Asia Associated Press Chief Photographer David Guttenfelder is currently in North Korea covering the 60th anniversary of the country’s armistice with South Korea. As expected when documenting the country’s Mass Games the spectacle is visually incredible, yet subtly disturbing in their homogenous achievement.

Times have collected some of his photos here, whilst AP’s Big Story has got a slightly wider scoped gallery of the country itself here. Of particular interest though is his instagram account that’s got some pretty remarkable images, particularly of aged Korea War veterans, and videos of the countryside and military parades.

Worth mentioning, if not seen yet, is the 2003 documentary A State of Mind where two British filmmakers got then unprecedented access to North Korea and followed two young girls with dreams to train and participate in the Mass Games for their dear leader Kim Jong il. It certainly doesn’t attempt to unmask the horrors of the country’s regime, but it gives a very rare insight into the lives and psychology of some of its inhabitants.

F = m*a

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• Seeing Photosynthesis from Space: NASA Scientists Use Satellites to Measure Plant Health
• Nano Scientists Reach Holy Grail in Label-Free Cancer Marker Detection: Single Molecules
• Ed Drew’s Afghanastan: the first ‘wet-plate’ conflict photos in 150 years
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• Life on The Wire: How Bunk, Kima, Freamon, and McNulty blew off steam in Baltimore
• Revisiting Pharcyde’s ‘Drop’ Music Video
• Through pictures: Star Wars vs. Game of Thrones
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And like Shiva the destroyer, here is Scientifically Accurate Ducktales

Rare Color Photography of Early 1900s Paris

• An interview with Steven Soderbergh on his career and quitting Hollywood
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• Why Malaria’s Magnus is celebrated by Wales’ Wikipedia Day
• The Chapelle de Bathléem and its sci-fi gargoyles
• The ‘Horror Frog’ breaks its own bones to produce claws
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• Humans and animals: How and why do we pick our friends?
• The EU’s plan for 50,000 EV charging stations by 2020

• Whoa, now the KKK are also fighting against Westboro Baptist
• “We still look at ourselves as survivors”: over 80 years later, remembering the deadliest school massacre in American history
• The rather interesting origin story of ‘Miranda Rights’
• Warren Ellis on The Social Web: end of the first cycle (stoked it’s close to what I’ve been mediating on throughout the year)
• UCL research paper on Why the Internet only just works (.pdf)
• What the world will look like in 2030 — as predicted by the Government
• Will we ever… have cyborg brains?
• A few Tolkien-rific facts about the book version of The Hobbit
• Try this interactive/zoomable four BILLION pixel image of Mt Everest
• Earthmoving: Ways of moving the Earth’s orbital path

Lastly, the latest TEDEd on ‘What is colour’ gives a very concise and simple explanation on the how with some very nice animation too.

More amazing splash photography by Markus Reugels via This is Colossal

• Hrmm… 2012 was the best year yet?
• How the internet is accelerating the evolution of language
• 12 Letters that didn’t make it into the alphabet
• Recreating the Mona Lisa using polygon rendering genetic algorithms
• Testing audiophile claims and myths
• An eBay for Professors to sell college courses directly to students
• Why are (almost all) economists unaware of Milton Friedman’s thermostat?
• Unexpected behind-the-scenes horror film photos 
• Authors’ responses to the film adaptations of their work (Ellroy’s praise for The Black Dahlia is somewhat inaccurate)
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Building the Big Apple

• A record 58 percent of Americans say legalize marijuana
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• The curious case of Clairvius Narcisse, and other instances of Hatian “zombies”
• Exploring the Paris Metro’s eerie ghost stations
• UC Berkeley Librarian to Daily Cal sex columnist: ‘Please don’t f*ck in the Library’
• Journey soundtrack nominated for a Grammy

• Photos: What it looks like inside Amazon
• Truth in advertising: The Birth of ‘Just Do It’ and Other Magic Words
• Christopher Nolan discusses making his first feature Following
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• Like it or not, non-replaceable CPUs may be the future of desktops
• Augmenting a light bulb to make a touch screen desk
• Prices have finally been announced for the Surface Pro
• Plus Microsoft have put out a pretty great self-depreciating ad for IE10

These come from a fantastic collection of lesser-seen Vietnam War photos that can be viewed here.

I can’t recall where these were referred onto from (came back from the weekend to find this buried amongst tabs and that I also have amnesia), so I’ve little context on this collection, apart from the fact that they’re all great.

[ link ]

So Canadian photographer Jonathan Hobin‘s now project is called In The Playroom and depicts images of kids playing as kids do. The exception though? Rather than the traditional imaginary play time, these kids are re-enacting scenes from infamous events and media events in history… crazy.

More at Designboom via petapixel

• Top 10 photos from the Guardian’s eyewitness app
• Surreal images of the Deepwater Horizon disaster
• The winners from National Geographic’s Traveler Photo Contest
• Infographic: comparing 10 years of the internet
• Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
• On the horizon: A male birth-control pill
• Science confirms: The only workday we like is Friday
• The Mpemba Effect: how hot water freezes faster than cold
• Amelia Earhart: 75 Years of Mystery — and Now an Answer?
• Scientists discover genetic key to Elephant Man’s disfigurement
• The lost towns of Russia
• Whut: eBay Bans Sales of Spells, Curses, Advice and Other ‘Intangibles’
• How to back up your Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts and why you should
• Iceland’s hard stance on bankers is working out pretty well
• Romney’s tax plan: mathematically impossible

Also, the Sarychev Volcano Eruption viewed from the International Space Station…