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NASA mechanical engineer Mark Rober made an uber-creative halloween costume that features a gaping see-through hole in his torso. What he did was strap two iPads to his body — one in front and one in back — with a FaceTime video chat running between them. Each iPad’s camera footage is displayed on the other iPad’s screen, providing a view right through Rober’s body.

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A Boeing 767 with 230 people on board has made an emergency landing at Warsaw airport, apparently without its landing gear.

It appears the Polish Lot aircraft, en route from New York, circled the city to burn up fuel and allow emergency crews to gather in preparation for the landing.

A spokesman for the airline said none of the passengers was injured.

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Federal regulators have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money has gone missing from MF Global in recent days, prompting an investigation into the brokerage firm, which is run by Jon S. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor, several people briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The recognition that money was missing scuttled at the 11th hour an agreement to sell a major part of MF Global to a rival brokerage firm. MF Global had staked its survival on completing the deal. Instead, the New York-based firm filed for bankruptcy on Monday.

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World War II is the story of the 20th Century. The war officially lasted from 1939 until 1945, but the causes of the conflict and its horrible aftermath reverberated for decades in either direction. While feats of bravery and technological breakthroughs still inspire awe today, the majority of the war was dominated by unimaginable misery and destruction. In the late 1930s, the world’s population was approximately 2 billion. In less than a decade, the war between the nations of the Axis Powers and the Allies resulted in some 80 million deaths — killing off about 4 percent of the whole world.

This series of entries was originally posted weekly to TheAtlantic.com from June 19 through October 30, 2011, running every Sunday morning for 20 weeks. In this collection of 900 photos over 20 essays, I tried to explore the events of the war, the people involved at the front and back home, and the effects the war had on everyday lives. These images still give us glimpses into the real-life experiences of our parents, grandparents and great grandparents, moments that shaped the world as it is today. There were thousands of events affecting millions of lives, and I hope that I was able to do justice to this important story in this large-photo narrative format and thank you for joining along the way.

I just couldn’t pick one picture, there’s way too many great images. Go follow the link and spend some time on these galleries.

You know, compared to this, the Microsoft video wasn’t all that bad after all.

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The Greek government was plunged into chaos on Tuesday, as lawmakers rebelled against Prime Minister George Papandreou’s surprise call for a popular referendum on a new debt deal with Greece’s foreign lenders

On the one hand, it’s kind of annoying when democracy gets in the way of rule by the bureaucratic elite.

On the other hand, I don’t know why everybody is so upset with a referendum. After all, the EU will make them repeat the referendum until the desired result is achieved, so why worry about the outcome?

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Hurricane Ike destroyed dozens of homes in Seabrook. Many families are just now rebuilding, but when Brad Gana tried to pick up the pieces, he learned that Bank of America was trying to take what little he had left.

"I was shocked when they said they were foreclosing on it," Gana told investigator Amy Davis.

Gana was working overseas when the hurricane hit, destroying his home. But even then, he said he never missed a mortgage payment. It took him days to figure out why Bank of America was foreclosing.

"It wasn’t until about 20 calls that someone said, ‘We had a homeowner’s policy on your home that you reside in, and your monthly payments have gone up,’" Gana explained. "But they never notified me that my monthly payments had gone up."

That’s right. Bank of America took out a forced homeowner’s policy on an empty slab.

The White House answered the “please stop issuing software patents” petition.

It is a textbook demonstration of “pricks pretending to care”, as I said before.

They take three paragraphs to obfuscate their “No” and add a paragraph about Open Source, which has just about nothing to do with the worries about software patents. The trolls at Lodsys must be laughing their pants of with this statement by the White House.

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Virginia Republicans were in apology mode Monday over a Halloween-themed email that depicted a zombie-like President Obama with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head.

The northern Virginia-based Too Conservative blog first flagged the mailer from the local Republicans in Loudon County promoting a local holiday parade. It also offers a ghoulish caricature of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi D-San Francisco).

“I am no fan of Barack Obama, but putting up a photo of him as a zombie with a bullet hole in his head?” the blog stated. “Someone should send this to the US Secret Service.”

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The health consequences of consuming sugary drinks are well known. It is not surprising, therefore, that groups such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and other groups have said that consumption is too high and needs to come down.

What has been missing from this picture is a detailed analysis of how the industry markets these products to the most vulnerable segment of our population: children. It is important to know this in order to help establish government policies on whether children should be protected from this influence, and also test whether the industry is holding true to its promises to market less to this age group.

The beverage industry, dominated by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, is represented by a trade association called the American Beverage Association (ABA). The beverage companies have made a number of promises that it will market less to children. Coca-Cola, for example, claims they "…will not place any of [their] brands’ marketing in television, radio, and print programming that is primarily directed to children under the age of 12…"

[..]

Our group at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University has just released the most extensive analysis ever of the marketing of sugary drinks to children and teenagers. This new report found that children are exposed to more — not less — advertising for sugary drinks than they were several years ago, and that the companies are finding new and sophisticated ways to reach youth.

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During a March 1, 2009 appearance on ABC’s This Week, Rep. Cantor said that the government can’t create jobs, “And what we see in this budget, frankly, is an attempt, again, to try and stimulate the economy through government expenditure. And, you know, at best what that can do is redistribute wealth. It can’t create jobs; it can’t create wealth. We’ve got to get back to focusing on job creation and creating prosperity.”

Newsweek has uncovered letters that show Rep. Cantor requesting hundreds of millions of stimulus dollars for his district at the same time; he was publicly claiming that government can’t create jobs.

Just a month after going on ABC and claiming that the government can’t create jobs, Cantor sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to request almost $75 million in federal stimulus funds for the I-95 high speed rail project. Cantor along with Rep. Bobby Scott wrote that, “High speed rail provides a sensible and viable solution to our region’s transportation challenges. It is estimated that creating a high speed railway through Virginia will generate as many as 185,500 jobs, as much as $21.2 billion in economic development, and put nearly 6.5 million cars off the road annually.”