A Most Unfortunate Scientific Acronym

Oh, dear. This probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. As seen in Science China: Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy. Add this to our growing collection of eccentric scientific figures, abstracts, paper titles, etc. HT BoingBoing

Are there any happy endings that are completely believable?

I’m one of those people who likes a happy ending, as long as I feel like the story has earned it. But I hate it when creators tack a nice ending onto a story just to make audiences feel good. What science fiction and fantasy stories do you think have the most believable happy endings?…

The walls of reality are breaking down! Over at the Guardian, children’s authors are interviewed by their own characters, as portrayed by children in costume.This is delightfully metafictional.

What if the Kitchen Velociraptors in Jurassic Park were played by cats?

It would be the best thing ever. Replace all the dinosaurs with cats! We Are Camera Studio swapped out two velociraptors for kitties, and you can all just go home now, because this is the best thing you’ll see on the internet today. [via Laughing Squid]

Can you guess how this unique image of Toronto was put together?

We’ll give you a hint: The first of these 2,300 data points appeared at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor back in 1924. If you guessed traffic signals you’re absolutely correct. This beautiful map of Toronto was created by Redditor William Davis by using information from the city’s open data portal. You can find a…

Luis Royo’s Shining Artwork for George R.R. Martin’s The Ice Dragon

Tor Teen is doing a new edition of George R.R. Martin’s novella The Ice Dragon, set in the same world as A Game of Thrones. And legendary artist Luis Royo is providing some illustrations. Which look just incredible. Check out more of Royo’s illustrations over at Tor.com. Here’s the official description of The Ice Dragon:…

Honeybees reveal that evolution is stranger than you ever realized

Darwin’s idea of natural selection is simple. Good mutations are passed on, because the animals who have them will survive to reproduce. But how do you pass on those good mutations in honeybee colonies, where most bees are sterile workers who never have babies? A group of researchers decided to find out. Photo of a…

Triplets of Belleville director does a French-themed Simpsons couch gag

C’est magnifique! Sylvain Chomet, director of The Illusionist and Triplets of Belleville, animates the couch gag for this Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons. Naturally, it’s both beautifully animated and hilarious, poking fun at both the characters and French stereotypes. [via Cartoon Brew]

Two men are living in a spinning hamster wheel house for ten days

Think it’s tough living with a roommate? These two fellows are sharing a house that spins like a hamster wheel—one on the inside and one on the outside—forcing them to coordinate their daily routine. Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder’s In Orbit is a performance art piece examining the social effects of architecture. For ten days,…

First trailer for Sin City 2 is all sex, sex, murder, sex, car, sex

The very first trailer for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is chockablock full of all the great things that reside in Sin City. Sexy dancing, sexy sexin, gambling, fist fighting, bruises, sexy ladies, and people looking pissed off in the front seats of cars. Here we go again! Directed by Frank Miller and…

First track from the Game of Thrones rap album is actually pretty good

Yesterday, we told you that HBO was releasing an album of rap songs inspired by Game of Thrones, and we had a nice chuckle at the incongruity of it all. But now HBO has released the first song from said album — “King Slayer” by Wale — and damn if it isn’t kind of awesome.…

Watch a kick-ass four-minute fight scene from Captain America 2

Watch Captain America kick and punch his way through a tough sitaution. Because that is all we really want from the stack of well sculpted flesh that is Steve Rogers: action. So here’s America greatest soldier going into battle, in a clip from the start of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. [Via Fandango]

Star Trek: The Original Series, The New Best Streaming Device [Deals]

Own all of Star Trek: The Original Series on blu-ray today in one attractive set for $75. This is among the lowest prices this set has dropped to and the shows looks (and sounds) great in HD. [Amazon] It’s the streaming stick you’ve all been waiting for. The Chromecast was sold out everywhere a few…

The 16th century plan to weaponize cats and birds with rocket packs

Back during the 1530s, a military planner in what is now Germany devised a rather strange means of siege warfare that would have seen cats and birds strapped with bombs to “set fire to a castle or city which you can’t get at otherwise.” The strange depictions appear in a manual that was discovered by…

This chart shows how humans dominate as land mammals — by weight

Randall Munroe of XKCD has compiled a chart in which all the world’s land mammals have been sorted according to weight. A quick glance shows that we humans — and our livestock — take up a disproportionate amount. Munroe aquired much of this data from a book published by Vaclav Smil in 2011, Harvesting the…

Lost Girl lets you make out with a valkyrie over and over again

Every TV show eventually does a Groundhog Day episode. On Lost Girl, it becomes a hedonistic excuse to have sex with whoever you want, since no one will remember and you’ll start all over again in the morning. This episode started off with an incredibly steamy scene. I was just transfixed. It was so hot…

10 Things That Every Brand New Creator of Science Fiction Should Know

Being a science fiction creator is the most amazing adventure — you get to invent whole new worlds, brand new futures, and fantastic technologies, and you get to tell the most incredible stories about them. But it’s also a tough and heartbreaking career path, whether you’re in books, comics, movies or television. Here are 10…

Here’s what American 8th graders think about high tech spying

News channel C-SPAN just announced the winners in its StudentCam competition, where people in grades 6-8 produced short news segments that answered the question, “What’s the most important issue the U.S. Congress should consider in 2014?” Their answer? Government spying. The winning documentary (above) and the second place winner (below) were both about NSA spying…

Who knew an illustration of an abdominal cavity could be so beautiful?

From a much larger collection of anatomical literature and drawings at Heidelberg University comes this surprisingly beautiful illustration by Elisa Schorn. It was Schorn’s use of color, and her organizational decisions, in the images below that originally caught our eye. Even though the drawings were produced around the turn of the 20th century, Schorn’s palette…

Here is the gargantuan ark Darren Aronofsky built straight out of the Bible

We’re still wrapping our brains around the biblical apocalypse movie that is Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. It’s got giants, angels, and one gigantic Ark that was constructed exactly how the Bible instructed. And here’s everything you need to know about the behemoth boat in one video.