excerpts
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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.
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The Most Badass Plane Ever Had An Equally Awesome Flight Suit
At the height of the Cold War, if you wanted a peek behind the Iron Curtain, it had to be a birds’s eye view from 63,000 feet — above the reach of Soviet SAM batteries. And to fly that high, America’s elite SR-71 pilots had to wear the most advanced flight suits this side of…
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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…
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How Lockheed’s Skunk Works Got Into The Stealth Fighter Business
How do you hide an aeroplane behind a bird? Very skilfully. Lt Col William B. O’Connor (ret) flew the F-117 Nighthawk during the Bosnia Conflict, and in Stealth Fighter, he explains the history, operation and soul America’s most advanced stealth jet.