This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
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 ?. Enjoy.
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? Counter-intuitive but important: Don’t Take Your Vitamins
Want to see immune cells swarm an infection?
? Long-exposure photos of fireflies in the forest. Incredible.
Your daily dose of WOW is this octopus camouflage. Learn more octopus facts here
I wish my school was cool enough to do Pac-Man at a football game
Your eye never really stops moving. It’s the ideomotor iris
? Vibrate sand on a plate and you get mathematical art
Bacterial colonies expressing fluorescent proteins, or a Petri paradise
? Discouragement for young writers. This is great. Awful, but great.
A year of activity on our Sun in one photo
My favorite Inception flowchart is still confusing
My latest additions to the 6-second science videos I make: Science on the Vine: Nothing Sucks, Unconscious Control, Candle Smoke, WWCSD
Be nice, some sea creatures are really sensitive
I might use this amazing Bane soundboard to answer all my phone calls
? Wow, the border between the US and Canada is way weirder, and much more utilitarian, than I thought
The rise of the neuropundit (and the accompanying bullshit)
What is Wind? It’s the Earth’s molecular soup running though your hair.
Could we ever record our dreams? Kinda/notreally
Dissolving Alka-Seltzer is fun, even better in space
If you must kill a spider, choose the super-villain method of a frozen prison and rubbing alcohol
? Wow, good shooting. Painting the Mona Lisa with paintballs
With hydrographics, you can make your hand all cyborgy. More info here
Isn’t the *snikt!* enough? You have to run a few thousand volts through your DIY claws too?
? If you throw a ball covered in water just right, you can model galaxies
This gave me the absolute *shivers*: What it’s like to look down from the world’s tallest building
Speed up the blind graspings of vines, and it looks totally awesome
Destroy a tiny bonsai tree with artificial lightning? Sure!
Your city’s weather, in terms of Star Wars planets
? Be skeptical of “lone geniuses,” because that’s not really how science works
The calculus of Joss Whedon shows
The coolest thing I saw today was extensive footage of a rare Oarfish. Such an odd, wonderful animal
? A linguistic analysis of “Geek” vs. “Nerd.” Wonderful overthink
Are CFCs responsible for global warming? Short answer: No. Long answer: Nope.
I don’t think anyone has said this sentence: These vintage Dutch safety posters are dope
? I Hate to Break it to You, But You Already Eat Bugs
The Sun might actually never set on the British empire
? Why the Paleo Diet is really about privilege and misconceptions about human evolution
It always amazes me when a band can learn their whole song (and lyrics) backwards
A grain of pollen stuck on a bee…in a super-close “3D” GIF
If you have Chrome, you can use this web app to play around with the “Shut Up Gun”
? How we are tricking animals with evolutionary traps. (Like disastrous beer-bottle mating)
Braces work, a GIF
XKCD: Get your mental s*** together
Gullibility and pseudoscience in headlines about acupuncture and allergies
I like to make celebrities look like monsters to make myself feel better, with psychology
Nuclear containment pods are *indestructible.* Engineers sure as hell make sure
This frog fail should describe the Leher affair, but sadly it doesn’t
? Space shuttle thermal tile material is so good at dissipating heat, you can grab it at 2200 degrees
I want to catch a moss mantis just to stare
When a newborn baby looks like a chicken embryo: En-caul births
Manipulative female squid sneak male squid sperm snacks
The most amazing thing about a duck penis is that they have one
It’s counter-intuitive, but charcoal can burn bright in a liquid. Really, it’s chemistry!
It’s official: Thor’s hammer works via gravitons and nanotech
? Bill Nye shows a great air pressure demonstration to do with the kids
Rubidium and water don’t get along, but their meeting is pretty
Support indie art, celebrate science! Get a Super Mario-themed Jacques Cousteau drawing
Charts to prove that too many children go unvaccinated
The algorithm that uses Tetris to print your favorite 8-bit videogame characters
A wonderful life without gods, without masters (and a challenge to Stephen King)
? Roger Ebert on Kindness. Words to live by
Ink in water looks like organs and jellyfish and impossible flowers
While we wait for Attenborough to get better, let’s watch him discuss one amazingly vocal bird
XKCD: F***ing hipsters
For the material science people, ten minutes of bullets hitting lead and steel in slo-mo
? To stop bodysnatchers, graves a century ago were armed with tripwire-fired “grave guns”
Looking into a gecko’s eye somehow gives me the Jurassic Park willies
I’m pretty sure that the Taranturaptor, the animal I dreamed up for Wired Science, is the scariest thing ever
In a Pangaea with modern countries, Morocco touches New York
The Maned Wolf is not photoshopped, is beautiful. Having a favorite canid is important
? A bubble looks most beautiful at the instant it is popped