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A Wizard Researcher Made a Climate Model of Middle Earth
Image via Flickr/Maria Nayef A wizard-turned-climate-researcher has used supercomputer modelling techniques to produce a climate map of JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The paper, undoubtedly the first of...
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What a New Anti-Poaching Agreement Will Do to Protect Elephants
Elephants doing their elephant thing, via USFWS This week, key nations along the illegal ivory trade route met in Botswana and agreed to implement a host of new measures aimed at stemming the trade....
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Your iPhone Will Talk to Stores While You Shop
Image via Wikimedia Commons. If the holidays weren't enough reason to avoid the mall, beginning today in Apple stores nationwide your iPhone will be communicating with the store as you shop. The folks...
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NASA Sent Phones Into Space, and Now They've Called Home
With such tiny satellites, NASA can pack in a bunch for every launch Ever since NASA launched a new group of tiny, phone-powered satellites into space a few weeks ago, we've been waiting for one of...
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Sharks Get Cancer and Other Ways We Can Relate
via faithandmusic/Deviant Art While I usually find sharks sort of hard to relate to—they live in the ocean, they’ve been around since the time of the dinosaurs, their bones are made of cartilage,...
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Why Transit Riders Give Terrible Directions
Image via Flickr/CC If I asked you how far you live from work, and you replied, "It’s only about 25 minutes by train," then you're not really supplying a distance. It's relative, excusably typical, and...
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Among Other Things, Viagra Alleviates Menstrual Cramps
via Wikimedia Commons Sildenafil is a pretty amazing drug: it can be used to fight prostate cancer, pulmonary hypertension and even altitude sickness and jet lag. But refer to sildenafil by its brand...
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Why the US Launched a Spy Rocket With an Earth-Sucking Octopus On It
The Atlas V with NROL-39 launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base Thursday. What with all the flack government spooks are getting for the U.S.’s overreaching dragnet surveillance, one would think now...
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Congress Wilts as SCOTUS Takes On Patent Trolling
Wikimedia Commons The Supreme Court announced today that it would hear CLS Bank v. Alice Corporation, a case that deals with the patentability of software. This comes just weeks after Microsoft and IBM...
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Airports Are More Beautiful Than They Have Any Right To Be
I'm more of a trainspotter myself, but I make a point of swinging through airport viewing areas when they're present. A dying phenomenon—the terrorists won—you can still find official on-property...
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Farewell to False Hope? Would-Be HIV Cure Stumbles
Bordecia34/Flickr We were warned. Treating HIV via bone marrow transplant was risky, excruciating, and, above all, hardly guaranteed to work. Basically, if a patient didn't need the treatment anyway to...
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"Wild Bill" Bunge's Radical Geographies of Detroit Explain Everything
Angela Anderson-Cobb/Flickr I grew up in a lot of places. Most of those places were at one address in a suburb of Detroit called Harper Woods in a small house one block from I-94 and 15 or so blocks in...
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The Art of Looking at Government Secrets
To Trevor Paglen, the things we can't see are really just the things we're not supposed to see. Clandestine military bases and rendition aircraft, spy satellites, the logos of top secret military...
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Reprogramming New Lung Cells Isn't Biohacking, But It's Closer Than Anything...
Everything becomes a bit more serious when disease hits your lungs. We take it for granted, the smoothness of the entire pulmonary operation, its rigorous standards for healthy operation and ability to...
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The Physics Behind Last Week's Metro-North Derailment
Metro-North event recorder/NTSBgov A great entry point to the physics of trains is right near my house. For just a mile-long stretch, the highway and railroad share basically the same right-of-way on a...
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Why Cold Weather Makes You Pee
Image via Flickr/Uli Herrmann First off, I don't mean recreational peeing. We're talking about honest-to-goodness needing to piss or else, and if those of us equipped for it can draw in the snow, hey,...
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The Silicon Valley Backlash Against the NSA Heats Up
Silicon Valley image via Flickr/Patrick Nouhailler And so, the industry backlash against secret mass surveillance begins in earnest. Today, a group of the world’s largest tech companies has published a...
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Wannabe Xbox One Hackers Are Actually Just Troll Bait
This will be useless once you've bricked your console. Image via Flickr/Steve Petrucelli No matter how many times it happens, some people never learn. Let's say it again, all together: Hacks that sound...
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The Bleakest Drone Video Is Also the Most Life Affirming
Long ago, Vikings called Karmøy home. Today, this frozen, largely barren tract of land in southwestern Norway is ideally suited for a far more peaceable lot: drone cinematographers. Take one pass on...
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Crowd-funded Nikola Tesla Statue Broadcasts Free Wi-fi, Criticism of Silicon...
Image: TeslaStatue Earlier this year, a satirical animation that depicted Nikola Tesla pitching his inventions to disinterested Silicon Valley venture capitalists went in viral in the tech community....
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