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You Asked: How do party snaps work? — Boris, New York, N.Y. Marshall Brain Answers: The video shows you party snaps, also called snap-n-pops, in action: Here’s what happens if you snap one in your mouth: Of course, most kids immediately imagine making a bomb out of them, by unwrapping the paper and combining them [...]
Researchers Pick Away at Manuscript Puzzle
by Deblina Chakraborty | February 18, 2011
Filled with strange characters and weird illustrations, nobody’s been able to make heads or tails of what the Voynich Manuscript is even about. But thanks to the work of some Arizona-based scientists, we now at least have a better idea of when it was made.
Behold the power of social media and 80s action cinema: A group of Detroit residents have raised more than $50,000 to build a statue of RoboCop in the city’s downtown area. The craziest part? It only took them six days to do it.
Actually, scratch that: The nuttiest part of this story is how the statue came to be in the first place.
Why are there dots around the edges of some car windshields?
by Marshall Brain | February 18, 2011
You Asked:
Why are there dots around the edges of some car windshields? — Jim, Annandale, Va.
Marshall Brain Answers…
The Internet Going Dark and Intel Lighting Up on TechStuff
by Jonathan Strickland | February 18, 2011
This week’s episodes of TechStuff are timely. On Monday, Chris and I talked about the idea of the Internet kill switch — is the United States government considering an act that would let the President shut down our access to the Internet? And on Wednesday we had a discussion about two different methods of data transfer that may or may not be in competition with one another: Intel’s Light Peak technology and USB 3.0.
I’m a big fan of both the 1977 Eames short “Powers of Ten” and the National Film Board of Canada (NFBC), so for this installment of Mind-blowing Video I thought we’d indulge in both these loves. This 1967 short “Cosmic Zoom” by Eva Szasz takes us on an animated, wordless journey from the farthest reaches of space to the smallest corners of innerspace (or at least the smallest corners of innerspace as conceived in the late 60s). Enough chatter, let’s get to the sights and sounds of a boundless cosmos:
History Roundup: The Crafts’ Escape to Freedom
by Sarah Dowdey | February 18, 2011
The story of Ellen and William Craft had me hooked from the start. Daring, ingenuity and a 1,000-mile escape — compelling stuff indeed, especially when you throw in a top hat and green-colored glasses.
Tired of slavery in Macon, Ga., and unwilling to face the prospect of bringing children into a family that could be torn apart at any time, William Craft hatched a plan: his light-complexioned wife would disguise herself as a young, sickly, but well-off white man, and travel by train and steamer to freedom in Philadelphia. William would tag along as her solicitous slave, securing her medicine, making her comfortable and steaming the poultices that hid Ellen’s smooth cheeks.
Visualizing Inequality: U.S. Gender Pay Gap by Industry
by Cristen Conger | February 18, 2011
Pardon me if it seems like I’m beating a dead horse, but the gender pay gap is still very much alive and kicking in the U.S. of A. This old news flash comes courtesy of 2009 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics arranged in a handy, colorful (and depressing if you’re an employed female) chart…
Stuff Mom Never Told You about Kissing and Why You Feel So Cold
by Molly Edmonds | February 18, 2011
This week on Stuff Mom Never Told You, Cristen and I tried to warm you up, only to cool you right back down. Monday’s topic was kissing, something that’s guaranteed to give a person a fever, if Peggy Lee is to be believed. Most of the time, we’d prefer other people’s saliva stay far away from us, so why are we so eager to swap it with a person we love?
This week Nvidia announced its latest Tegra processor for Tablet computers and smartphones. The chip has 4 cores, which appears to be a first in this class of CPUs. This gives it unprecedented power, as demonstrated in this video: Here is what it means in real terms – the ability to drive 1440p displays: “We [...]
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