Spies turn to Twitomancy
That’s the use of Twitter for divination purposes. And, Nature says, is now an official field of government intelligence research: The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects […]
Science Art: Mirounga leonina 01, by H. Zell
This is a southern elephant seal, the largest marine mammal that isn’t a whale. They’re about twice as weighty …
Read moreScience Art: What can make any tape recorder sound a little more like an Ampex?, 1963.
This is an ad for Ampex tape from the August 1963 edition of Electronics Australia, a magazine (which I found o…
Read moreScience Art: Cygnus region in emission lines, 2025
This is a photo of space with a bit of color amplification so we can tell what we’re looking at. Nebulas on the…
Read moreScience Art: Heart apical two-chamber view myocardial regions, by Patrick Lynch
This is an illustration of a particular perspective in a cardiac echocardiogram. An “apical view” is one of the…
Read moreSONG: Sleeping Cathedrals
SONG: “Sleeping Cathedrals”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “World’s biggest whale g…
Read moreScience Art: Build Your Own Lie Detector, 1955
This is the opener for an article in the May 1955 issue of Popular Electronics. You can read the article here, …
Read morePolio spreads.
BBC says the disease, once thought practically eradicated, is now moving out into China from Pakistan: Polio has been found in China for the first […]
Herring AND good genes can keep you young.
So reports LiveScience’s “Bad Medicine” columnist Christopher Wanjek, writing about the woman who was the world’s oldest: The 115-year-old Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who held the […]
Science Art: “Good News for Bad Writers” (The Typewriter, Punch, September1867)
Click to embiggen In 1867, the typewriter was a ridiculous leap in technology. The editor of Punch anticipated the next step: “Writing Superseded. — Mr. […]
T-rex hungrier, bigger than thought.
So time travelers, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Reuters reports that the king of carnivores was even fiercer than we imagined: Using three-dimensional laser […]
It makes, uhhh, more sense. When I, ummm…
And, according to Scientific American, when I “errr” and “hmmm” too. Those weird verbal tics help children learn: Such vocal hesitations, called disfluencies, tend to […]
Giant Squid, we salute you!
Giant Squid is a doom metal/sludge rock band (with a cello) that writes songs about humpback whale tongues and the violent mating habits of sharks. […]
Touching robot fingers.
You wouldn’t think it would be emotional, but as this CBS report illustrates, that depends on if it’s the first time you’ve held hands with […]
Lair of the kraken.
PhysOrg uncovers tantalizing traces of terrifying prehistoric predator – a giant squid that hunted ichthyosaurs: But the fossils at the [Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada] […]
Science Art: Caisson, by Pearson Scott Foreman.
Found on Wikimedia Commons. It moves water. It moves me.
Liver brains.
MedicalXpress reveals a new source for nerve cells without stem cells – making neurons from liver cells: Fully mature liver cells from laboratory mice have […]
It’s really invisible.
None of this “invisible to X-rays” or “invisible in the infrared” business for the University of Texas. When they use carbon nanotubes to make something […]
Today’s science-crime police blotter…
Dateline: Washington state. 3news reports on a paleontological poacher pinched purloining a prehistoric proto-pig: A Longview, Washington, man accused of digging up the skull of […]
Rhythm of memory.
MedicalXpress dances to the beat that makes memories in our brains: UCLA neuro-physicists have found there is an optimal brain “rhythm,” or frequency, for changing […]
Randy squid.
Not like the name. Like… you know. The squid the New York Times says are ready to get it on, however they can get it: […]