The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

Antimatter: The Cosmos Answer to Red Bull

When I was in middle school if you wanted to work up a solid caffeine buzz you pretty much were reliant on Mountain Dew or the rarer, but more treasured Jolt Cola. After all, with the tag line "All the sugar, twice the caffeine!", it was hard not to get excited at the prospect of pure, fast burning, twitch-inducing rocket fuel to pour down your throat.

When I was in middle school if you wanted to work up a solid caffeine buzz you pretty much were reliant on Mountain Dew or the rarer, but more treasured Jolt Cola. After all, with the tag line "All the sugar, twice the caffeine!", it was hard not to get excited at the prospect of pure, fast burning, twitch-inducing rocket fuel to pour down your throat.

BikeStations: How Cycling Centers Could Help Make Life Easier

Andréa White-Kjoss, 35, modeled her full-service cycling centers on a similar idea already popular in Japan and Europe. More than a dozen bike stations have opened in such places as Palo Alto and Berkeley, California; Seattle; and, most recently, Washington, D.C.

Galaxy Friday Matinee: Orson Welles' Mercury Theater Broadcast of H.G. Well's "War of the Worlds"

Don't miss this re-enactment of the presentation and public reactions to the original Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds, performed as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938. The live broadcast was set in Grover's Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor Township, New Jersey frightening many listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.

Mythbuster's Adam Savage "Colossal Failures"

"Dirty Jobs" Mike Rowe on Discovery, Lamb Castration & America's War on Work

One of my childhood icons was Eric Hoffer, my father's favorite philosopher, migrant worker, longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero, and author the the bestselling True Beliver. Fast forward to today: in the swirl of Wall Street scandal and economic crisis a new advocate for America's underclass and the dignity of real work has emerged: "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe. Rowe reminds us that we are our own best resource. Not government, not academia, not Wall Street or Main Street.

The Seven-Year Churn: We Lose & Replace Half Our Friends Every 7 Years

New research  shows while the size of personal networks is remarkably stable over time, we substitute many of our initial network members for new ones. In short, we lose and replace about half of our friends every seven years, and as a result the size of our social network remains the same over time.  

What Do Robots Dream Of?

Science has a serious PR problem.  It seems that for every group doing something awesome like exploding antimatter or building giant rockets, there's another group determined to do something so nerdy they might as well steal their own lunch money.  In this case it's a European initiative called LIREC - Living with Robots and Interactive Companions - and we're afraid it's every bit as bad as it sounds.

The 4-Hour Work Week: Taking Control of Your Life in the iPhone Century

"The Apocalypse, What Now?" Instructional Video

Wired recently looked at the Georgia Guidestones, and if you just went "what?" you should read on.  Anything so genuinely weird and effective made by human hands deserves your attention.  It's basically a "So there's been an Apocalypse: What Now?" instructional video, for a world where the cutting edge of entertainment technology is a chisel.

The "Guidestones" are six twenty-ton, five meter tall granite slabs covered in inscriptions.  The stones are arranged to line up with various astrological phenomena, obviously to make people pay attention (it works pretty well for Stonehenge), while the instructions are intended to guide the survivors of some unnamed catastrophe in rebuilding civilization.  They were erected in 1979 and things immediately got stupid, because in case you haven't noticed, you can't run an ad for butter these days without offending
someone.

The Social Pulse of Human Connectivity On A Planetary Scale

Microsoft has studied a total of 30 billion instant messages sent by over 250 million people in June of 2006, and determined that we are in fact, all linked by only 6.6 degrees of separation.

 

Antimatter: The Cosmos Answer to Red Bull

When I was in middle school if you wanted to work up a solid caffeine buzz you pretty much were reliant on Mountain Dew or the rarer, but more treasured Jolt Cola. After all, with the tag line "All the sugar, twice the caffeine!", it was hard not to get excited at the prospect of pure, fast burning, twitch-inducing rocket fuel to pour down your throat.

When I was in middle school if you wanted to work up a solid caffeine buzz you pretty much were reliant on Mountain Dew or the rarer, but more treasured Jolt Cola. After all, with the tag line "All the sugar, twice the caffeine!", it was hard not to get excited at the prospect of pure, fast burning, twitch-inducing rocket fuel to pour down your throat.

BikeStations: How Cycling Centers Could Help Make Life Easier

Andréa White-Kjoss, 35, modeled her full-service cycling centers on a similar idea already popular in Japan and Europe. More than a dozen bike stations have opened in such places as Palo Alto and Berkeley, California; Seattle; and, most recently, Washington, D.C.

Galaxy Friday Matinee: Orson Welles' Mercury Theater Broadcast of H.G. Well's "War of the Worlds"

Don't miss this re-enactment of the presentation and public reactions to the original Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds, performed as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938. The live broadcast was set in Grover's Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor Township, New Jersey frightening many listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.

Mythbuster's Adam Savage "Colossal Failures"

"Dirty Jobs" Mike Rowe on Discovery, Lamb Castration & America's War on Work

One of my childhood icons was Eric Hoffer, my father's favorite philosopher, migrant worker, longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero, and author the the bestselling True Beliver. Fast forward to today: in the swirl of Wall Street scandal and economic crisis a new advocate for America's underclass and the dignity of real work has emerged: "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe. Rowe reminds us that we are our own best resource. Not government, not academia, not Wall Street or Main Street.

The Seven-Year Churn: We Lose & Replace Half Our Friends Every 7 Years

New research  shows while the size of personal networks is remarkably stable over time, we substitute many of our initial network members for new ones. In short, we lose and replace about half of our friends every seven years, and as a result the size of our social network remains the same over time.  

What Do Robots Dream Of?

Science has a serious PR problem.  It seems that for every group doing something awesome like exploding antimatter or building giant rockets, there's another group determined to do something so nerdy they might as well steal their own lunch money.  In this case it's a European initiative called LIREC - Living with Robots and Interactive Companions - and we're afraid it's every bit as bad as it sounds.

The 4-Hour Work Week: Taking Control of Your Life in the iPhone Century

"The Apocalypse, What Now?" Instructional Video

Wired recently looked at the Georgia Guidestones, and if you just went "what?" you should read on.  Anything so genuinely weird and effective made by human hands deserves your attention.  It's basically a "So there's been an Apocalypse: What Now?" instructional video, for a world where the cutting edge of entertainment technology is a chisel.

The "Guidestones" are six twenty-ton, five meter tall granite slabs covered in inscriptions.  The stones are arranged to line up with various astrological phenomena, obviously to make people pay attention (it works pretty well for Stonehenge), while the instructions are intended to guide the survivors of some unnamed catastrophe in rebuilding civilization.  They were erected in 1979 and things immediately got stupid, because in case you haven't noticed, you can't run an ad for butter these days without offending
someone.

The Social Pulse of Human Connectivity On A Planetary Scale

Microsoft has studied a total of 30 billion instant messages sent by over 250 million people in June of 2006, and determined that we are in fact, all linked by only 6.6 degrees of separation.