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Sometimes high-school cliques and supervamps both need a roundhouse kick

A boarding school full of vampires sounds like a bit silly, like Harry Potter meets Twilight. But Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy is actually something much cooler: Mean Girls with mysticism, plus complicated vampire politics. Spoilers ahead. The Vampire Academy novels have already reached their fifth or sixth volume by now, and I’ve seen them for…

Military Roomba Cleans Land Mines With Explosions

Like its domestic ancestor, iRobot’s new military robot is also a cleaning machine. But instead of dust devils, this one cleans land mines and barbwire obstacles. It works using the Mk7 Anti-personell Obstacle Breaching System. Not subtle, but extremely effective. The robot—called Warrior—is like a light version of the British Python and the American M58…

Are there phenomena in the universe that will always be beyond human comprehension?

Just after we linked to the Physics and Cake blog’s post about whether there might be a “ceiling” in the level of theoretical physics that humans can understand, Reith Lecturer Martin Rees wrote an essay for the London Times, explaining the first of his Reith Lectures. And Rees does believe that there may be intrinsic…

The alien landscapes of Northern California’s salt ponds

Last year, UC Berkeley architecture professor Cris Benton used kite aerial photography (KAP) to capture these stunning, otherworldly images of salt ponds. Benton writes: These are photographs taken during a first excursion to Salt Pond E6B in an area near the ruins of the 19th Century Ohlsen Salt Works just north of Alameda Creek. I…

The Best Year in Science Fiction: 1954

We’re getting to the end of our survey, but 1954 is a ridiculously robust year, with Ray Bradbury delivering Fahrenheit 451, Richard Matheson offering I Am Legend, and Japan unleashing Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Cinematic science fiction had yet to develop the technical wizardry to compete with the mind’s eye, so this year belongs…

Show Your Love of Music (Even If It Is Just Prince You Listen To)

I’m imagining pre-teen boy’s bedroom, rather than aging audiophile’s listening-room, but wherever you stick this cassette deck shelf or the equalizer coat-hangers, you’ll be able to smugly answer “they’re Italian” whenever visitors ask where they’re from. Rocket is the name of the company, which specializes in music-themed furniture, including guitar-shaped coffee tables and headphone-shaped napkin…

How Hollywood is destroying my postmodern love affair with 80’s pop culture

Since G.I. Joe and Transformers became big goofy movies, author Jeremy Robinson has developed mixed feelings about loving the 1980s. He explains why below. I’m a child of the eighties. That’s not to say I was born in the eighties. I wasn’t. What I mean is that my formative child rearing years stretched between 1980,…

Meet the Last Generation of Typewriter Repairmen

It’s easy to forget how much time computer word-processing programs have saved the writing public. Before computers, any typewritten document that needed revision had to be retyped again and again. And that’s hardly the end of it. Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Total up all the hours that people spent whiting out errors before the Delete key…

What if Jaws was made today?

Read this hilariously accurate depiction of what Jaws would be like if it was made today. Starring Sam Worthington as Chief Brody (who has an ultra-dark NYPD past), Michael Cera as Matt Hooper, and Samuel L. Jackson as Quint. [CHUD]

We Could Get to Neptune and Back in 5 Years for a Mere $4 Trillion

Manned spaceflight is an expensive and impractical proposition. But what if we had all the funds we wanted at our disposal? What could we do? Quite a bit, it turns out. Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory recently did a study that examines what sorts of missions we might be able to undertake in the latter…

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Donald Glover for Spider-Man: The evolution of a meme

Late last week, we wrote about the idea of Sony casting a non-white Peter Parker for their Spider-Man reboot. Then…a thing happened. And suddenly, Community actor Donald Glover has rallied the internet to his cause: getting him an audition. https://gizmodo.com/the-last-thing-spider-man-should-be-is-another-white-gu-5549613 If you’ll recall, the original post asked the question: In the face of such underwhelming…

Canon PowerShot SD4000 IS Review: No More Noisy Nights

The Canon PowerShot SD4000, the company’s first compact with a back-lit CMOS sensor, achieves an elusive point-and-shoot camera feat: crisp, clean nighttime photography. And it’s not even that expensive. If you already own a DSLR, you probably don’t think twice about snapping shots in low-light conditions. But as most point-and-shoot camera owners can tell you,…

How You Can Live Like A Vulcan Without Bleeding Green

You can’t be a Jedi, because the Force isn’t real. You can’t be a Na’vi, because your hair isn’t magic. But you can do a pretty good job of living like a Vulcan from Star Trek, and here’s how. And let’s face it – Vulcans are way cooler than Jedi or Na’vi anyway. (At least…

The United States of Supercomputing Against the World

Without counting secret machines, this is the state of supercomputing in the world: The United States’ government, companies, and universities have more computing power than the rest of the world combined. Each square within each country represents one supercomputer. The first position goes to the 1.75-petaflop-per-second Cray’s Jaguar, housed at the Department of Energy’s Oak…

Android Head: Updates Coming Once a Year Eventually

Andy Rubin—Google’s lead Android—gave a brief interview with the San Jose Mercury News that yielded one big nugget: at some point in the not too distant future, Android updates will scale back to once a year. That might seem like a step backwards, but it’s actually likely in the best interest of the platform. It’s…

Gadget Deals of the Day

Another reason why three day weekends are awesome: the four day work week. If skipping Monday doesn’t bring a smile to your face, then these latest deals should. Dealzmodo is bringing tons of savings today. Check them out! Top Deals: • 1TB Western Digital Elements WDBAAU0010HBK-NESN External USB 2.0 HDD for $69.99 with free shipping…

Can Your External Hard Drive Make a Latte?

Neither can a Seagate GoFlex drive—but you can save all of the recipes you want on the world’s most upgradable portable drive. Reliable, secure storage, plug-and-play design, remote content access, and the ability to use it on both Mac and PC are just a few reasons to check out the GoFlex drive family. Meet some…

A leaked first look at J.J. Abrams’ new spy show Undercovers

The purported first twenty pages of Undercovers — J.J. Abrams’ married spy thriller debuting on NBC this fall — were leaked to the Italian website Il Post. What’s the show about? Sexy espionage action and unsexy married life. Spoilers on. The leaked script — which is credited to J.J. Abrams and co-creator Josh Reims, and…

Play Top Trumps With Valuable Artworks Using the Tate Museum’s iPhone App

You remember the Top Trumps games right, where you have to outdo your opponent with a stronger/faster/leaner/meaner dinosaur/footballer/celebrity/poo? The Tate museum of London has created a decidedly more high-brow version, in the form of a free iPhone app. It’s a fun and interactive way to make visiting the Tate museum more entertaining, with various games…