Robots Battle For Supremacy

Japan’s economic ministry has named nine finalists for the Robot of the Year 2007. Will it be the surgical robot? The fire-fighting robot? The music robot? You don’t get a vote. But you do get to ogle the cute robot pics. [PinkTentacle]

A Fresh Apocalypse Every Day

Do you feel like you’re falling behind when it comes to the latest developments in post-apocalyptic pop culture? Now you never have to be out of the end-of-the-world loop again, thanks to the Quiet Earth blog, a fantastic compendium of all things apocalypse devoted to “making the post-apocalyptic genre mainstream.” Hold the right-wing nut jokes,…

Sam Raimi, Put A Sock In It

Sam Raimi drops us the stunning news that “Spider-Man 4 is up to the writer,” which must mean that his claims of exhaustion are true. Let’s face it, you dropped the ball with Spider-Man 3, now it’s time to stop talking about it.

Witness The Evidence For Life On Mars

This Martian meteorite, which goes on display today at the Natural History Museum in London, crashed in Egypt nearly a hundred years ago. It was part of the great Martian rockfall of 1911, which started with the appearance of a cloud and some detonations. Local residents were terrified when they were hit with a rain…

Atomic-Powered Hats of the Future

OK, it’s not really a hat, just a late-1960s “differential multidetector” that used radioisotopes to diagnose (and maybe cause a few) brain tumors. But I swear the eccentric hat junkie Isabella Blow once wore something exactly like it to Ascot. From The Atom at Work: How Nuclear Power Can Benefit Man (1968), by C.B. Colby.

In the Future, You Will Be Poorer

A new study shows that 2 out of 3 middle-class families in the United States is in danger of economic collapse. Most of these families have no assets, and could lose their sources of income at any time. [Science Blog]

Doctor Who Stunt Casting: A Report Card

Kylie Minogue’s star turn on Doctor Who, and the return of overexposed Billie Piper, may seem like signs that Doctor Who has finally gone cameo-crazy. But really, stunt casting has a long and trashy tradition in Doctor Who. Sometimes, it’s even made the show more watchable. Here’s a quick chronology of the show’s stunt casting,…

Close-Up of Life (and Death) from Another World

No, this isn’t the plant life you’ll see on Jupiter when we get there. It’s a tiny piece of decaying strawberry. It’s the work of amateur macrophotographer Bill Hails, who spent a recent sleepy afternoon taking his high-magnification camera on a safari through the the micro-jungle. The strawberry was there, along with a photograph of…

Breast Stereography — Now in 3D!

Let us now praise the latest boob-o-gram technology. Scientists can now ogle my breasts from the inside-out and in 3D. A new technique called “stereoscopic digital mammography” lets researchers image breasts more accurately to check for cancer or gestating alien beings. Sounds almost as good as the 3D boobs in Beowulf. [RSNA] Good news! Humans…

Human Emotion? It’s All Programmed

In this installation from the early 2000s, Finland-based multimedia artist Charles Sandison re-imagines seemingly complex feelings like rage, love, and despair by creating an artificial mind. The “mind” is pre-programmed with behavioral patterns, and projects its output in the form of glowing words on a wall. But this isn’t just art, it’s psychotherapy. Sandison believes…

Indiana Jones and the Jumping of the Shark

Steven Spielberg has yanked the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind out of mothballs, and plans to stick them in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when Indiana accidentally finds Area 51. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have put little inside jokes and sly references to their other films in…

Help! My Nervous System Has Been Remapped!

Neuroscientists announced yesterday that they can do something extremely creepy with your nervous system. Using delicate surgery, they can make you feel your hands in your chest. That’s right — they move your nerves around so that when somebody touches your chest, it feels like they are touching your hand. There are real applications for…

Dear Santa: Bring Me This Fashionable Dalek T-Shirt

I’ve been a very good boy this year, and it’s just a t-shirt from Etsy. Come on, y’big beardie weirdie. Exterminate T-Shirt [Etsy.com]

Which NYC Doomsday Scenario Has You More Stoked?

This winter movie season will be tough on New York, with 6 million people succumbing to a pandemic and then a giant crab (turtle?) decapitating the Statue of Liberty. Blame Bloomberg. Are you more excited to see NYC destroyed by a plague (in I Am Legend) or by a giant monster (in Cloverfield)? Gawker Media…

After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Comics Have “New Release Wednesday Thursday”

Time travel becomes a reality this week for comic book fans everywhere, with last week’s holiday bumping the traditional New Release Wednesday to Thursday. The post-holiday blues also affect the books themselves, as the usual focus on the single issues begins to shift towards pricier collections. But of all the hundreds of things arriving this…

Christmas is coming and the United Kingdom is getting its decorations ass in gear, looking to science for something a little fresher than usual. Foregoing the more traditional garlands of tinsel, Regent Street in London has this display of “clusters of light” that change color depending on atmospheric conditions, courtesy of designers Wieden + Kennedy…

Let the Terraforming Begin

This machine looks like it should be creating a new biosphere on Mars, but instead it’s bringing solar power to Europeans on cloudy days. Called a “heat accumulator,” this massive, silvery ribbon of solar-power-sucking panels can store energy all day and then feed it to the power grid at night. German aerospace engineers put it…

DC Comics and Warner Bros have announced a release date for their anticipated animated adaptation of the retro sci-fi comic DC: The New Frontier. Following a world premiere at San Francisco’s Wondercon convention next year, the movie – following the formation of superhero team the Justice League in response to an alien threat in 1950s…

World of Warcraft’s Strange Rules About Cybersex

A new version of massive multiplayer game World of Warcraft will allow people to change their characters’ hair and dance moves, but not their genders. Just goes to show that you can move to a new cyber-world packed with an international population of millions, and still be SOL if you want to find a decent…

Has “Doctor Who” Become “Dancing With the Stars”?

It’s official: Billie Piper is back on Doctor Who next year, in a needless ratings grab. And the BBC also released more details about her fellow pop star Kylie Minogue’s appearance in the Christmas special. Kylie plays Astrid, a waitress on the Titanic, which crashed into the Doctor’s time ship at the end of the…