The Thummer
Video game controllers are compact and efficient little things (although I always find the button-heavy X-box ones a little confusing to use). They’re also the […]
Articles by grant b
Zombie roaches.
National Geographic reveals how parasitic wasps transform cockroaches into
Keeping the “C” in OLPC.
The BBC has a field report on the XO, the laptop distributed by the One Laptop Per Child project. It’s a field report by one […]
Endangered words.
Natural History magazine sounds a warning for words. University of Michigan linguist Sarah Grey Thomason, a specialist in the Salish–Pend d’Oreille language of Montana’s Native […]
Dinosaur meat.
Palaeontologists in North Dakota have found a first-of-a-kind duck-billed dinosaur fossil, the BBC reports, containing not just hadrosaur bones, but the remains of skin, ligaments […]
One chimp, two chimp.
Science Daily continues to make me feel inadequate by pointing out that even chimpanzees are better at math: “There are still many people, including many […]
Science Art: Rust and Dirt
No, this isn’t an orbital photo of Mars or a microscopic image of crystallography. It’s a photo of good old iron oxide, taken by Roger […]
Etienne-Jules Marey, Fusil Photographique
Picture borrowed from the Étienne-Jules Marey biography in the Hargrave Aviation History pages. In the 1800s, Étienne-Jules Marey made a name for himself studying human […]
Babies know who’s helpful.
New Scientist reports on the wisdom of babes. Six-month-olds are able to recognize who’s really on their side and who’s trying to do them wrong, […]
Making a brain.
For a few years now, computer engineers have been building a virtual brain – using computers to replicate every neural connection in a mammal’s gray […]
Invisible? Or just empty?
Nature recently revealed research that will please the nihilists among us, from astrophysicist Teppo Mattsson, who says that dark energy, the stuff that keeps the […]
Robot Guitar.
I’m not sure if this takes the fun out of weird intonations and un-well-temperedness, but Gibson is now selling an amazing guitar that Is. A. […]
Science wants to be free…
…even when taught online by some of the world’s top universities. Maybe I can finally get chemistry to make sense.
Dry tobacco.
Nature reports on a new strain of genetically modified drought-resistant tobacco. OK, so some people are probably thinking this sounds like the least healthy plant […]
Science Art: Snow crystals 2b
Hexagonal dendrite snowflake as captured by the Electron Microscopy Unit of the USDA Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.