The 21st Century Is Making You Miserable
Precisely because you're not miserable enough in the first place, if I follow this chap's reasoning.
Wes Phillips
Baked Seaweed Capacitors
French researchers have constructed "supercapacitors" from burnt-to-a-crisp seaweed.
Huck's Still On Strike
Huckleberry continues his lie-down strike, protesting his exclusion from the air-conditioned bedroom.
Who Watches the Watch-Cat?
Bagheera is no shirker. A little heat wave doesn't deter her from her daily duty of making sure our block is thoroughly observed—especially those good-for-nothing squirrels.
Pop Quiz
Okay, not a pop quiz, but a test of your ability to differentiate the famous musicians from the unknowns.
Rare Dava Sobel Sighting
The Age profiles Dava Sobel, author of Longitude (very highly recommended), Galileo's Daughter (ditto), and now Planets.
Not a Comet!
I love NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, but today's image of a planetary nebula is spectacular even by APOD's standards.
Not Another List!
Yup, but this five book list of technological books that matter from the WSJ is a corker. The only book on it that I've read in Dava Sobel's superb Longitude, but if the others match it for page-turning readability, I'll hoover 'em all up.
Dare to be Dumb!
Feel confused by the pace of scientific progress? Ah grasshopper, that is but the first step on the path to enlightenment.
Parasite Rex?
Has Toxoplasma gondii affected human culture? Maybe so, claims Kevin Lafferty. Toxoplasma guru Karl Zimmer points us toward Lafferty's just published paper and tells us what to look for.