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Deals: The Little Mermaid, Home Theater Upgrades, Xillia 2 CE

The Blu-ray 3D 3-Disc Diamond Edition of The Little Mermaid also includes a regular Blu-ray, a DVD, a digital copy, music, and you know, also the movie itself. It’s down to its lowest price ever of $29 today. [The Little Mermaid Diamond Edition] The Fox Searchlight 20th Anniversary Collection packs in 20 critically acclaimed movies…

Australia took kangaroos as mascots to World War I

War is hell. It’s especially hellish when the entire world is involved in a conflict that boils down to complicated alliances and diplomatic ass-hattery. So every little happy piece of home helps. Kangaroos evidently make great battle buddies. A century ago, Australia joined the rest of the British Empire in declaring war on Germany, pulling…

Sunday Night Will Be An Extraordinary Time For Skygazing

The biggest, brightest full moon of 2014 rises this Sunday. That’s exciting in and of itself (though not nearly as exciting as some headlines would suggest), but Sunday’s “supermoon” also happens to coincide with the Perseid meteor shower, one of the largest and most dependable meteor displays of the year. The “Supermoon” First things first:…

Crazy Ivan climbs atop the frozen crane of the 2073-foot Shanghai Tower

Ivan Kuznetsov doesn’t care that the world’s highest construction site—atop the 2,073-foot (632-meter) Shanghai Tower, the second tallest building on Earth—is full of ice and it’s slippery as hell. His compatriots did it before him without ice, so he had to best them. Here are more of his adventures for you to scream. Of course…

A Magical Machine Lets You Inject Bananas With Sweet Sweet Fillings

You know that disappointing feeling when you bite into a banana and there’s nothing on the inside? Normally they can’t compete with the likes of a creme-filled Twinkie, or a caramel-packed tube of Rolos, but the DestapaBanana levels the playing field. It lets you inject bananas—still in their peel—with all kinds of fillings so you…

In case you were ever curious about the proper way to pack and ship suspected Ebola specimens, the CDC has posted a primer for medical professionals. The guidelines reiterate OSHA standards for handling bloodborne pathogens. Here’s one especially good CDC safety tip: for Ebola, use plastic not glass containers.

This Educational TV Show About A Space Station Academy Needs Your Help

A new TV series wants to entertain kids with space-faring adventures while teaching them real scientific concepts—and it needs some crowdfunding help to get off the ground. You can also fund a reprint of the lost adventures of a golden age comics hero, a comic about the dismal future of immigration, and a short film…

This Algorithm Can Change the Season and Weather In Your Photos

One time I drove five hours out of my way on a road trip to Monument Valley, only to be devastated when I arrived. Instead of the bright red buttes I’d envisioned against a clear blue sky, a gray haze had settled into the valley, rendering the landscape flat and lifeless. My photographs could have…

Who famously said “You don’t introduce new products in August”?

Can you guess who shared this pearl of marketing wisdom? “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” Was it Apple founder Steve Jobs? Advertising legend David Ogilvy? Good guesses, but no. It was White House chief of staff Andrew Card in September of 2002, explaining why the Bush administration…

The Weirdest Stories Where God Is An Actual Character

Plenty of science fiction and fantasy stories have angels and demons wandering around. Or minor deities, like Glory in Buffy. But a few stories dare to introduce THE God. The Judeo-Christian Supreme Being. Here are the absolute wildest stories where God makes an appearance. Dogma In Kevin Smith’s Dogma, God comes to Earth as an…

Zack Snyder Calls Into Local Radio Show To Defend The Honor Of Aquaman

Zack Snyder heard a couple of local radio DJs in Detroit talking shit about HIS movie—specifically about Aquaman, and that was just not going to fly. So he called them up and politely set them straight. And in doing so, he revealed a whole lot about his Aquaman. Plus, it’s just adorable. CBS Detroit caught…

Shoelaces That Include Everything You Need To Start an Emergency Fire

Unless you’re trying to prove yourself on some ill-conceived reality survival show, it’s always a good idea to bring some way to easily start a fire when you head off into the wilderness. But if things go awry, this simple set of shoelaces can be used to start a fire in the event of an…

Should Robotics Companies Help The Workers They Displace?

The Pew Research Internet Project has just published a major survey of tech experts, asking whether they thought robotic devices would displace significant numbers of blue- and white-collar workers. Opinions are divided, with 52% saying no, and 48% warning that we could see a new underclass of unemployable people. What’s striking about this study is…

The World’s Most Badass Combine Harvester Will Shuck Your Mind

For untold centuries, humanity manually harvested and threshed our grains to separate the literal wheat from the chaff. The advent of combine harvesters—those that both harvest and thresh the grains in a single, automated process—however has vastly increased our ability to cultivate crops. And the new CR10.90 from New Holland does it better than anyone.…

More Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles Movies Are Coming

Yikes, has it really been 20 years since Interview With The Vampire? By Hollywood standards, that makes Anne Rice’s works way overdue for a reboot—which is exactly what is happening, only with producers we’re not really sure we want meddling in this supernatural genre. The Wrap is reporting that Brian Grazer, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto…

NASA Is Betting on These Five Extraordinary Ideas

Beyond developing current missions, NASA’s job is to invest in technologies that might seem like sci-fi—but could hold the keys to the next generation of space missions. After all, a century ago, the idea of a lunar landing probably seemed almost like pure sensational fiction. And this week, NASA picked the five seemingly distant concepts…

Peter Capaldi Really Is A Pricklier Doctor In These Doctor Who Clips

We haven’t seen much of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor in action yet, but if these snippets from the upcoming series of Doctor Who are any indication, he really will be a less warm and fuzzy Doctor, his curiosity tempered with a snarky edge. It’s a shame we can’t quite hear all the lines in this segment…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review: An NYC Tale That Needs More NYC

Reboots of cartoon classics are just a fact of life now. Each time they hit theaters, you hope and pray they’ll do justice to your childhood memories. More often than not, they leave you disappointed. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is sadly no exception, and it doesn’t take advantage of the one thing that could have…

Reality Check: Most Scientists Never Believed In “Global Cooling”

Climate-change deniers like to remind us how, in the 1970s, scientists all believed the Earth was heading for another ice age. So why should we believe the doomsayers who now claim the opposite? Here’s why: Most scientists rejected the “global cooling” theory and, even then, were convinced the real problem was global warming. Unfortunately, the…

A See-Through Glass Pot That Definitely Boils While You Watch It

Designed by Massimo Castagna and made in Italy, this gorgeous all-glass pot defies the saying “a watched pot never boils” because it encourages chefs to stare in awe at whatever they’re preparing for dinner, while it cooks. Made from dense borosilicate glass instead of opaque stainless steel, the $200 transparent pot has been tempered so…