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A combination of heat and high pressure allow this semi-autonomous boring robot to tunnel through undrillable rock - credit: Petra San Francisco startup Petra says its new contactless thermal drilling robot can make steady progress through the hardest rock on Earth – stuff that would normally destroy drilling equipment – so quickly and cheaply that it could make a lot of underground infrastructure projects economically feasible. The semi-autonomous "Swifty" robotic system can create 18-60 inch (46-152 cm) diameter tunnels through any geology, blasting the rock with an extremely hot, high-pressure spallation head such that it glows, chars and flings away....

Lloyd Grove says Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) loyalists "are kicking themselves for cooperating last year with filmmaker Steve Rosenbaum on Inside the Bubble, a potentially devastating behind-the-scenes look at the Massachusetts senator's failed presidential campaign." "I'm also told that Hillary Clinton partisans are licking their chops to see the film, which 'could end up being the silver bullet that kills Kerry's presidential chances for 2008." The film won't be seen publicly until Thursday, but a press release claims the movie "turns a harsh but deeply revealing mirror on the campaign ... a disorganized, contentious, self-absorbed team that thought they could...

Swifty the donkey is led from his stall on Morris Powell's family farm in Rising Fawn, Ga., Friday, July 16, 2004. As one of the most active Democrats in the rural part of Georgia, Morris Powell was assured a spot months ago as a delegate at the party's convention in Boston. It took some negotiating, but now Swifty is a delegate too. Swifty overcame security and space concerns to become ``the official Donkey Delegate'' of the convention. (AP Photo/Ric Feld)