Scientist Archive

  • Daily Crunch: Beer & Cake Edition

    Daily Crunch: Beer & Cake Edition

    Posted on April 1, 2010 | No Comments
    Full-frame Canoncake is 5Delicious Indispensible to nature photography: the hide Scientist: Don’t bother going green because there’s nothing we can do to save the planet The KegStool: a bar stool made from a keg! First iPad reviews hit the net

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  • Scientist: Don’t bother going green because there’s nothing we can do to save the planet

    Scientist: Don’t bother going green because there’s nothing we can do to save the planet

    Posted on March 31, 2010 | No Comments
    Well, I hate to be the one to break this news to y'all, but here we are. You know the "green" movement, where companies try to say things like, "Oh, our products are more safe for the environment than our competitors' products"? I don't want to say it's complete nonsense, but the scientist who devised the Gaia theory—our planet is an organism, and we should do our best to ensure its survival—has just said that there's no chance in hell that we're going to save the planet. His advice? "Enjoy life while you can." So, so amazing.

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  • Magnetic quantum dots

    Magnetic quantum dots

    Posted on March 8, 2010 | No Comments
    Scientist #1: "You got your manganese in my germanium!" Scientist #2: "You got your germanium in my manganese!" Both: "Wow! Magnetic quantum dots!"

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  • The European Space Agency wants to extend the ISS’s life until 2020

    The European Space Agency wants to extend the ISS’s life until 2020

    Posted on January 14, 2010 | No Comments
    Believe it or not, the current plan for the International Space Station is to abandon it in 2015 and let it crash into the atmosphere in 2016. Sad, right? But the ESA wants to keep it flying for a few more years to allow more scientist access to the zero-gravity labs.

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  • Samsung Bada screenshots hit the web, but what’s with the Series 60 font?

    Samsung Bada screenshots hit the web, but what’s with the Series 60 font?

    Posted on December 18, 2009 | No Comments
    Hey, good on Samsung for trying to make their own OS. I'm sure it will be wonderful for them. It saves them from having to, I don't know, use Android? But what's with all the Nokia Series 60 font usage in the UI? These screenshots, which are floating around right now, show some of the UI elements of the new OS, Bada. The font they're using is approximately (or exactly, I'm not a font scientist (fontographer?)) the same font used on most Series 60 Symbian phones.

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  • From the Obvious Department: Scientist says 2012 will not be the end of the world.

    From the Obvious Department: Scientist says 2012 will not be the end of the world.

    Posted on October 12, 2009 | No Comments
    So we're all in agreement: the movie 2012 is terrible, and we'd all be better off if it didn't exist. What we should also acknowledge is that, no, the year 2012 will not, in and of itself, mean the death of mankind. Maybe we'll blow ourselves up before then, but 2012 isn't some magical year that you should all be afraid of.

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  • Public Service Announcement: The Zune HD is nigh unreadable in direct sunlight. Just sayin’.

    Public Service Announcement: The Zune HD is nigh unreadable in direct sunlight. Just sayin’.

    Posted on September 26, 2009 | No Comments
    Sometime in the past two weeks I decided, with some thought being put into is, to buy a Zune HD. Why, I don't know; I thought it looked neat, and I was thoroughly unimpressed with the new iPods Apple showed off at that Rock and Roll event. For the most part the Zune HD is, indeed, neat. Its user interface is miles ahead of the iPod's, and, with a little forethought, can be used rather effectively with a dual-booting Mac. There's just one small thing: you absolutely cannot read the display in direct sunlight. Don't try to because you can't.

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  • Feel free to drink your shower water, kids

    Feel free to drink your shower water, kids

    Posted on August 26, 2009 | No Comments
    Normally, you probably wouldn't consider drinking your own shower water after you had used it, but throw a couple of plants in there and you may well reconsider. Or, perhaps you'll react like the Drudge-ushered Daily Mail commenters and say stuff like “WHAT IS THIS GARBAGE, I EARN THE RIGHT TO WASTE WATER AND I'LL BE DAMNED IF SOME EGGHEAD SCIENTIST SAYS OTHERWISE.”

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  • Can you name a scientist? Not too many Americans can, it turns out.

    Can you name a scientist? Not too many Americans can, it turns out.

    Posted on July 2, 2009 | No Comments
    Some hard science-related news for you now. Try this: name a scientist. Go ahead, name one, any one. If you're like me the first name that pops into your head is Bill Nye or Michio Kaku. And if you're also like me you can name several others. The average American? Not so much. USA Today ran a little poll a few days ago asking Americans to name a scientist, and a whopping 23 percent of respondents couldn't name one. That's right: 23 percent of the people USA Today asked couldn't name a single scientist, living or dead, famous or obscure. And only 47 percent could so much as muster the name “Albert Einstein”! What person, let alone American, couldn't come up with the name “Albert Einstein”?

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  • Bored on a Thursday: Check out the Scientist’s Lab from the movie 9

    Bored on a Thursday: Check out the Scientist’s Lab from the movie 9

    Posted on June 17, 2009 | No Comments
    I know, I know. We’re not a movie blog, but many of you have shown interest in Shane Acker’s little project, 9. And it’s a slow news day.

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