Top Stories excerpts
Regulars
Apple Juice: How To Charge Your Phone With Pocket Change And Fruit
Arthur C. Clarke wrote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, but he was wrong. It’s easy to tell the difference — technology works. For example, “remote-viewing” mentalists claim they can see events far away, yet they fail every test. In fact, remote viewing is simple: It’s called TV.
How To Turn Burning Gas Into A Lamp Without Blowing Yourself Up
If you were a coal miner in the early 1800s, the light you used was an openflame oil lamp — even though mines were sometimes filled with “fire-damp”, a volatile mixiture of air and methane gas. Explosions were inevitable and threw bodies from mine shafts like grapeshot from a cannon. Humphry Davy became a national hero when he found a remedy in 1815: surround the lamp flame with mosquito screen.
Incredible Shot Of SR-71 Blackbirds Together
Like Richard Gottardo says: this image reaches a “maximum amount of awesomeness”. Here are 11 Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbirds — perhaps the the most exhilarating piece of flying titanium ever to touch the sky — “posing” together.
‘I Had The Best Cell On Death Row’: Life In The Shadow Of Execution
In 1994, Damien Echols and two of his friends, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were wrongfully convicted in what prosecutors called a satanic ritual murder of three 8-year-old boys. Echols, the leader of the group, was sentenced to death; Baldwin and Misskelley received life sentences. The trio became known as the West Memphis Three, and their cause was taken up by the likes of Johnny Depp and Eddie Vedder. In August 2011, they were released under a legally awkward plea deal. Echols wrote a book about his experience, Life After Death, which is available on Amazon and which we’ve excerpted here.
How Makers Are Desktop-Fabricating A Revolution Of Things
When I was in high school in the late 1970s, we had workshop class as part of the “Industrial Arts” curriculum. It wasn’t quite clear why this was a required credit — we lived in suburb of WashingtonDC and there were no factories around and most of my friends’ parents were lawyers. But learning how to use workshop tools — band saws, table saws, drill presses and the like — was just part of a mid 20th century education.
How To Prove You’ve Been Abducted By Aliens
Do I believe in UFOs or extraterrestrial visitors? Where shall I begin? There’s a fascinating frailty of the human mind that psychologists know all about, called “argument from ignorance”. This is how it goes. Remember what the “U” stands for in “UFO”? You see lights flashing in the sky. You’ve never seen anything like this before and don’t understand what it is. You say, “It’s a UFO!” The “U” stands for “unidentified.”
Gizmodo Is Hiring a PHP Developer!
Take pride in writing clean code? We’re looking for an autonomous PHP developer to join our rapidly-growing team at Allure Media. Apply within.
