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The Case for Using Drugs to Enhance Our Relationships (and Our Break-Ups)
A philosopher argues that taking love-altering substances might not just be a good idea, but a moral obligation. Not actual love drugs (Alexis Madrigal)George Bernard Shaw once satirized marriage as...
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Why We Should Be Scared for Our Coastlines, in 55 Acronyms
VBZD? "Vector-borne and zoonotic disease." SLCS? "Sea level change scenarios." CSO? "Combined sewer overflow." A woman looks at a roller coaster sitting in the ocean after the boardwalk it was built...
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We'll Always Have (Early 20th-Century) Paris: The Web's Renaissance of the...
An old, but beautiful imaging technique preserves a lost Paris, and is itself preserved online. There are dozens of now-obscure graphic processes, so-called dead media, cherished by coteries of...
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What Happens When You Walk Into a Bar Wearing Google Glasses
In which a new technology trial is proposed: The Shotwell's Test.This is how regular patrons act at Shotwell's (flickr/melinnis). Two people wearing Google Glasses walk into a bar....Nope, that's the...
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Behold, the Twilight of the GIF
How rude! The noble GIF is now less popular a format than the humble PNG. imgur via Chris Heller Late last year Zach Seward, my colleague at Quartz, made a bold declaration: "Actually, the GIF is...
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Should What Happens at Applebee's Stay at Applebee's?
A stiffed server, an uploaded receipt, a digital backlash -- it's all a case study in how the Web changes the power dynamic between servers and customers. Flickr/PointnshootAfter Friday services at a...
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The Clocks at Grand Central Station Are Permanently Wrong
... And they're that way on purpose. Reuters Today is the centennial of Grand Central Terminal, the nation's most iconic -- and certainly its most beautiful -- train station. One of the most telling...
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DOE Chief Steven Chu Makes It Official: He's Stepping Down
His legacy, however, is unclear. makes a speech during the 55th International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference at the UN headquarters in Vienna, Austria on September 19, 2011. (Reuters)...
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Today's Glimpse Into the World of Software-Writing
Two years ago, Mark Bernstein was part of the stellar guest-blogger team in this space, when I was holed up in China in a fever of book-writing. In his day job, Mark Bernstein is the head of Eastgate...
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Columbia's Astronauts, Remembered on Mars
Seven hills for seven explorers NASA/JPL/Cornell The best way NASA knows how to pay tribute to the people it has lost in the name of discovery is simply to keep on discovering. But the second-best way...
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DARPA's 1.8 Gigapixel Drone Camera Could See You Waving At It From 15,000 Feet
Word of DARPA's experimental 1.8-gigapixel surveillance video camera, ARGUS-IS, first surfaced in 2009. And now that they probably have something better hidden, more details continue to emerge. A PBS...
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Would a Cessna Fly on Uranus? What About a Cirrus?
In gratitude to the many readers who have sent in pointers to this item, and in ongoing appreciation of the living national treasure that is Randall Munroe of xkcd, and as a little pre-Superbowl...
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Today's Inspiring Aerospace News: Hello Kitty Touches the Face of God
You might already have seen this. I hadn't until just now, thanks to reader RJ of California (and in his case via The Register; also, NY Daily News). It's an absolutely charming video and set of photos...
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The Internal Memo That Allowed IBM's Female Employees to Get Married
When Eleanor Kolchin worked at IBM in the late 1940s she had to keep her marriage a secret. Eleanor Kolchin/Huffington Post In 1946, Eleanor Kolchin's father came home with the news that IBM was hiring...
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Anger Directed at Applebee's Is More Likely to Hurt Than Help Workers
They're being targeted because an incident went especially viral, not because they behaved especially badly. And that creates bad incentives. stev.ie/Flickr Admit it. The Web campaign against...
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The Oldest Known Photographs of a U.S. President
... were actually not a big deal at all, according to the president who sat for them. A 1970 news report announcing the finding of the Adams daguerrotype, accompanied by an ad for a water-weight...
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UPDATE! Cat Bombs More Prevalent Than Previously Thought
A deeper global history of the animal-borne incendiary bomb You may remember this disturbing image from a recent post of mine. It appears to show a bird and cat with bombs strapped to them. The archive...
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Great Essays on Vine and Snapchat
Two seemingly trivial services are a lot more interesting if we take them too seriously. vine.co/v/b1qarUHB6be-- LOST CAT (@LostCatBook) February 1, 2013 Vine and Snapchat are the latest poster...
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Is App-Era Pricing Making Software Better, or Worse?
Last week I mentioned Mark Bernstein's essay on the surprisingly complex sequence of decisions, trade-offs, and design choices that went into creating even the most routine-seeming aspects of the...
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The Case of the Disappearing Homing Pigeons
Between 1968 and 1987, about 900 homing pigeons released at the Jersey Hill fire tower in upstate New York got lost, never to be seen again. Why couldn't they find their way home? William T. Keeton...
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