Self-tickling is impossible even if you think someone else is doing it

New research has revealed that tickling yourself is impossible, even if you’re fooled into thinking that someone else is doing the tickling. The surprising result casts considerable doubt on what scientists think they know about the neural mechanisms of tickling. https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-you-tickle-yourself-5936290 Top photo by Sham Hardy via Flickr. The new study – conducted by Jakob…

How Catching Fire Fixed All the Worst Mistakes The Hunger Games Made

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire made all the money this weekend, raking in a record-topping $161.1 million. But that’s not all this YA sequel did for the movie franchise. Catching Fire actually goes about unchecking our long list of problems with the first Hunger Games film, resetting the franchise both for die-hard fans and people…

Cary Elwes is writing a memoir about the filming of The Princess Bride, to be titled As You Wish. It’s due out late next year, and will feature interview with the rest of the film’s cast. Honestly, I’ll never get tired of reading about the time during the movie André the Giant racked up a…

How whales made the dramatic evolutionary shift from land to the sea

All whales and dolphins are descended from terrestrial mammals, ancient creatures that were very similar to the modern hippopotamus. Now, a fascinating new genetics study shows the incredible evolutionary changes these animals had to experience to become the perfectly adapted marine animals we see today. Biologists aren’t entirely sure which creature modern cetaceans (dolphins, whales,…

Here Is Your Self-Driving Car! But Do You Want It?

So long, jetpacks! Our self-driving car has arrived. Burkhard Bilger has a rundown of the fascinating build-up to the self-driving car and its future in the New Yorker — and in this case the future is now. Now, the question is, are we really ready to start using it? “Of the 10 million accidents that…

​The Governor starts Woodbury 2.0 on The Walking Dead

The Governor’s journey to, uh, standing in front of the prison looking at Rick and Carl is complete, and his emotional journey takes him pretty much back to where we left him. I still have no idea why this needed two episodes. So we ended The Governor Side-Story Parte the Firste with the Guv holding…

Make some bions this week

What are bions? According to Wilhelm Reich they are the elementary material of life — the half-way point between living and nonliving things. According to others, they don’t exist. But if they did, you could make them. Wilhelm Reich had a long and varied career, if not a celebrated one. During his time, he worked…

Newly presented evidence shows that early humans interbred with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and now, shockingly, a fourth undocumented hominid species. The paleoarchaeologists who made the discovery are now saying that ancient Eurasia was a “Lord of the Rings-type world,” a landmass containing many hominid populations. As to the identity of the new species, scientists haven’t the…

When will we see more of Peter Capaldi’s costume on Doctor Who?

And does an audition video reveal a returning Doctor Who villain? Jessica Lange explains why she’s leaving American Horror Story. And Arrow might be laying the foundations for yet another major DC character. Plus, True Blood’s casting a love interest for a character you thought might be dead. Spoilers now! Guardians of the Galaxy Here’s…

Holiday Gift Books for Lovers of Science and Science Fiction

There’s nothing better than a gorgeous coffee table book or special edition to leaf through during the holidays. We’ve got recommendations of gift books for people who are fans of scientific discovery — and science fictional exploration. Science and History Southern Light: Images from Antarctica Luminous photography from the world’s least-explored continent. Out of the…

Apparently, what Witches of East End was missing was testosterone

Who else is surprised that Witches of East End’s somehow gotten unexpectedly good? Don’t get me wrong, it’s still picking up and dropping plots like an indecisive shopper buying groceries while hungry, but at least it’s choosing the right ones to keep and drop. The right ones to keep? Enver Gjokaj and Freddie Prinze, Jr.…

Sculptor carves mythic cathedrals out of New Mexico’s sandstone cliffs

Sculptor Ra Paulette digs into sandstone walls in New Mexico, hand carving caves covered with shells, flowers, leaves, and abstract designs and transforming the natural features of the stone into otherworldly shrines. Paulette is the subject of the short documentary CaveDigger, directed by Jeffrey Karoff. The film examines Paulette’s obsessive nature in digging out and…

Thanks to the eruption of Mount Etna, it’s been raining rocks in Sicily

Fortunately, the recent eruption of Mount Etna didn’t force anyone to evacuate their homes, but in this video, you can watch the volcanic ash and rocks raining down on Sicily. [via Geekosystem]

Bio-artist colors textiles with deadly bacteria and antibiotics

Would you cuddle up with a quilt stained with MRSA? Artist Anna Dumitriu challenges the relationship between humans and bacteria by staining textiles with superbugs. As part of her artist’s residency on the UK Clinical Research Consortium Project “Modernising Medical Microbiology” at the University of Oxford, Dumitriu has been developing her MRSA Quilt and Infective…

Crowdfund a preview location for a Museum of Science Fiction

A nonprofit group wants to build a Museum of Science Fiction in Washington, DC, and they’re looking to raise funds for a preview location. Plus, you can fund a journal devoted to linguistics, a Blade Runner zine, a new horror comic by Ben Templesmith, or a pen that lets you draw conductive circuits. Top image…

Want to build a clock made of flowers for spring?

If you want to add some botany and some poetry to your science, why not try something that was first proposed by Carolus Linnaeus? You can have a zero-carbon-footprint clock made of flowers. What happens if you wake up one morning and find that it’s too cloudy to get a clear reading on your sundial?…

A short horror film set in an America in which cannibalism is legal

Greg Hanson and Casey Regan channel an older B-movie aesthetic for their short horror film Meat Me in Plainville. After all the livestock in America die off, cannibalism becomes legal with unexpected consequences. Despite being apparently set in the “future” year 1994, Meat Me in Plainville debuted in 2012 at the Puchon International Fantastic Film…

The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special broke the Guinness World Record for the largest simulcast of a television drama ever. “The Day of the Doctor” was broadcast in 94 countries on six continents.

Posters and Art Gift Ideas for the Geek in Your Life With Bare Walls

Most of us have that friend, the one without a single piece of decoration on the walls. Just vast expanses of bare space. The good news is that this makes it easy to come up with something to get them. The bad news is that, after this, you may actually end up with too many…

Compare footage of San Francisco before and after the 1906 earthquake

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked San Francisco in 1906 and the resulting fires devastated the city, but old San Francisco remains in photographs and video. This video lets you travel down Market Street as it looked before the earthquake hit. The video, produced by Miles Brothers in 1906, was filmed from the front of…