Ilya Somin calls Texas’ affirmative action program a “travesty.” ∞ You can follow me on Twitter here.
Geoff Nunberg on the denunciation of “hopefully” as an adverb: You hear people saying that a misused “hopefully” or “literally” makes them want to put their shoe through the television sc...
I really don’t care about the hypocrisy; I’m not sure I’d say that the “war on marijuana” belongs to Obama either. I just wanted to pull this tidbit of disappointing inf...
Natt Garun, Digital Trends: It’s no secret that branding is powerful: Fonts, shapes, colors are all part of what we associate with certain brands. Without the words, we can tell the swoosh is part of...
The editors at Scientific American wrote a great piece on why political attacks against Planned Parenthood are completely misguided. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona declared last year on the floor of the ...
Episode #19 of The Impromptu, with Adam Hyland and Shadoe Huard. ∞ You can follow me on Twitter here.
The universe is mind-bogglingly huge. So how do astronomers know the distance to nearby stars and far off galaxies? Find out in this short, animated video from the Royal Observatory Greenwich. The fi...
iA has created a new website using “responsive typography” — and a custom font to boot. Oliver Reichenstein explains why a responsive typeface is necessary. Most people can’t discer...
In an attempt to encourage more browsing, I have made a couple of changes to the site’s Archive — or perhaps I should say “additions.” There is now a dedicated Linked List and...
Dan Hurley, The New York Times: Early on a drab afternoon in January, a dozen third graders from the working-class suburb of Chicago Heights, Ill., burst into the Mac Lab on the ground floor of Washi...
I’ll go ahead and tag this one NSFW/NSS, just for good measure. An interesting read by Tracy Clark-Flory, nonetheless. Early vibrators were hand-cranked, two-person jobs — and prescribed ...
Konstantin Kakaes, Slate: It would take a thick head indeed to believe that new technologies aren’t valuable to the economy. But determining how they are important, and how important they are, gets t...
A new twist on speed-dating — L.A. singles hook up by smelling slept-in T-shirts. They’re called “pheromone parties,” and Salon’s Lauren Eggert-Crowe has all the details...
Perhaps the most enthralling video you’ll see all week. (Via Kottke.) ∞ You can follow me on Twitter here.
Episode #18 of The Impromptu is another great one. Heck, I got to talk about Lord of the Rings and StarCraft. This week we wonder whether it is fair to whine about Diablo downtime and explore how J.R...
A super-snorkel concept called the Powerbreather allows swimmers to keep their faces submerged in water while breathing fresh air. Of course, the device also works great for snorkeling. With the Powe...
A 71-year old man who was paralyzed in a car crash four years ago has regained some of the use of his hands after doctors rewired the nerves in his arms. Ian Sample reports for The Guardian: In the o...
Like plants, some species of photosynthetic bacteria and organelles such as chloroplasts move toward or away from light to maximize their food intake. Now, plant scientists are using this phototropis...
Orion Jones, Big Think: Although we are not consciously aware of the calculations our brain is making, our behavior seems largely determined by sets of chemical reactions. So when it comes to high le...
Bill Hammack explains how a digital camera captures color images using a CCD (charge coupled device) and color filter array. This video is based on a book by Bill Hammack, Patrick Ryan, and Nick Ziec...
In 1848, an explosion shot a meter-long iron rod straight through the skull of Phineas Gage. Amazingly, Gage survived the accident, but underwent drastic personality changes. Now — more than 15...
From Wired Science, Jonah Lehrer explains how thinking in a foreign language can reduce decision biases: The experiments themselves relied on classic paradigms borrowed from prospect theory, in which...
Discover Google’s data centers through video and photos by following an email along its path on this interactive journey. ∞ You can follow me on Twitter here.
Chris Dixon: Google makes the vast majority of their revenues when people search for something to buy or hire. They don’t have to stoke demand – they simply harvest it. When people use Facebook, they...
A guest post by Bruce Schneier at SamHarris.org on airport security: [T]o assume that only Arab-appearing people are terrorists is dangerously naive. Muslims are black, white, Asian, and everything e...
A POV graffiti process video I really enjoyed watching, by someone called I Love Graffiti. (Via Aaron Cohen.) ∞ You can follow me on Twitter here.
James Nizam makes incisions into the structure of a house to manipulate sunlight into “light sculptures” such as the one pictured below. That’s right — it’s the sun. The...
Most people think of tapeworms in their adult stage, as 20-foot parasites living inside of people’s intestines. However, before tapeworms become adults, they spend some time as larvae inside of...
Laura Hazard Owen, paidContent: New York, the District of Columbia and fifteen other states have joined the e-book pricing class action suit against Apple, Macmillan and Penguin, bringing the total n...
Episode #17 is a recording of The Impromptu’s first live broadcast, courtesy of Google+ Hangouts. First, the group returns to HBO, Netflix, cable companies, and iTunes. Next, we ask whether or ...
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