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The digital duo Josh and Chuck deconstruct your world.
There’s a secret war that’s been ongoing for sometime among archaeologists concerning the proper way to interpret relics left behind by older cultures, the meanings and intentions of which have been lost to the gulf of time. On the one hand are those who would call a cigar a cigar, or in this case, a cave painting that looks like an owl is probably an owl. On the other side are those who are pretty sure we’ll never be able to say with certainty that the painting actually is of an owl, though it certainly looks like one.
If you were born a baby spider, things would have turned out much differently for you. You’d have been mostly brain, for example. Researchers have long suspected that tiny spiders — the young of which are routinely born deformed yet grow into normally proportioned adults — are born with very large brains. Now they know it, thanks to what I imagine is research that amounted to dissecting deformed spider babies carried out by arachnid specialists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, down Panama way.
Amazing Medical Conditions: Maple Syrup Urine Disorder
by Josh Clark | December 13, 2011
If you were to be diagnosed with the condition known as maple syrup urine disease you may think that you’ve hit the medical jackpot: All the free maple syrup you can drink at your disposal almost anytime. But you would be wrong, friend. Despite its quasi-pleasant name, MSUD — that actually is the medical term [...]
How Winners Work: The Great HowStuffWorks Contest of ’11
by Josh Clark | December 9, 2011
First, let me say they made me write this. They being the marketing department, the people who make others write about themselves in blog posts about contests that the writer figures into as a prize. Would it be too unsettling to write about myself in third person instead? Let me try that.
Food Trucks begat Diners; or, What’s old is new again
by Josh Clark | November 22, 2011
Sometimes things come so clearly full circle that it’s elegant. An excellent case in point and the only one I can think of right now is the current trend toward buying one’s gourmet hotdogs and tacos from food trucks. It’s worth pointing out that it’s a trend in outlying cities like Atlanta, St. Louis. and San Francisco, though it’s has been pretty much permanent and largely taken for granted that at any given moment on certain streets in New York, there will be a line of trucks capable of preparing and serving hot food like gyros and sausages in exchange for cash only.
3/50 Project: Support Local Business, Keep Your Town Afloat
by Josh Clark | November 17, 2011
I came across a pretty cool nascent web-based social movement the other day, thanks, I must admit, surprisingly, to the Captivate, the elevator TV network. It’s called the 3/50 Project and it encourages patronizing small businesses as a means of sustaining the communities they serve. I’m not typically a frequenter for business blogs that have taglines like, “Success only runs in one direction,” and that feature FAQs where the author writes of herself glowingly in third person. They remind me that I tend to fail at chatting in conference rooms. Despite its roots in just such a blog I am struck by the 3/50 project as a pretty good idea.
I think there’s probably nothing more disturbing than a giant spider, one where you can see all of its mouth parts and eyes and hairs. Extremely close up photography provides some of the unsettlement, but at least you can’t hear the terrible sounds they make. Their ability to terrify me (only in gigantism) notwithstanding, spiders are also extremely interesting creatures (arachnids, to be technical).
The quantum world makes my head hurt a lot, but I have here to present to you, something that I kind of have my mind wrapped around, largely because I haven’t delved too deeply into it, as the quantum level of material existence is the yawning void where human minds are warped to destruction. This is just like that, I’m sure, but I’m remaining relatively superficial here.
Cake Walk: The strange origin of an unwittingly prejudiced term
by Josh Clark | November 14, 2011
Surely you’ve heard the term cake walk, used to describe some sort of challenge or task that is reckoned to be pitifully easy. Surely you have, please, please don’t lie. That figurative definition has been around since the early 19th century, as long as the literal one; in fact it appeared in print first. But did you know that the term is actually pretty racist? I’ll bet you didn’t. Nor did I until I looked into the origin of the term and found it has roots in the Antebellum South of the early 19th century.
On Clostridium difficile and fecal transplants
by Josh Clark | November 11, 2011
Remember the MRSA scare of a couple years ago? Remember, it was before the swine flu scare but after the SARS and avian flu scares. For those who can’t recollect, MRSA is a potentially fatal, antibiotic-resistant staph infection, essentially a superbacterium that a lot of researchers believe is the result of the overuse of things like antibacterial soap and the misuse of antibiotic medications. One of the things that made it so frightening was that otherwise healthy people were catching it in hospitals.
Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
- How the Philtrum works – the place under your nose where your face comes together
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
- What happens to our sun once it runs out of fuel?
- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
- Who invented the Christmas card?
- How the Kinsey Report Fueled Whiskey Sales
- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
- Blow Your Mind: In the Lair of the Rat King
- Mandala: Memory Palace, Inception and Simulated Worlds
- Virgin Galactic: $200,000 Ticket to Ride
Stuff You Should Know
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
- Amazing Medical Conditions: Maple Syrup Urine Disorder
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Was Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial a little too political?
- Why is NASA studying car safety?
- Tips for in-car Navigation Systems
How-to Stuff
- How to Make the Most of a Gallery Crawl (When You’re on a Shoestring Budget)
- How to Swim with Dolphins (When Deep Water Terrifies You)
- How to Cure a Homemade Cookie Craving Without Turning on the Oven
PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 39: Urban Legends
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 38: Defending Disney Princesses?
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 37: An Introduction to Studio Ghibli
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
- Are we rooting for D.B. Cooper?
- Party Time: A Look at Unconventional Politics
