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IBM's Watson Memorized the Entire 'Urban Dictionary,' Then His Overlords Had...
You don't even want to know, they should have explained. Jeopardy/Alexis C. Madrigal Humans talk funny. We invent words. We smash words together, tear them apart, abbreviate them one way, then another....
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The Story of the Slinky
How one klutzy move launched a toy empire. In the early 1940s, the nation's energies were bent on victory in Europe. American industry revolved around war production. On the grounds of Cramp's shipyard...
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Here It Is: The 'Most Significant' Photo Recently Taken From Space
Astronaut Chris Hadfield is, in addition to everything else, a photographer. This is his favorite image. Chris Hadfield captures images of Earth from the cupola of the International Space Station....
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A Big Field Test for 'GeoPush' Ads That Pop Up on Your Phone
Google-backed geofenced ads could open up space for whole new types of media as it becomes profitable to do new kinds of local journalism. Today, ScoutMob, a daily deals site with a focus on the...
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What It Would Look Like to Orbit the Moon
On December 14, as NASA's GRAIL mission came to a close, the mission's Ebb spacecraft flew above the northern hemisphere of the far side of the moon. The little spaceship -- a vehicle about the size...
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Rare Photo of the Mushroom Cloud Over Hiroshima Discovered in a Japanese...
Taken just minutes after the bomb fell, as incomprehensible horror unfolded below. Honkawa Elementary School In the center of Hiroshima, in a part of the city totally destroyed by the explosion and...
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The U.K.'s Biggest Distributor of Children's Books Is About to Be ... McDonald's
Happy meals in Britain are getting a little more literary. Flickr/Chelsea Gomez Is there an activity that combines whooping and weeping and shaking one's head at the weirdness and occasionally the...
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NSFW: First Ever Video of Deep-Sea Squid Having Sex
Just kidding, totally safe for work Mystery solved! Scientists have long wondered how, precisely, a male squid uses his quote-unquote "terminal organ" to transfer spermatophores (capsules containing...
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The Newtown Shooting Really Has Changed the Conversation on Gun Control, as...
For a long, sad time, with each mass shooting incident came a wave of passion about gun control -- a wave that pummeled the shore for a few days, before flowing out to sea with the arrival of another...
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Aaron Swartz
From my friends in the tech world I have over the years heard about someone I hadn't ever met, Aaron Swartz. I feel as if I had been hearing about him forever, but it couldn't have been all that long,...
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Today's Diverting Aerial-Undersea Footage
As a break from some dark-toned discussion, I give you the Italian skydiver, jumper, conservationist, and model Roberta Mancino -- in China, under the waves, and elsewhere. You may recognize some of...
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Why You Can't Cry in Space
In microgravity, says astronaut Chris Hadfield, "your eyes make tears but they stick as a liquid ball." No tears here! ISS crew members Romanenko, Marshburn and Hadfield joke as they talk with...
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Cannonballs, Samurai Swords, Chastity Belts: An Inventory of the Items Found...
A year's worth of (weird, revealing, scary) data from the nation's airports A gun and accompanying ammunition, concealed -- but not well enough -- in stuffed animals (TSA) The Transportation Safety...
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The Largest Structure Ever Observed in the Universe
At 4 *billion* light years across, this quote-unquote "object" throws astronomical assumptions that go back to Einstein into doubt. A computer visualization of quasar cluster U1.27 or, more...
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Visualizing the Death of Print—as a 3D Tyrannosaurus Rex
Paper Age, a short animation by Ken Ottmann, brings the pages of a newspaper to life in crisp 3D to tell the story of the rise and fall of print: A mighty dinosaur stalks through an origami-style...
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Security Tip: Disable Java Now
I'm skeptical about many of the "worst virus ever!!!" warnings that storm across Internet-land from time to time. But the latest advisory, about a potentially very serious vulnerability in the Java...
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New Delta App Puts a Virtual Glass Bottom on Your Plane, Shows You What's Below
If you've ever looked out your window and wondered, "What is that down there?," a new iPad app will satisfy your curiosity. Delta's new iPad app has all the usual features of a standard airline app:...
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Video: Can Google Make a TV That Will Listen When I Talk to It?
A visit to YouTube's lab, where they are building the TV of the future TV works great when it's TV. You turn it on, a moving picture displays something. You use a rudimentary device to tune into...
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Facebook's Graph Could Be OkCupid, Yelp, and LinkedIn, All in One
Facebook unveils a powerful new search tool that will put the wisdom of your friends at your fingertips. Facebook Perhaps you've posted on Facebook something like this: "Anyone have any good book...
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'This Robot Is the Latest Weapon in the War on Birds'
Four years after the "Miracle on the Hudson," a higher-tech way to combat bird strikes Airline passengers wait to board a ferry to be rescued after their US Airways Airbus 320 jetliner ditched in the...
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