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Your planet is beautiful

Wind-sharpened jaws of sand are closing around the uncertain foam of the river. This gorgeous shot is via the European Space Agency’s Observing the Earth archive. Here’s what the ESA has to say about this: Korea’s Kompsat-2 satellite captured this image over the sand seas of the Namib Desert on 7 January 2012. The blue…

Keep Your Desk Clutter-Free With These Clever Magnetic Doodads

A while back, we showed youthis awesome magnetic bottle opener for all your no-mess, Adult Beverage needs. Now, our friends at DropCatch have infiltrated the office—not with beer (bummer) but with a new line of lovely magnetic pen and headphone holders. Both holders are handcrafted from maple and walnut wood, and can be applied using…

Now you can control living cockroaches with a mobile app

A company called Backyard Brains will sell you a DiY kit that allows you to hook a living cockroach up to your mobile phone and control its movements with electrical impulses. This will be the first consumer version of the technology behind things like the robo-rat. And not everyone is happy about it. You can…

Inside Bentley’s Workshop, Where Tailors Turn Leather Into Luxury

Complex assembly lines and state-of-the-art robots usually hog the limelight when car makers give behind-the-scenes peeks at how their vehicles are assembled. But this look at Bentley’s leather shop is a wonderful mix of both modern machinery and old-school art and craftsmanship. The shop uses everything from laser cutters, to maximize the number of pieces…

Comment of the Day: Futuristic Shipyard Edition

In today’s comments we theorized about the inner lives of our house-pets, smiled awkwardly at the science behind nervous laughter, and came up with one unlikely candidate for most life-changing invention. In response to this post, on the inventions of the last 100 years that most changed our lives, commenter AverageDrafter makes the case for…

Spacey Fukushima Worker Pushes Wrong Button, Almost Causes Meltdown

It’s another week and another chance for TEPCO to embarrass itself at the beleaguered Fukushima power plant. Sometime on Monday morning, the cooling pump for the reactors shut down suddenly. It must’ve been some mechanical failure or some freak accident, right? Nah. Some worker just pushed the off button by mistake, according to the Nuclear…

Watch these interlocking gears spin at a mindbending 4,500 rpm

Mitsubishi Corporation has developed a set of three interlocking gears that can move around in different movement patterns while spinning at full tilt — which in some cases can reach an astounding 6,000 rpm. These three gears are running on an AC servo system. Each unit has three motors, and they’re being controlled by a…

A novel about a dystopian future China wins the Chinese Nebula Awards

The winner of the Best Novel category in this year’s China’s Xingyun (Nebula) Awards is a book that paints a pessimistic, dark view of a corrupt near-future China. The Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan takes place in the 2020s, and depicts a dystopian future China. Workers in an “economic zone” in Guangdong Province are turned…

OptiGrill Lightning Review: It’s a George Foreman With Laser Eyes

It’s been a brutal day at work, you have no energy to cook, and you just want your dinner to take care of itself. With this meat-sensing indoor grill at your disposal, it kind of will. What Is It? It’s an indoor, electric grill with a built-in optical cooking sensor. Who’s It For? The culinarily…

Is This Terrifying Storm About to Eat Manhattan?

All day we’ve been hearing about some terrible storms, and wind, and tornados that are coming for us New Yorkers. But thanks to the folks at EarthCam, we can watch the this horrifying weather come straight at us livefrom a webcam mounted on the Statue of Liberty. It’s getting dark over our office. Oh my…

Do you love B movies? Then don’t miss the 7th annual B Movie Celebration in Illinois! There will be performances, great new B movies, and interviews with the greatest B-movie creators ever. It’s Oct. 25-27, and you can find out more on the event website!

Get Obsessive With These Size Comparison Charts

Size matters. Especially when it comes to starships, giant monsters, buildings, and . . . well, pretty much anything else that you can obsessively categorize using common measurement systems. Here are some of the most outrageously detailed size comparison charts you’ll ever see. Spaceship Comparison Chart by Dirk Loechel Check the chart in full size…

The secret reason for Sweden’s lack of child-eating gnomes revealed

Seattle-based band King Luan posits there are no gnomes in Sweden in their amazing song “There Are No Gnomes in Sweden,” and if you’ll listen to it, I think you’ll agree that their evidence is quite compelling. Truly, it’s the most informative music video since we learned what the fox says.

When Will Airbnb Decide What Kind of Company It Wants to Be?

In 2007, I got an email from San Francisco. A big industrial design conference was coming to town and Bay Area hotels were predictably overbooked and overpriced. Two designers wanted to help their friends find affordable, un-scary places to stay, so they started a website called AirBed & Breakfast. The two designers were Joe Gebbia…

Thomas Edison’s Talking Dolls Sound Like They’re Possessed By Satan

Thomas Edison is remembered for his contributions to many great innovations, including the phonograph, the light bulb, and the movie camera. But few people today remember one of his most spectacular failures: a talking doll that was the must-have Christmas toy in 1890. There was just one little problem with the dolls. They sounded like…

Unpaid Members of the NSA Probe Refuse to Meet Because of the Shutdown

So, you know how the federal government all shut down because Congress failed to come up with a budget to pay the employees? Well, the members of the special committee set up to investigate the intelligence community just threw in the towel, too. But they weren’t even getting paid in the first place. In what…

NBC’s ordered a scifi pilot from Transformers movie scriptwriter Ehren Kruger titled Tin Man. It is not, thankfully, yet another show about The Wizard of Oz, but “a psychological crime thriller set in the near future that focuses on a fugitive robot accused of first degree murder,” according to Variety

The central limit theorem, explained with bunnies and dragons

Animator Shuyi Chiou and the folks at CreatureCast give an adorable introduction to the central limit theorem – an important concept in probability theory that can reveal normal distributions (i.e. bell curves) across data that does not appear to fit a normal distribution curve. Via The New York Times: Many real-world observations can be approximated…

An Audi You Can Give As a Pre-School Graduation Gift

Before you scoff in disbelief at the $450 price tag on this adorable children’s toy, remember that you’re actually getting two ride-ons for the price of one here. The Mini Runner, made from a hydroformed lightweight aluminum frame, converts from a sit down balance bike to a standing scooter with minimal fuss and muss. The…

Science proves dogs are people too!

As every dog owner/lover/friend knows, dogs are extremely intelligent and insanely lovable bundles of fur. Now, science has proven just how smart and aware our four-legged friends really are. Recent canine brain scans prove that dogs “experience consciousness and emotions at a level comparable to humans.”