When I was a kid – and who am I kidding; when I was an adult too – I made fun of the science in movies. “That’s so fakey!” I would cry out loud when a spaceship roared past, or a slimy alien stalked our heroes. Eventually, my verbal exclamations evolved into written ones. Not long after creating my first website (back in the Dark Internet Ages of 1997) I decided it would be fun to critique the science of movies, and I dove in with both glee and fervor. No movie was safe, from Armageddon to Austin Powers. I was right; it was fun. It was surprisingly easy to deconstruct Hollywood accuracy, or lack thereof. Any mistake was fair game; a flubbed line with ... Continue reading →
Last night, millions of viewers watched as Phillip Phillips was crowned "American Idol's" winner for the show's 11th season. But hours before the announcement, computer scientists had already predicted he would win after looking at relevant Twitter posts, and they published their prediction online. A key factor missing from other analyses — the geographic location of the tweets — proved critical in making the final prediction. In addition to the final prediction, the researchers also successfully predicted many of the show's earlier eliminations — a more difficult task considering the greater number of contestants.Phillip Phillips, the 11th American Idol winner. Image Credit: Fox Television via ABC News. Researchers have been looking at Twitter's predictive power for applications including disease spreading, stock market behavior and political ... Continue reading →
Leonard Susskind — he’s the father of String Theory, someone who won the black hole wars with Stephen Hawking, and a Stanford professor who likes to bring physics to the broader public. (Find his 6-course introduction to Modern Theoretical Physics in the Physics section of our collection of Free Online Courses.) Last year, Susskind headed to CalTech to talk about Richard Feynman. Of course, he’s the late, great physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics (find his public lectures on that here). He also shared Susskind’s enthusiasm for popularizing science, creating memorable shows like Fun to Imagine, a television series for the BBC, and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. In this warm talk, Susskind remembers his mentor and friend, ... Continue reading →
Experts at the Smithsonian are using 3D scans of artifacts, like this 19th-century explorer's skull, to recreate the past. Robert Kennicott, a naturalist and early contributor to the Smithsonian collections, died mysteriously on an expedition in 1866. When forensic anthropologists from the National Museum of Natural History exhumed him in 2001 to determine his cause of death, however, they discovered evidence that pointed to natural causes. They were also left with a good looking human skull on their hands -- an ideal item for Vince Rossi and Adam Metallo (aka the "laser cowboys" of the Smithsonian's 3D digitization team) to scan. With a digital scan and replica of the skull, a sculptor recreated Kennicott's face. This short documentary was produced by Ryan Reed for Smithsonian ... Continue reading →
Kathryn's Dad thought she was going through a tomboy phase. Kathryn's Mom suspected it might be something more. From the age of two onwards, Kathryn herself was utterly certain: "I am a boy," the child insisted. Kathryn's story was told on the front page of The Washington Post last Sunday, and I found it a gripping tale. It explores Kathryn's sense, expressed consistently through her toddler years, that she is a boy, and her parents' "upheaval" in trying to do the right thing by their child. When Kathryn was four, after seeking professional counseling, the parents decided to let her live as a boy. Tyler (the pseudonym chosen by the Post for Kathryn's new name) now dresses as a boy and attends preschool as a ... Continue reading →
For those that missed Sunday night’s episode of The Simpsons, there was a brilliant “couch gag” in the opening credits: the Simpson family animated by The Ren & Stimpy Show mastermind John Kricfalusi. The bit (above) was bizarre, awkward, weird (yes that’s Homer pouring a beer directly into his cranium), and wonderful. Basically, it’s all the [...] Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry is floating the idea of invading Mexico. Too late: The U.S. military is already up to epaulets there. 10.03.11 From Danger Room The United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement on Saturday, an accord targeting intellectual property piracy. 10.03.11 From Threat Level Ten years ago this month, in a small-ish theater ... Continue reading →
Photo: Jaap Scheeren On a bright May afternoon in 2007, a German artist and printmaker named Hans-Jürgen Kuhl took a seat at an outdoor café directly opposite the colossal facade of the Cologne Cathedral. He ordered an espresso and a slice of plum cake, lit a Lucky Strike, and watched for the buyer. She was due any minute. Kuhl, a lanky 65-year-old, had to remind himself that he was in no rush. He’d sold plenty of artwork over the years, but this batch was altogether different. He needed to be patient. Tourists milled about the platz in front of the cathedral, Germany’s most visited landmark, craning their necks to snap pictures of the impossibly intricate spires jutting toward the heavens. Kuhl knew those spires well. ... Continue reading →
Sometimes life is a bed of tulips. (Credit: John Gottula) John Gottula is a patient man. His proposal to girlfriend Kelly Voll took more than six months. No, this wasn't the slowest knee-lowering in history. It was a carefully hatched horticultural plot. When it comes to geek love, we've come across proposals involving Super Mario, iPhone apps, "Back to the Future," and Twitter. Gottula, a graduate research assistant in plant pathology and plant-microbe biology at Cornell University, turned to his science background in horticulture for inspiration. "I've heard of men proposing by hiring a pilot and popping the question with a banner. That's expensive; plus I don't have a flair for aeronautics," Gottula tells Crave. "Planting flowers to spell out a proposal seemed more like ... Continue reading →
