Global warming @ Home -- Everybody should go to this site right now and start running their program:

climateprediction.net portal: "There is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth is likely to warm over the coming century, but estimates of how much vary hugely. By taking part in the climateprediction.net experiment you can help to improve scientific forecasts of 21st century climate. " We want you to run a climate model as a background process on your computer (similar to the successful SETI@home project). It should not affect any other tasks you use your computer for. If you choose to download the model, you will be supplied with your own, unique, version of the model. As the model runs, you can watch the weather patterns over the globe evolve. The results are sent back via the internet, and we are developing an interactive portal to allow you to compare your results with other people's as the experiment progresses. The Open University will be offering a short course based on the project, and there will also be opportunities to get schools involved with the project.

As a followup to James' post on parallel chemical detection via films on CD surfaces:

Slashdot | Beer-Coated CDs are Optical Biocomputers: "A DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's some of his research, and some media samples which include mp3s of the distorted music."

This guy seems to be flinging his work a little far. He's written five papers on this for four different conferences in July. I haven't read them yet, but it looks like they are wildly speculative. From what I can see, he's grown some stuff on some CDs and DVDs and verified that they screwed up the data, but he doesn't indicate (on the web site at least) whether he's actually done any useful computation. Maybe there's more in the papers...

From the BBC: "Astronomers have detected sound waves from a super-massive black hole. The 'note' is the deepest ever detected from an object in the Universe." No James Earl Jones cracks, please.