the-art-and-science-of-building
Look At This Hilariously Botched Drug Smuggling Attempt
You can almost hear the lowly mules--both of whom fled the scene--cry out in that sort of self-deprecating _God damnit_ that only comes when you know you really fucked up.
Robots Are Controlling Each Other Now
This vid was presented earlier this month at the latest International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Vilamoura, Algarve in Portugal by Rehan O'Grady, and Marco Dorigo, from Universite Libre de Bruxelles and Instituto...
Oh, Great: Humans Can Cause Earthquakes
In May of last year, an earthquake in the southeast of Spain violently shook the region. In the aftermath of the event, which registered a 5.1 on the Richter scale, nine people died and dozens of others were injured. The event caught many residents off...
Ever-Changing Apartments of the Future Will Do Everything
Move over, McMansions. In the not-so-distant future, your studio apartment will also be your gym, your massive dining room, your home office, a yoga studio, house a guest room and function as pretty much any other kind of space you could imagine...
The Navy's New Super Warship Looks Like a Tiny Fishing Boat on Radar
Remember _The Hunt for the Red October_, that terrific movie from the 1990s starring Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery running around on submarines? The Red October was this new Soviet super sub that was virtually undetectable by radar and rigged up with...
The World's Cities Are Set To Grow Explosively and Maybe That's Not a Bad Thing
A study published last week in "the journal":http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/11/1211658109 of the National Academy of Sciences forecasts massive global urbanization between now and 2030. Researchers estimate total expansion of the planet's...
What It Takes To Really, Truly Understand Weather on Earth: Art
Perhaps chalk it up to lack of caffeine, but I've spent a cool 30 minutes here trying to think of a good metaphor or statistic that might point to how insanely complex weather on Earth is -- the near-infinitely vast number of variables and interactions...
Chinese Students Say They Are Being Forced to Build Your Next iPhone
*With an update* Now that Apple is putting the finishing touches on the most anticipated smartphone in history, Chinese students are again being pressed into service on the factory line inside the single largest internship program in the world.
Panopticon In Reverse: Steve Mann Is Fighting for Your Cyborg Rights
Last month, Dr. Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto who has been living as a cyborg for his entire adult life, was attacked by employees at a Parisian McDonald’s.
The Eerie ICE 3 Explosions of the European Countryside
Here's a thing I became mildly obsessed with this weekend (thanks to the "new issue"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Biomimicry-is-Inspiring-Human-Innovation-165592706.html of _Smithsonian_): "tunnel boom." Tunnel boom is a common...
The World of Prosthetic Art Is Marvelous
Prostheses are a lot of things — practical, functional, useful — but pretty they are not. Your standard prosthetic leg is typically nothing more than flesh-colored hunk of plastic designed, if anything, to be ignored or overlooked. But a handful of...
Salvador Dalí's Bikini Exhibit At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Caught On Home Video
Salvador Dali's career has, over the years, slowly been distilled into posters of melting junk that inspire millions of _whooooaaaaas_ in dorm rooms everywhere, but his surrealist work wasn't limited to the canvas. In fact, he designed an entire...