an urban and environmental policy specialist at Tufts University, spoke with FP about the project a while back. She seems to share Foster's optimism:

[F]or almost everything, it's easier to do it right the first time. That's true of a new building versus renovating an old building, [so] why shouldn't it be true of [building] a new city, [rather] than transforming an old one? ...

[Y]ou can think about spatial patterns, you can think about their notion of creating walkable spaces... shading—all these things that we now understand to be very important to our carbon budget. We just weren't thinking about that hundreds of years ago when our major world capitals were developed. So that's exciting.... [Your first reaction may be that this is] a city in the middle of a place that others might define as a desert. On the other hand, I think that climate change is challenging us all to think about where the good locations are for human development.... When many of the world's foremost cities were developed, we were looking at transportation access by boat, and now that means that these cities are really vulnerable to sea level rise... [T]he prospect looks attractive, and perhaps the devil's in the details, but it’s not a ludicrous concept.

No country needs this type of innovative thinking about the environment more than the UAE, designated by the World Wildlife Fund as the country with the world's worst per capita ecological footprint. Obviously, one project is not enough to exonerate the country's wasteful and unsustainable practices. But at least it's a start.

Reuters

Just about every newspaper, magazine, and website has published a holiday gift guide. And inevitably, their lists include lots of eco-friendly products, such as bamboo bowls or bamboo clothes. But how about a bamboo computer? Cashing in on the green trend, Taiwan's Asustek Computer has developed a laptop encased in bamboo. Most laptops are encased in plastic that contain toxins like polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, whereas bamboo is a fast-growing, durable natural grass. Sadly, though, you can't buy it. Asustek has only unveiled a prototype. Maybe it'll hit the market by next year's holiday season.

Check out this very cool map, which was on a promotional e-card for a new book being published by Penguin called Transit Maps of the World:

(Click for a larger version)

Based on the famous London Underground map, this map contains the major cities of the world that have underground transportation. It also has the same fun distortions that the Tube map has to make everything fit. For example, to get from Tehran to Dubai, one must go through Haifa. And Pyongyang appears to be south of Tokyo, when in fact the opposite is true. The map also cleverly reflects what's actually going on in certain parts of the world. Most of Africa is "Under Construction" and Siberia is a giant wasteland for public transportation.

Too bad this map isn't available for purchase. I'd rather have this for Christmas than the actual book it's promoting, although that looks pretty cool too.

(Hat tip: BKNY 2.0)