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Extremely Bad Reasons Why Waterless Urinals Were Illegal

We take it for granted that urinals flush. With each pull of the lever, gallons of clean water come to whisk away a few ounces of pee. If you think about it, it’s actually pretty wasteful, and the current drought is convincing facilities to consider waterless urinals. But these waterless bathroom contraptions have had to…

Electricity Can Make You See Hovering Shapes—And Drugs Can Help

There is a term for the little glowing shapes that temporarily appear when you rub your eyes or bang your head – phosphenes. In the 1930s, a German scientist found ways to make them appear via the use of electricity, and later the use of drugs. Phosphenes can be caused by all kinds of things.…

Why You Have To Watch The Wonder That Is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the BBC’s 7-part adaptation of Susannah Clarke’s novel about the rediscovery of magic in 19th century London is finally making its way to the US tomorrow — and so far it’s been pretty damn magical. This is why you should give it a watch, even if you weren’t a fan…

The reason to start investing in a 4K screen just became much more convincing—NASA is now uploading 4K content at 60 frames-per-second via YouTube. The videos will mostly be of breathtaking views and scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station. So yeah, you’ll want to subscribe right here.

A Brief History Of Vaginal Cutting During Childbirth

During childbirth, the vagina has to stretch to accommodate a head the size of a grapefruit. This, you may imagine, takes time. So if something goes wrong during labor and delivery has to happen fast, doctors or midwives might speed things along by artificially widening the vaginal opening. With scissors. The procedure is called an…

Four blue lobsters, one yellow, and one albino lobster have been caught in the Canadian Maritimes in the last two weeks. To put that into perspective, the odds of catching a blue lobster is 1 in 2 million, a yellow is 1 in 30 million, and an albino is 1 in 100 million! The CBC…

I’m Paddling All 2,552 Miles Of The Mississippi River

Alex Woodford is a 22-year old lady from England. Last year, while the two of us were camping with Bear Grylls, she told me she wanted to kayak the Mississippi from its headwaters in Minnesota all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. And now she’s doing it. — Ed. Lovingly nicknamed the ‘Big Muddy’…

A Before-And-After Look At How Sharlto Copley Became The Robot Chappie

Chappie, the childlike super-genius robot, is the best thing about Chappie, the movie. And a large part of that is due to Sharlto Copley’s insane performance, done via motion capture. We’ve got an exclusive clip from the movie’s DVD featurettes that shows how Copley created the character. Chappie is out on DVD and BluRay on…

These Lady Scientists Are So Distractingly Sexy I’m In Love and Crying

The internets are having fun destroying biochemist Tim Hunt’s comments about the “trouble with girls” in laboratories. Using the hashtag #distractinglysexy, people are posting ironic pictures of famed female scientists, while working scientists are taking selfies so hot it’s like they’re saturated with thermal energy. Hunt, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and British Knight, will have…

Parrot’s Revamped Drones Will Carry Lego Blocks And Skim Across Water 

Parrot makes the coolest looking toys: robots that zoom through the air and jump over obstacles just by tilting your phone. Now, they’ll do a whole bunch of sweet new tricks—if you trust Parrot with your money. Today, Parrot’s announcing five new Minidrones in all, but they fall under two basic categories: 1.) Revamped versions…

This Short Film Reveals Why Being The Devil’s Lawyer Is A Lousy Job

In a great many stories about the Devil and his infamous contracts, the Devil’s lawyer is a confident, mystical figure as tricky as the Devil himself. But in the short film Chasseur, a demon hunter tries to summon the Devil and gets his lawyer instead, a man who seems, much the hunter’s frustration, perfectly ordinary.…

Why It’s Often Easier To Innovate In China Than In The United States

About a year and a half ago, I discovered this $12 “Gongkai” cell phone (pictured above) in the markets of Shenzhen, China. My most striking impression was that Chinese entrepreneurs had relatively unfettered access to cutting-edge technology, enabling start-ups to innovate while bootstrapping. Meanwhile, Western entrepreneurs often find themselves trapped in a spiderweb of IP…

Wayward Pines Reveals The Utterly Insane Truth On A Bombshell Episode

Buckle up, because we’ve arrived at the episode entitled “The Truth,” and indeed, a lot is finally revealed about the mysteries of Wayward Pines. But just because we know everything doesn’t mean we have any clue about what’s going to happen next. Spoilers follow! As we open, Ethan’s still skulking through the dark forest that…

22 Incredible Facts About The Life and Career Of Sir Christopher Lee

If Sir Christopher Lee had just been a movie star, he would still have been an icon. But the late actor, who passed away last week, had an amazing life even beyond his incredible body of work. Whether you’re still lamenting his passing or unsure why his death is such a loss, here’s 22 reasons…

How to make delicious Singapore chilli crab

The hawker stands of Singapore are filled with so much delicious food that you want to eat everything your eyes smell and your nose sees. It overloads the sense and crosses some wires and the dish that might be responsible for doing most of that is Singapore Chilli Crab. The sauce is edible crack and…

Lucasfilm Is Making Amazing Star Wars and Jurassic Park VR Experiences

Now that the Oculus Rift has made virtual reality not suck, countless companies are lining up to produce ground-breaking interactive content. But the most exciting could come from Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects company behind Star Wars, Jurassic World, and countless other blockbusters. Today, the Lucasfilm-owned effects shop announced the creation of a…

Say Goodbye to Quirky Products (Sort of)

Quirky is becoming a much different kind of Quirky. Put bluntly, the democratic design pioneer needs money and is radically changing its direction. Part of that new direction involves no longer making or selling Quirky products, but Quirky—and its community—will still help giant corporations like GE design products. It sort of sounds like the dream…

Beyond Manson: A Celebration Of Another Bugliosi True-Crime Page-Turner

Everybody remembers that famed Manson Family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who passed away this week at the age of 80, wrote Helter Skelter. But Bugliosi was a prolific author whose other volumes are well worth picking up — especially true-crime murder mystery And the Sea Will Tell. Bugliosi’s involvement in the case came after he left…

I Went to the Place Where There Is Nothing But IKEA

When you walk out of the Älmhult train station, there’s not much to see. To the west is a string of filthy box cars on the railroad, and to the east, a small park with no people. TripAdvisor will tell you that there is only one thing to do in the tiny Swedish village: Go…

The first images of Lego’s upcoming WALL•E set are unbelievably adorable

Back in February, Lego announced that it would be putting Angus MacLane’s WALL•E Lego Ideas model into production. Which is fitting, because Angus is actually a Pixar animator who worked on the film. And today, courtesy of the SmythsToys website, we might finally have our first look at the official Lego version of WALL•E. There’s…