Category Archives: pop culture

The Age of the Selfish Meme

Posted on March 27, 2013 by

The times, they are a-changin’. The image above (via Reddit) comes from an Australian store that has started charging $5 to customers who peruse the goods but don’t buy anything, assuming they are just looking around to buy elsewhere later (possibly … Continue reading →

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The Up-Goer Five and Quantum Mechanics

Posted on January 22, 2013 by

What you see above is something called The Up-Goer Five Text Editor. It’s an online text editor that uses only the 1,000 most common words in the English language as its word database, giving you a warning every time you … Continue reading →

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When Space Pioneers Play It Safe

Posted on December 14, 2012 by

NASA has recently announced that a new rover will be sent to Mars by 2020. Another one? They already have three there. Spirit and Opportunity landed first, in 2004. While Opportunity is still scuttling around, Spirit has been stuck in a sand pit … Continue reading →

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The Perils of Gift Giving

Posted on November 28, 2012 by

The gifting season is upon us. Like several things that require you to interact with others, gift giving is an apparently simple, benign activity that can quickly turn into a can of worms. The main problem is that the giver … Continue reading →

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The 11 most annoying things on Facebook

Posted on November 22, 2012 by

There are a number of things on Facebook that just rub me the wrong way. Here’s a list. 1. The Plea to stop unwanted requests. Let me tell you how this works: those requests are automatic. When you play a … Continue reading →

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Do You Have to be Mad to be a Scientist?

Posted on November 16, 2012 by

Great Scott! “Doc” Brown, from Back to the Future, is peculiar among fictional scientists, because he’s not a villain. A survey of about about 1,000 horror films released between 1930 and 1980 reveals that in about a third of the movies, … Continue reading →

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The Infinite Blades Hypothesis

Posted on November 14, 2012 by

How many blades does your razor have? If you’re a customer of one of the two leading brands and you’re on their latest products, it’s likely to be either four or five. Gillette and Schick (known as Wilkinson Sword outside … Continue reading →

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The Snooze Dilemma

Posted on November 8, 2012 by

Waking up is hard to do. So, to snooze or not to snooze? Well, it turns out that snoozing, like many enjoyable things in life, is critically bad for you. And you shouldn’t do it. Here’s why. First of all, … Continue reading →

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The Death of Skeuomorphism

Posted on October 30, 2012 by

This is the Calendar app you find on iPads and recent Macs.  It comes complete with fake leather and torn bits of paper, resembling the real object it’s supposed to replace. This is an example of skeuomorphism, an approach to … Continue reading →

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The Plastic Brain of Taxi Drivers

Posted on October 22, 2012 by

What’s special about London taxi drivers? They have enlarged brains. They’re not mutants. If you want to become a cabbie in London, you have to undergo a daunting test called The Knowledge. To pass, you must be able to plot the shortest … Continue reading →

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