<I>Bad Astronomy</I> (gotta love that name) hosts a video animation of what would happen if a 500-mile wide asteroid hit the Earth. Yes, I could have embedded the <I>YouTube</I> video here, but I found <I>BA</I>'s comments worthwhile.
Has <I>Toxoplasma gondii</I> 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.
Feel confused by the pace of scientific progress? Ah grasshopper, that is but the first step on the path to enlightenment.
Yup, but this five book list of technological books that matter from the <I>WSJ</I> is a corker. The only book on it that I've read in Dava Sobel's superb <I>Longitude</I>, but if the others match it for page-turning readability, I'll hoover 'em all up.
I <I>love</I> NASA's <I>Astronomy Picture of the Day</I>, but today's image of a planetary nebula is spectacular even by <I>APOD</I>'s standards.
It <I>is</I> theoretically possible, but they'd have to destroy the original. You go first.
As my buddy Jeff and I were walking around the neighborhood recently, I was struck by how many drop-dead gorgeous high-school age girls there were. Feeling sort of dumb for asking, I said, "Is it my imagination or have girls gotten prettier since we were in high school?"
Conventional wisdom holds that continental strength relies upon the solidity of rock at a depth of 15km and that below that pressure and heat cause the rock to flow as liquid. Not so fast, say Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, Roberto F Weinberg, and Gideon Rosenbaum. Their new study says that "through dynamic interaction the strongest part becomes the weakest."
The linguistic distribution of the generic names for soft drinks.
But the Ace Craft Gen H-4 personal helicopter is pretty darn cool. If you have a Y chromosome, I bet you want one, too.