On January 5, 2011, I wrote the following: “Designer” is a dangerous term, because it usually means some crazy person with ridiculous ideas who then makes CAD drawings or actual mock-ups of his crazy ideas and yet, for some goddamn reason, I appear to be the only person to notice that said idea is crazy.... Continue Reading →
Ever been to the website Elite Daily? If you haven't, don't bother. Home of such journalistic masterpieces as "Zayn Malik Isn't Worried About Leaving One Direction Because His Fiance Is Hot As F*ck" and "Man Given 18 Months To Live Says Cannabis Oil Cured His Cancer," it's a long-running stream of feel-good drivel that's generally... Continue Reading →
This has come up before and never gotten a ton of mainstream attention, but I saw it again and thought I'd address it. WHAT IS IT? Breaking news: the Sun is really freaking bright. Like you cannot believe. In ideal conditions, the Sun is shining roughly 1050 watts on each and every square meter of ground.... Continue Reading →
Recently there was a schism on the internet between people about the color of a dress. That led to all kinds of scientific articles about how we perceive color differently, memes about white and gold things and black and blue things, and finally, eventually, this. That is from an article on LinkedIn, written by a woman... Continue Reading →
If you've never seen Vertical Limit, good for you. If you've never even heard of it, even better. It came out in 2000 and somehow made $215 million on a budget of just $75 million, despite being a train wreck of scarcely believable proportions. It is, without a doubt, the worst climbing movie ever made,... Continue Reading →
Doubtless there are some among you who are already mad at me for being so rude to this innocent woman in my title. First of all, it's paraphrased from the atrocious article on which I based this post, and secondly, get over it. She deserves it. You'll see. Earlier this week, a friend of mine... Continue Reading →
Obviously the classic song ends that phrase with “your dreams come true.” Then, as I’m sure you’ve seen, some smartass decided to put a modern and more cynical spin on the phrase with some iteration of the following: Unfortunately, that smartass was also a dumbass. Here’s why. First of all, the phrase “you’re a few... Continue Reading →
As I'm pretty sure everyone on the internet knows by now, Bill Nye recently had a debate with Ken Ham about whether creationism was a viable explanation for the origins of people and animals and plants and rocks and stars and stuff. I'll cut to the chase: it's not. Creationism doesn't have any science behind... Continue Reading →
A while ago, several news outlets of varying degrees of reputability reported on the intentions of a company called Liftport to build a space elevator, but not on the Earth where it'd be accessible by human beings. They want to build one on the moon. But first they have to figure out if it's possible.... Continue Reading →
There's a lot of science that's kind of boring if you don't understand it or its implications. I get that. But there's also a lot of stuff that's awesome in the world of science, despite being almost literally unbelievable when you first hear about it. This is one that I was perusing recently that, upon... Continue Reading →
First of all, the first sentence of this post's title is taken from Phil Plait's book of the same name, which is awesome. It looks like this. You should buy it and read it, and then make all the people you know do the same thing. It's a really good book and Phil is really... Continue Reading →
Yes, I know, that was a somewhat crude title. It is not, however, misleading. You see, a little while ago I read on Inhabitots (Inhabitat's despicable hellspawn) the following headline: I was intrigued, naturally. And being a responsible and intelligent member of the human race, I naturally look up the original study every time the... Continue Reading →
I'll keep this one short. A company named Innowattech (innovation + watt + tech. Get it?) wants to put piezoelectric pads under railways to harvest electric energy from passing trains. Trains roll over the pad, the pads compress, electricity happens, and eco-conscious morons the world over collectively cream their pants because we've MAGICALLY GOTTEN ENERGY... Continue Reading →
So in our last post that was titled like this, we visited some douche who thinks that he can get energy out of cars by making them worse. That was a bad idea. This idea is quite a lot worse. Here's the headline: Again, a preposterously bold claim. The idea is that this train would travel... Continue Reading →
Eventually, there will come a day when people stop listening to "designers" with no background in physics who propose physics-based things. Until then, the word "designer" will continue to mean "dude with AutoCAD/Photoshop skills, a wild hair up his ass, and no connection to the actual world that real people live in." Now when you're... Continue Reading →
