The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to two different teams: one that proved Coke is spermicidal and another that demonstrated the opposite. We haven’t read either dissertation, so we don’t know what methods they used… but we can think of a few!
Also winning this year are the researchers who discovered that foods that sound crunchier taste better, higher-priced placebos are more effective than cheaper ones, (female) lap dancers’ fertility cycles affect their tip-earning potential, and fleas on dogs can jump higher than fleas on cats.
For the full…
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People are all freaked out like you wouldn’t BELIEVE about this third manned mission China’s sending into outer space!
It all went down yesterday or maybe tomorrow. (I don’t really know, isn’t China 36 hours east of Eden, what with the time zones and all? Plus, there’s daylight savings time to consider.) Or rather, it all went up: atop a Long March 2F rocket, the Shenzhou 7 blasted off and in an upward direction toward space and then into space with a three-person crew.
According to Liu Guoning, a researcher with the…
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Over 4th of July weekend in New York City, the streets are blissfully quiet, the crowds subside in SOHO, and the whole damn place quiets down to the murmur. You feel like you’re in Berlin for a weekend. You also end up seeing things you normally don’t and for whatever reason, I noticed a lot of Smart cars this weekend parked on the street.
I couldn’t help but think further about the success of Smart car in the US so far, and hopefully what it means for other cars pushing the future…
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Not only are the objects that make up this world utterly fascinating - the way we document those objects is equally intriguing.
Wikipedia gives the title of every entry exactly the same preference, the same weight. There is never any disparity between boldness, font, size. However detailed the body copy, in the headings we are all created equal.
Open several Wikipedia pages at once and read the title of each entry in a judicial monotone:
“Jesus. Bottlenose Dolphin. Tim Allen.”
[audio:http://www.lvhrd.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/wikipedia.mp3]
For further proof that the world is populated by…
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The Bush administration censored a report dealing with the safe extraction of Arctic oil and fuel as it prepares to auction off 30 million acres of the remote Chukchi Sea.
“The long-awaited assessment was meant to bring together work by scientists in all eight Arctic nations to give an up-to-date picture of oil and gas exploitation in the high north. In addition to that it was supposed to give policy makers a clear set of recommendations on how to extract safely what are thought to be up to one quarter of…
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Graffiti Research Lab built their own bullet time camera rig for a hip hop video they shot with Styles P, AZ and the Large Professor.
Not only is the video sick, but they left instructions on how to build your own ghetto rig.
Lots more pictures here; and then you have the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUfyu-RFWYs
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Check out this spectral radiometer footage from the descent of the Huygen probe onto Saturn’s moon, Titan.
“The probe remained dormant throughout the 6.7-year interplanetary cruise, except for bi-annual health checks.”
All so it could transmit data for 90 minutes after it completed the parachute-guided descent to Titan’s surface.
“One ESA scientist compared the texture and color of Titan’s surface to a Crème brûlée, but admitted this term probably would not appear in the published papers.”
Imagine some sentient life discovering the Huygen on Titan and being touched by how desperate we…
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This graph is arranged in such a way to make us feel bad just looking at it.
We (Americans) all want more time to ourselves, more time with our friends and families, more time to do the things we love to do that we don’t consider work…but what about when work is what you love to do?
The problem isn’t that we don’t get enough time off; it’s that we’re not doing the right kind of work.
Instead of working jobs we hate that we can’t wait to get away from,…
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Yesterday we talked about the body being a poor vessel for the mind: it gives out.
What if we had the ability to extend our lives beyond the meager 70, 80, 90 years we get now? Augment our bodies and enhance our intelligence. Would we want to live longer in the world we’re building?
On his blog “Accelerating Future” Michael Anissimov lists 10 Reasons We Should Live as Long as Possible:
“8. Because aging and death are primitive and inherently unpleasant”.
And 10 Reasons to Learn about Science and Technology:
“1.…
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So often it seems that the human body cannot support the paralyzing genius of an excessively brilliant mind. Such was the case with Joe Engressia, or Joybubbles, who pioneered the phone pirating subculture of “phone phreaks” in the 1970s.
Joybubbles died earlier this month at the age of 58. He was legally blind, a genius with perfect pitch that allowed him to reproduce perfectly the frequencies phone companies used to transfer and connect long distance calls.
He also refused to grow up. Joybubbles was a minister in his own Church…
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Since we’re trying to increase the amount of awe in the world we will be bringing you regular space updates.
This picture comes courtesy of California Yankee. Astronaut Rick Mastracchio is walking where there is no air away from the earth. Everything looks so clean in space.
NASA decided the astronauts of Endeavor don’t need to fix the gash in the shuttle’s heat shield before they return to Earth next week, at which point they will be a bright point in the night sky, a blip, then gone. Remember to look up.…
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If you’ve been in Riverside Park across from 70th St this summer you may have noticed a cheery looking float bobbing in the water. That would be The Science Barge, a florescent floating solar farm powered by wind and biofuel that tours NYC’s waterfront parks showing people how you can grow food with no carbon emissions and no water.
The Science Barge is run by the NY Sun Works, a non profit that defines sustainability as this:
“To us, sustainability means producing what we need without damaging the world around us.”…
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