I have dug through the Internet this week and uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.
I have marked my favorite links with a 8. Enjoy.
Science to Read, Watch
Take a breath, thank a sponge? Following the chain of events back to the origin of oxygenated animals
When you screw with your sense of self, it’s harder to form memories
8 Do lobsters feel pain when we cook them, alive, like monsters? Maybe. Scientists disagree
“The science of cognitive training has not kept up with the hype” (i.e., they don’t work).
15 minutes of “pit stop science” with a great white is something I’ll always want to do
The “new car smell” became a status marker after WWI, but the chemicals have toxic roots
On the physics of flying snakes and our unhappiness with them on our planes
8 How repetition lets music work its magic, work its magic, magic
If you’re an unfortunate wasp, you might have junk in your trunk. It’s not fat. It’s a hellish parasite.
Hard Science updates a classic science demo with DUBSTEP. Put this in your classroom
The enemy of my enemy is a spider-eating ant
Spiders building in the city get spun over (read: screwed over) twice
Sorting through a new study that claims light exposure may help memory
Putting the cancer cases around Fukushima into (important) epidemiological perspective
Really hope that when astronomers see this gas cloud pass by the galactic core, it dies spectacularly like this
An animation that is like an open house for a small slice of the universe
This terror bird was the hangover for the small mammals having their “yay no more dinosaurs” party
How do you find a planet without a star (and maybe with native laser-sharks)?
8 Figuring out when whales evolved the ability to sing through their noses to see
Looking for the right genetic factors for obesity in the wrong place
8 The fascinating (and controversial) physics of curling
Naming a new tyrannosaur after the polar bear
Elephants are so much smarter than most of us think. Just check out how they hear human voices
What is the resolution of the human eye? It’s a tricky question that doesn’t have a great answer
Eating a certain plant makes rabbit’s pee blue
Practicing 10,000 hours doesn’t necessarily make perfect, says new study
How cracking something can make it stronger (even your teeth!)
8 To study asteroid impacts, sometimes we film metal balls hitting sand in slo-mo. It’s so, so beautiful
Extreme Nerdery
This scifi short–Project Skyborn–is better than anything on the Syfy channel right now. Go ahead and check
8 My proudest moment as a writer: We Finally Have A Name For Scooby Doo’s Speech Disorder
Scooby’s real name is “Scoobert”. Cookie Monster’s name is Sid, you know, before he got addicted.
Only 1, maybe 2 situations in life where you will need this, so here it is: Riker and Picard being awesome for 10 hours
“Why do you try to make something magical scientific?” I could not agree more with this author’s answers
We think we want intelligent AI in our video games but, “Most players still take the bait like tween girls on Edward Cullen”
8 Dad-of-the-year contender spends 6 months animating himself and his son into Dragon Ball Z
What if “radar enforced” really meant stopping a car with pure, terrible radiation? A lot of car-plasma
#TrueDetectiveSeason2
Garfield Minus Garfield is a comic that shows one man’s descent into absolute madness
Sciencey GIFs and Images
8 Have you ever really looked at an animal who has a relatively long neck swallow something? It’s awesome/bizarre
I prefer anatomical drawings where our lungs are filled with flowers and our muscles writhe with snakes
The Smithsonian captured this incredible footage of a bird’s flight dexterity and I can’t stop watching
Holy crap, this parrot is actually a woman posing in bodypaint
Astronomy is paradoxically one of the few places where lay people can overestimate large numbers
And that is how Pi is related to the circumference of a circle!
8 I have never seen a pelican spider before. Jeez are they bizarre
Angler catches albino marlin before its defect got it killed by something else
One of my favorite all-time GIFs has to be of the “Prince Rupert’s Drop” by Smarter Every Day
Extremely effective graphic shows the scale of the search for flight MH370
The Wellcome Image award winner is amazing, and a kidney stone is an alien world (#2)
8 How do you test the impact force on an F-4 Phantom? Get a rocket sled and watch the fireworks
Always an amazing story: A leopard seal “feeds” a photographer
Jasper Nance took this incredible photo of some (unidentified) pupa
The best visualization of a sonic boom you will ever see, thanks to VHS and a very low-flying jet
When an ice cap on Mars looks like a cerebral cortex
Nature’s NSA
When you release a spacesuit into space, it looks like a terrifying, real-life ‘Gravity’
Hard to look at violin playing the same way after watching this
8 Alexander Semenov is the undisputed king of underwater photography. These worms prove it
More things (read: fluid dynamics) happen to airplane wings than you get to see
I know we want to commercialize spider silk and all, but I feel bad for this spider
One way to visualize ALL the RGB colors without repeating. A new color in each pixel
Pop Culture Happenings
8 The top five YouTube gamers have more subscribers than Peru has people. They make millions
Pre-ordering the hell out of xkcd’s upcoming “What If” book
What is Vi Hart doing? We don’t know but we keep watching
Are You Better Than The Average American At Science? (It isn’t hard to be)
What’s the best animal analog for these awesome “strandbeest” toys? A robo-crab?
8 60 GIFs of the part in infomercials where the people can’t do anything right
Homeopathy judged useless and unethical
Does the new Cosmos really get how science is communicated today? Maybe not
Pharmacist prescribes “anti-monster spray”, wins internet
“After you die, a piece of you may end up in an aeroplane, a wind turbine, or even another person.”
Snail-eating worm threatens escargot supply
Hmm. Cosmos may have picked the wrong “hero” for independent, critical thought
The president did Between Two Ferns and it’s pretty funny
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