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Adidas Energy Running: The Next Great Running Innovation, Or the Next Big Cheat

Running shoes are a touchy subject. Some people like minimal cushioning to promote good form, others prefer something more engineered. Adidas’s new Energy Running push comes down on the latter side of the argument in an impressive way. Maybe even too impressive. So “Energy Running” means Adidas has two new things to stick in its…

Alfred Hitchcock is haunting the River Charles

You’re looking at a photograph of the frozen Charles River, taken this morning at 9:35 local time from the Mass Ave bridge connecting Cambridge to Boston. Call us crazy, but we couldn’t help but notice the profile of a certain Master of Suspense taking shape in the cracks between the river’s ice floes. What say…

Amazon just added even more shows to Prime Instant Video, this time from CBS, aka your parents’ favorite network.

Why Is Pop Culture So Obsessed with the 1920s?

A great science fiction author once said that every story of the future is really about the “unthinkable present.” The same is true of stories about history. And right now, a lot of our most popular stories are set in the 1920s, from Downton Abbey and Boardwalk Empire to the forthcoming Baz Luhrmann adaptation of…

9 Reasons to Root Your Android Device

To root or not to root? That is the question. Rooting your Android device definitely pushes you up a level or two in your geekdom. It requires a certain level of commitment, at least a little savvy, and even a modicum of risk. So, why would you want to bother? We’ve got nine good reasons…

This sea slug has a detachable penis

Sea slugs are weird. But their sexual habits are even weirder. Take Chromodoris reticulata for example. It’s a “simultaneous hermaphrodite,” meaning it has both male and female sexual organs which it uses at the same time when mating (making it the envy of the animal kingdom). Even stranger, however, is how its penis detaches after…

13 Lazy Christians Giving Up Facebook for Lent

Lent begins today, commemorating the story of Jesus and some friends trapped in the desert, starving, hot, miserable, and tempted by Satan. A reminder of piety. It’s also a depressing reminder of how cripplingly addicted we are to Facebook. The idea behind Lent, if I’ve read this Wikipedia entry correctly, is giving up a vice…

I’m Elyn Saks and this is what it’s like to live with schizophrenia

Elyn Saks first started noticing that something was wrong when she was 16. One day, and without reason, she suddenly left her classroom and started walking home. It turned into an agonizing journey in which she believed all the houses in her neighborhood were transmitting hostile and insulting messages directly into her brain. Five years…

You’ll Desperately Want To Complete This Connect-The-Dots Music Video

Motion capture technology isn’t all about creating life-like digital creatures. A band called Foal recently used it on the music video for its song My Number to create a moving connect-the-dots puzzle that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. The video took about three months to create, from the motion capture sessions to the computer animation…

This aerial view of Boston two days after Nemo is absolutely breathtaking

Have you been humbled by nature today? Take a look at this. It’s a photograph of Boston, taken from the cockpit of a 777 two days after Winter storm Nemo blasted the city with 30+ inches of snow. [Click here for hi-res.] “My bosses’ buddy is an American Airlines pilot and was flying a 777…

Googlers Reported More Than Half of the Vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Latest Patch

Microsoft just released a giant “Patch Tuesday” bulletin for the month. Weird thing about this update? More than half of the bugs found in Microsoft products were reported by none other than Google engineers. It’s not unusual for Googlers to uncover security flaws in Word, Office, Internet Explorer, and so forth. Mountain View’s finest found…

Cram All Your Soccer Gear, Including a Net, Into This Backpack

Not since the tennis ball has a product promised to so radically change the face of pick-up kickball games. Gone are the days of kids having to place two backpacks side-by-side to create an impromptu goal because Golme’s new Urban Pac backpack features a five-foot wide pop-out net. The backpack itself is also spacious enough…

If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?

As XKCD’s Randall Munroe recently pointed out, it’s a question worth considering. Psychologists and sociologists agree with him. Here’s why. When we hear about the psychology of crowds, it’s often in an unsavory context. “Group-Think Makes Killers,” reads the title of this article by social psychologist Bernd Simon, who cites the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment…

Slacker Radio Redesigns Its Look to Entice the Pandora-Weary

Pandora is the leader in streaming music mostly because it got there first. But use it for a while, and you realize the service’s catalog—not to mention its features—are limited. On paper, Slacker Radio is superior, and today, the five-year-old service is launching an overhaul aimed at proving it’s superior. Slacker Radio is Internet radio…

Holy crap this live-action Wreck-It Ralph short is stunning

What would Wreck-It Ralph look like if it starred real people? A lot like Kial Natale’s 60-second short. Seriously. this thing is unbelievable, and we would pay movie theater prices to see the whole movie recreated in live-action. Well done!

The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro Just Got $200 Cheaper

Apple just cut the price of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. You can now pick one up for $1,500—$200 less than the original starting price of $1,700. That means that the basic 13-inch Retina Pro—with 128GB of storage—is now slightly more wallet friendly. For $1,700, the same price as the old entry-level model,…

Feet Of Flames: These Survival Boots Include a Built-In Fire Starting Kit

RockS2V is working hard to build a name for itself when it comes to emergency survival gear. The company’s Provision coat includes a built-in life-saving toolkit if you find yourself stranded somewhere remote, and its new Substratum boots feature a secret compartment inside designed to stash an emergency fire starting kit. In reality you can…

Surface Pro Teardown: Don’t Dream of Taking This Thing Apart

Microsoft’s Surface Pro may only have been released last week, but iFixit has already torn it apart. Perhaps unsurprisingly, you don’t wanna think about repairing or upgrading this thing, period. iFixit counted a whole 90 screws that had to be removed to open the Surface Pro up completely as well as a whole bunch of…

First clip from Monsters University shows the moment Sully and Mike met

Here it is, the very first time Mike Wazowski and Sully shook hands and exchanged words, all thanks to a six-legged monster pig. John Goodman (the voice of Sully) revealed the first ever clip from Monsters University while stopping by the Jimmy Fallon Show. And so far, this latest Pixar pictures looks good, real good!

What should our post-apocalyptic currency be?

Sorry if today’s mail is a little short; I’ve been chased by a group of assholes through what I believe is the entirety of Idaho. Here’s a tip for any other post-apocalyptic travelers posing as postmen — no matter how badly someone makes fun of you for your mailman uniform, if they have a gun…