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What Do You Think of Black Friday At This Point?

Black Friday deal shopping, which is now more of a concept than a single day, has evolved from a brief free-for-all into a multi-day marathon. It’s gotten to the point where Black Friday “deals” basically exist from sometime in the end of November right up to Christmas. Is it a good thing that retailers are…

Want to build a clock made of flowers for spring?

If you want to add some botany and some poetry to your science, why not try something that was first proposed by Carolus Linnaeus? You can have a zero-carbon-footprint clock made of flowers. What happens if you wake up one morning and find that it’s too cloudy to get a clear reading on your sundial?…

A short horror film set in an America in which cannibalism is legal

Greg Hanson and Casey Regan channel an older B-movie aesthetic for their short horror film Meat Me in Plainville. After all the livestock in America die off, cannibalism becomes legal with unexpected consequences. Despite being apparently set in the “future” year 1994, Meat Me in Plainville debuted in 2012 at the Puchon International Fantastic Film…

The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special broke the Guinness World Record for the largest simulcast of a television drama ever. “The Day of the Doctor” was broadcast in 94 countries on six continents.

Posters and Art Gift Ideas for the Geek in Your Life With Bare Walls

Most of us have that friend, the one without a single piece of decoration on the walls. Just vast expanses of bare space. The good news is that this makes it easy to come up with something to get them. The bad news is that, after this, you may actually end up with too many…

Compare footage of San Francisco before and after the 1906 earthquake

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked San Francisco in 1906 and the resulting fires devastated the city, but old San Francisco remains in photographs and video. This video lets you travel down Market Street as it looked before the earthquake hit. The video, produced by Miles Brothers in 1906, was filmed from the front of…

In honor of Hunger Games‘ Peeta, SNL cast members fight to the death

Hunger Games and Catching Fire star Josh Hutcherson hosted last night’s Saturday Night Live, which meant a bit of obligatory Panem pageantry, with two cast members fake-battling to the death. It’s not a particularly surprising take on The Hunger Games (although there are a few cute moments), but it’s Hunger Games fetishism taken to its…

Learn Real-Life Minecraft at London’s First Academy for Tunnelers

In today’s Observer, architecture editor Rowan Moore explores Europe’s largest infrastructure project: London’s new Crossrail line. Moore explains that, in addition to such factors as cost, miles, tons of dirt moved, and other construction superlatives, Crossrail also “claims to be the largest archaeological site in Britain, an inadvertent probe through a plague pit, a Roman…

This was the first-ever “selfie,” taken in 1839

It didn’t have the cringe-inducing moniker to go with it, but the first recorded photographic self-portrait was taken in 1839 by chemist and metallurgist Robert Cornelius—and it’s one of the earliest human photographic portraits as well. In fact, according to the Library of Congress, Cornelius’ self-portrait is believed to be the earliest extant American portrait…

Illustrated ballad tells the life story of Alan Moore

This past week, comic book writer Alan Moore turned 60, and in his honor, songwriter and cartoonist Jeffrey Lewis set Moore’s biography to pictures and music. [via Forbidden Planet International]

What Would You Do If You Found Out You Were A Psychopath?

One day in 2005, neuroscientist James Fallon was casually leafing through the PET scans of serial killers. As one does. He was doing research at UC Irvine and was trying to figure out which aspects of brain anatomy contribute to psychopathy. He also had brain scans of all his family members on his desk for…

Do tears of grief look different from onion tears under a microscope?

You may joke that, when something sad brings a tear to your eye, someone is chopping onions in the room. But if you compared those two types of tears under a microscope, would they look similar? Rose-Lynn Fisher’s photographic project “Topography of Tears” captures the abstract landscapes contained within dried human tears. She began the…

Amazon’s Week of Black Friday Deals Kicks Off Today

You may think it’s just a lazy Sunday morning, but in fact deals (and Dealz) madness is kicking off today. Right now. Go crazy. Amazon (and apparently Sears) is starting the week with a bunch of Logitech PC accessories like surround sound speakers, wireless gaming headsets, and of course mice. The Logitech deals seem like…

The Bat-Family and their foes prepare for Thanksgiving dinner

Batman Eternal artist Jason Fabok sends up Jean Leon Gerome Ferris’ painting The First Thanksgiving 1621 for his Easter egg-laden image of Gotham’s finest and fiercest settling down to a holiday meal. It also serves as a teaser for the upcoming comic book series. Scott Snyder tweeted the image above, teasing that it contains clues…

Holy Crap, Tamagotchis Are Coming Back From the Dead

Remember Tamagotchis? Of course you do. They taught you about responsibility. They taught you about friendship. And perhaps most importantly, they taught you that friends don’t leave friends to die of starvation and despair. But now, it’s time to impart that wisdom on a new generation. Rejoice, friends, for the Tamagotchi is back. Japanese toymaker…

These awesome airplanes are not images from Iron Man 4

Some jet fighter photos look so perfectly choreographed and sharp that I automatically think they must be computer generated frames from some movie or game. These ones are very real. When I see them, I hear someone in my head screaming “EVASIVE MANEUVER!” I don’t know why the A-10C Thunderbolt II Warthogs from the 188th…

The gigantic gun inside America’s tank killer

The A-10 Warthog is one of the most famous warplanes ever created, designed to obliterate any tank—900 in the first Gulf War alone—and vehicle using air-to-surface missiles and the GAU-8 Avenger, the biggest gun ever in a combat jet. It is gigantic. It is more than two times the size of a Volkswagen Beetle! The…

Here’s Why It’s So Hard to Find Good Movies

You know when you get in those funks where you feel like every movie is the same, or pointless, or badly written? You might just be watching a ton of junk on Netflix, but before you judge too harshly you should look at the pile of crap that readers have to whittle down to find…

This Week’s Top Comedy Video: The Onion Reviews the Hunger Games Movie

With a movie adaptation like The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, it’s easy to get swept up in the pop culture hype, and lose sight of what’s really important: how hot are the boys? Fortunately, Philip K. Rosenthal is here with a deeper look. For the rest of this week’s top comedy videos, including a head-to-head…

In the days when human-made structures cover the moon

On clear evenings, Jacen and Jenn would play their favorite game, pointing at the moon and imagining what the people there were doing at that very moment. What Jenn didn’t know was that Jacen fell asleep each night dreaming of working a lunar greenhouse, staring out the windows back at Earth. A digital composition by…