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The mass musical hysteria that predated Beatlemania

We’ve seen sixties fangirls scream and claw their faces over The Beatles but we always get the impression that before the swinging sixties, everybody behaved much more sensibly. Everybody stayed calm and expressed enthusiasm in a civilized fashion. Not so. The “mania” suffix wasn’t original to The Beatles — or even to the twentieth century.…

This is what Voltron looked like in 1905

Here’s a man sitting on a throne made of thirteen lions. Okay, so it looks like there’s a wooden platform as well. But you wouldn’t be so churlish to deny that at least five of those lions constitute an arm rest, would you? Sure, this photo may not have the visceral thrills of a bear…

Star Wars TIE Fighter, Free to a Good Home

Would you like a FREE giant Star Wars TIE Fighter, made with love? Do you live in the Salt Lake City vicinity? Well, we’ve got great news for you… There is a TIE Fighter on Craigslist for free — it just needs a good home and someone who remembers to feed and change its water…

Ghostland Observatory: Sad Sad City

Sometimes you have one of those days where you just need to take a dance break. So here’s Ghostland Observatory’s “Sad Sad City” to help you do that. If you haven’t seen the funky Austin electro band live, find a show near you and go. Seriously, they are fantastic performers, and they rock the hell…

Samsung Owes Apple a Comedically Huge $1.05 Billion in Damages (Updated)

The patent trial of the century is not going well for Samsung; the jury has ruled almost entirely in Apple’s favor, with damages so far totaling a hilarious $1.05 billion. That’s about a quarter of Samsung’s operating profit in Q4 of 2011 (but only a tenth of Apple’s cash on hand), and could have massive…

Disguising Physics in a Pretty Pop Tune Is a Great Way to Make People Care About Physics

When all else fails, turning to the most popular song of the year is a great way to make people care about whatever your’re trying to tell them. In this case, the convoluted science of the Higgs Boson—aka the “God particle”—is made infinitely more palatable when sung to the tune of Adele’s multi-platinum best-seller “Rolling…

Samsung vs. Apple Verdict: Apple Wins Huge

We’ve been watching Apple and Samsung hammer each other for what feels like eons over who ripped off whom. And now the jury is in (shockingly soon): Samsung just lost almost everything. The case, which has centered over a panoply of patents relating to both hardware and software design, should settle one major argument once…

Frank Gehry Is Designing Facebook’s New Office Building and That’s Sad

Frank Gehry, the genius architect who designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall or the curve perverted one-trick pony who litters beautiful cities with Toontown buildings because he can’t draw a straight line anymore (depending on your perspective), is going to be designing Facebook’s new engineering office building. You don’t even need to know architecture to…

Turns out bears aren’t actually interested in women’s menstrual cycles

Worried that your period will attract unwanted attention from wild bears? Fear not! By referencing actual studies that look at actual bears’ reactions to actual human menstrual blood, boingboing’s Maggie-Koerth Baker has helped clear up some of the fact and fiction surrounding bears and lady business — and it’s (mostly) good news! Writes Koerth-Baker: Good…

Tiny Boat Brings Go-Karting to Your Local Lake

Maybe you want to get into boat ownership, but can’t be bothered to keep a full-sized one around. Maybe a jet ski isn’t your style. Maybe you just like minature things. In any of those cases, you might like the Marinekart. Very much the boat-equivalent of a go-kart (why they didn’t call it a the…

These are the questions Bill Nye would ask if aliens were to visit Earth

Can you think of a better Earth Ambassador than Bill Nye? And before you say Neil deGrasse Tyson, consider for a moment that his enthusiasm — which, don’t get us wrong, is great, but can also be a little overwhelming — could also be interpreted as threatening to an alien race. NdGT can be a…

The Most Breathtaking Space Pictures You’ve Never Seen Before

Many people associate Hubble Space Telescope with beautiful images of the cosmos — but the truth is that the majority of Hubble’s observations, while scientifically valuable, are pretty boring from a purely visual standpoint. https://gizmodo.com/here-are-10-000-reasons-to-be-excited-about-deep-space-5865535 These “unattractive” observations so vastly outnumber the aesthetically pleasing ones, that a surprising number of Hubble’s most dazzling images never…

Peter Jackson tells us how much of Guillermo Del Toro’s design DNA is in The Hobbit

The Hobbit movies have changed a lot during their production — recently morphing from two movies into three — but no change was greater than when Guillermo Del Toro handed over the director’s spot to Peter Jackson. This was after Del Toro, celebrated monster-designer and director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy, had already spent 18…

Ad Hawk, NextDraft, and More

This week’s edition of the best iPhone apps is special because every single title is free. From a couple of tools to sniff out who’s behind political ads, to a witty selection of the day’s best stories, we’ve got plenty of gratis goodness for you this time around. Ad Hawk: The closer we get to…

TV Guide, Stick Tennis, and More

Congratulations! You’ve made it to Friday again, which means another fresh batch of the best apps of the weeks. This time we’re giving you something that might incite a little wanderlust, an exercise app, and much more. TV Guide: No need to lose sleep over your TV indecision. The new TV Guide app combines all…

Organ Trail, Pinball Pro, and More

Just in time for the weekend, here’s another round of the week’s best Android apps. If you can handle the awesomeness, we’re giving you a zombie/Oregon Trail hybrid, an old pinball game, and much more. Pinball Pro: Unless you’re lucky enough live in close proximity to a bar full of arcade games, you might feel…

Is spontaneous combustion for real?

There have been many alleged cases of spontaneous human combustion in history — but such accounts tend to rouse suspicion even among the more open-minded of us. How is it possible, after all, for the human body to just simply explode into flame? Well, writing in New Scientist, biologist Brian J. Ford thinks he’s found…

The jury in the Apple-Samsung patent trial jubilee has reportedly already reached a verdict. Stay tuned! [CNET]

Here Are the People Behind Google Doodles

Google Doodles are the Cracker Jack prizes of the Internet, the digital back of the cereal box, a quirk that humanize the giant search company. And it’s funny because the Doodles themselves exist in a sort of mysterious world—they pop up one day and then disappear. Very few people know about the process of creating…

The creator of the British Life on Mars creates a new show about the cross-universe police

This actually sounds amazingly promising — Matthew Graham, best known for creating the original British Life on Mars, has a deal with Fox to create a new show called Para Time. According to Heat Vision, the show “revolves around a group that polices parallel worlds.” So, sliders meets police procedural? We’re in. [Heat Vision]