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Stargazing near the Grand Canyon

Arizona is one of the places that has made a vocal stand in support of making their skies more friendly to letting the night shine freely. Recognized as a place of exceptional nighttime beauty, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument is the newest Dark Sky Park. The Big Dipper rising over Parashant at sunset. Photography credit: Nicholas…

Guy films himself having an LSD trip in the middle of the desert

According to the YouTube description, this guy went by himself to the Thar Desert, India, to have an LSD trip that lasted for 24 hours. It’s beautiful there, but having LSD on your own—let alone in the desert—is a huge risk. “It was the most beautiful and yet frightening experience,” he said. Watching his reactions…

Why Squinting Helps You See Better

Whether or not you knew what you were doing, there’s undoubtedly been a time when you found yourself squinting to get a better look at something you otherwise couldn’t see. Minute Physics’ newest video breaks down this wildly useful little phenomenon. Basically, there’s two different factors at play when scrunching up. First, your eye slightly…

How to Survive Getting Struck by Lightning

Getting struck by lightning might seem like one of those impossible things more or less relegated to the world of idioms, but the truth of the matter is that it’s a lot more likely than we’d want to believe. So just in case, The Art of Manliness has created this handy little infographic on how…

Watch Curious Alice, Perhaps the Worst (Best?) Anti-Drug Film Ever Made

Released in 1971 by the National Institute of Mental Health, “Curious Alice” was supposed to educate children on the perils of drug abuse. Instead, through a series of creative missteps, it managed to equate a drug trip with a phantasmagoria of whimsy and discovery, missing its intended mark in truly spectacular fashion. Media Matters’ Audrey…

In 1995, artist Ralph Steadman lent his iconic style to a special edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Over onBrain Pickings, Maria Popova has curated a selection of the book’s illustrations. It’s almost uncanny, how exquisitely Steadman’s freewheeling genius dovetails with Orwell’s controversial masterpiece. You really must see for yourself.

The Price of Electricity In The U.S. Is About to Skyrocket

Here’s the sad, dark truth about our aging electrical grid: The way we generate power is not sustainable and needs to change. Here’s the other sad, dark truth: As the U.S. becomes more reliant on renewable energy like solar and wind, our electricity bills are going to go up. Way up. In fact, you might…

The Doctor’s Attempts at Poetry Are Predictably Idiosyncratic

Tumblr user Herminbean’s captured each Doctor’s personality with just a few lines of doggerel verse. If someone could go ahead and mesh this with the “Malcolm Tucker as the 12th Doctor” meme, that’d be great. Here are all of the poems: herminbean via Doctor Who Official tumblr

A 1956 Plane Crash in the Grand Canyon Made Flying Safer for Americans

In 1956 two planes collided over the Arizona desert, killing all 128 people on board and scattering the debris deep inside the Grand Canyon. This week, the National Park Service designated the crash site a National Historic Landmark—even though they don’t actually want you to go visit it. At the time, the tragedy was the…

New York on the Floors of Athens

A small corner of Athens, pays homage to the city that never sleeps. In our latest example of science-inspired design, the carpets of this marketing firm are a satellite image map of New York City, bringing the harbour city to Greece. In 2008, ValueCom hired Stage Design Office to create “an expressive atmosphere” for their…

Even More Mind-Blowing Cosplay From Calgary Expo 2014!

The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo has grown massively in the past few years, to over 80,000 attendees this year. And that means one thing: astonishingly great cosplay. The highlights in our second batch include Skeksis, a whole family of Princess Leias, and tons more. Top image: Will Box Thanks again to Undiscovered Photography for…

Code Dicks Parody Site Is Your Equal Opportunity Answer to Code Babes

It was only a matter of time. Just a few days after the internet got good and outraged over the wildly absurd, porn-based learn-to-code site Code Babes, we present to you its satirical, equal opportunity cousin. Say hello to Code Dicks. While an otherwise dead-ringer for the widely scorned original, Code Dicks doesn’t actually offer…

New Vulnerability Found in Every Single Version of Internet Explorer

According to a confirmation by Microsoft late last night, a new zero day vulnerability has been found to affect every version of Internet Explorer. In other words—over a quarter of the entire browser market. Attacks taking advantage of the vulnerability are largely targeting IE versions 9, 10, and 11 in something called a “use after…

Parks And Recreation‘s Next Season Will Be “Very Gently Scifi”

Where does the sitcom about city government in small-town America go after last week’s season finale? Spoilers ahead if you haven’t gotten a chance to watch the episode yet. In an interview with HitFix, Parks and Recreation co-creator Mike Schur talked about the episode’s final minutes, which sees Leslie Knope and her friends three years…

The Life-Saving Science Behind Sunscreen

Every summer we slather layers of sunscreen with the highest SPF we can find, and bravely venture outside hoping our slimy cloak will shield us from the sun’s death rays. So how does this work? TodayIFoundOut.com’s resident medical expert, Scott, and a buddy of his recently started The Medicine Journal, where you can learn all…

Ain’t No Poodle Skirt Like a K-9 Poodle Skirt

‘Cuz a K-9 Poodle Skirt’s got a ROBOTIC DOG ON IT. When Sabrina (above) needed a poodle skirt for an upcoming sock hop dance, her parents (and fellow Whovians), Denise and James, decided to surprise her with a twist on the classic, wide-swing attire. “We found an image of K-9 on the internet that we…

Space This Week

It’s time for another link-round-up of space-related stories that we didn’t cover this week! Consequences of the impending El Niño for 60 locations around the United States. Science history! How Apollo 12 Helped Solve the Skydiver Meteorite Mystery Building the Giant Magellan Telescope Astronomy graduate students can apply for a summer school on Education &…

Thousands of Tons of Nazi Chemical Weapons Are Hiding in the Baltic Sea

When the Nazis surrendered their weapons at the end of World War II, the Allies got rid of them in a way that made sense in the 1940s: they dumped it all into the water. Mustard gas and other chemical weapons—estimates ranging from 13,000 to 300,000 tons—are now slowly leaking into the Baltic Sea. The…

Okay, Why Wasn’t This Iron Man 3‘s Credit Sequence?

Seriously, what’s better than Iron Man credits, set to the “The Stripper,” that feature a dancing animated suit coming apart? Nothing. The answer is nothing. Higher quality video can be found at Art of the Title’s interview with creative director Danny Yount, who says of this bit of concept art: The first presentation I did…

Game of Thrones Creator Says Drones Are Worse Than The Dothraki

Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has definitely come up with some of the most shocking ways to kill people, from gasp-inducing beheadings to blood-spattered Red Weddings. But in an interview with Rolling Stone, Martin says the way we engage in modern warfare is far more brutal. When speaking about the remorse that some…