The Daily Show talks Wall Street

Last night's The Daily Show was a full on assault on financial news networks and the hypocrisy and greed of Wall Street.

Robots

Here's a collection of robot photos by The Big Picture, particularly robots interacting with humans.

Robotic systems continue to evolve, slowly penetrating many areas of our lives, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance. Developers in Japan are currently building robots to assist the elderly, while NASA develops the next generation of space explorers, and artists are exploring new avenues of entertainment. Collected here are a handful of images of our recent robotic past, and perhaps a glimpse into the near future.

Bionic eye gives blind man sight

A man who lost his sight 30 years ago says he can now see flashes of light after being fitted with a bionic eye.

It uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of the eye.

When these electrodes are stimulated they send messages along the optic nerve to the brain, which is able to perceive patterns of light and dark spots corresponding to which electrodes have been stimulated.

Free throw rate remains the same

The general expectation in sports is that performance improves over time. Future athletes will surely be faster, throw farther, jump higher. But for some reason, as other records are broken, free-throw shooting has remained the same over the past 50 years.

The consistency of free-throw percentages stands out when contrasted with field-goal shooting over all. In men's college basketball, field-goal percentage was below 40 percent until 1960, then climbed steadily to 48.1 in 1984, still the highest on record. The long-range 3-point shot was introduced in 1986, and the overall shooting percentage has settled in at about 44 percent.

Surprise asteroid buzzed earth Monday

Last night, an asteroid the size of a 10 story building moving 12 miles per second buzzed pass earth within 1/5 the distance to the moon.

Discovered only days ago, asteroid 2009 DD45 zipped between our planet and the moon at 13:44 universal time (8:44 a.m. ET). The asteroid was moving at about 12 miles (20 kilometers) a second when it was closest to Earth.

Books and music that make you dumb/smart

Virgil Griffith has used aggregated Facebook data about the favorite bands and books among students of various colleges and plotted them against the average SAT scores at those schools, creating a tongue-in-cheek statistical look at taste and intelligence.

For example, the favorite musician of the smartest students was Beethoven, with an average SAT score of 1371. Also on the "smart" end of the scale were Sufjan Stevens (1260), Counting Crows (1247), and Radiohead (1220). And sadly for Lil Wayne, enjoying his music was associated with being the dumbest, with an average SAT score of 889.

On the book front, Lolita was favorite tome of the brightest students (a result which Griffith called "charming"), with an average SAT score of 1317. The lowest-scoring students liked the erotica author Zane, with an average score of 980. And strangely, the students who listed their favorite book as "The Bible" were smarter (1047) than those who said it was "The Holy Bible" (980).

Baby Travis

Apparently somebody named Travis left their Facebook account open on their mom's computer.

Travis, this is what happens when you leave your facebook account open on my computer :) Love Mom

Scientists' stem cell breakthrough ends ethical dilemma

Scientists have found a way to make an almost limitless supply of stem cells that could safely be used in patients while avoiding the ethical dilemma of destroying embryos.

In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form.

The work has been hailed as a major step forward by scientists and welcomed by pro-life organisations, who called on researchers to halt other experiments which use stem cells collected from embryos made at IVF clinics.

The origins of 8 high-tech names

Mental Floss breaks down the background behind 8 high-tech names and what they mean, including TiVo, Hulu, and BlackBerry.

Hulu means many things to many people. To some, it's a great online resource for watching their favorite TV shows and movies. But to a native Hawaiian, it means "hair." To someone who speaks Swahili, it means "cease." To an Indonesian, it means "butt." While these translations are accurate, the folks behind naming hulu.com were inspired by a couple of Mandarin Chinese definitions instead - "interactive recording" and "a hollowed-out gourd used to hold precious things." Despite this often misunderstood word, the website is rapidly becoming one of the biggest names in streaming video.

Newsweek's The District - Episode 1

Ever wondered what it would be like if the makers of MTV's hit 'The City' made a reality show about Obama's first 100 days?