Why Gay Talese does his reporting on “laundry board”
This morning, I was reading the print version of The New York Times when a thin, one-column story in…

41% of museums don’t know how dogs actually walk
See that skeleton above? It’s a display at the Natural History Museum in Oulu, Finland, and it shows a…

New technique renders objects at sea “invisible” to waves of water
This is incredibly cool: A group of engineers and mathematicians have built a device that renders an object invisible…

Poll: Young people who use landlines are more conservative than those who use mobile phones
Are young people who use landlines more conservative than young people who use mobile phones? Apparently so, according to…

At Amherst college, 1% of first-year students have landlines, 99% have Facebook accounts
Peter Schilling — the director of information technology at Amherst College — crunched the numbers on the technological habits…

North Dakota the most outgoing state, according to study of “the geography of personality”
I’m coming a bit late to this one — it’s been heavily blogged in the last day or two…

Why the next wave of high-tech CEOs will be as old as your parents: My latest column in Wired magazine
Are all breakthrough high-tech startups founded by young turks? You’d think so, based on youthquake hype in the tech…

Vote for your favorite photomicrographic image at the “Small World” competition
For 30 years, Nikon has held its “Small World” competition, which gives awards to the year’s best examples of…

Democracy, the game: My latest video-game column for Wired News
Wired News just published my latest video-game column, and this one compares the design of a video game to…

Suzanne Vega, “Tom’s Diner,” and the birth of the MP3
I didn’t realize this, but Suzanne Vega is known as the “the mother of the MP3”, because Karl-Heinz Brandenberg…

The environmental cost of Esquire’s e-ink cover
This month, Esquire celebrated its 75th anniversary by publishing the world’s first magazine cover with e-ink — a trippy…

A 10-foot spinning orb to replicate Earth’s magnetic field
Behold a 30-ton, 10-foot-high spinning ball of steel and sodium that is intended to simulate the Earth’s magnetic field….

Now that’s what I call engineering
So, I was reading the half-page infographic feature “Colossal Squid Revealed” in the latest print issue of Popular Science,…

Binary marble adding machine
I only discovered this now, fully a year after everyone else blogged about it, but it’s so awesome I…

African drummer helps develop whale-avoidance system
As you’ve probably heard, the rise of noise-pollution in the oceans has caused huge problems for marine life. Animals…

Cows align themselves with magnetic north
I’m coming a bit late to this one, but apparently a new study has unveiled a curious new fact…

Michael Dinges’ awesomely engraved laptops and retro-brass navigational instruments
I’m in love. Michael Dinges is a Chicago artist whose latest show — “Dead Reckoning” — consists of laptops…

Chinese scientists unveil “the anti cloak” — technique for defeating invisibility shields
Okay, the war over “invisibility cloaks” has officially begun. A team of Chinese scientists have just announced that they’ve…

Ghostly “timescanned” images of New York’s streets
This is lovely: A “timescanned video” project by some students at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Basically, they took panoramic…

My replies to questions from New York Times magazine readers, re: “ambient awareness”
The New York Times got about 80 reader comments on my recent story on “ambient awareness”, and they asked…

Teenagers unwittingly use the scientific method to beat video games: My latest Wired News column
Wired News just published my latest video-game column, and it’s a pretty fun subject. It’s about how teenagers, while…

The Humboldt squid beak: Diamond-sharp mystery of the briny deep
There are many weird things about the giant Humboldt squid, but here’s one of the strangest: Its beak. The…

Comments are working; old comments are temporarily MIA
I got a few emails from folks wondering “where have all the old comments gone?” If you look at my…

Study explores how a fly avoids a swatter
Last week I was on vacation in Connecticut, and somebody left the patio door open for a few hours….

The Age of Awareness: My latest feature for the New York Times Magazine
Today, the New York Times Magazine is publishing an article I wrote about “ambient awareness” — the way that…

Relaunching with a new blog design
It’s been an awfully long time since I blogged — seven months, to be precise. There’s a story behind that,…

Why is the science of interrogation so neglected?
I’ve read a ton about the debate over torture, but in a piece in today’s New York Times Week…

Study: Musical improvisation shuts down your brain’s “overthinking”
I admit, I’m a sucker for brain-scanning experiments. But this one is particularly intriguiging: A group of scientists scanned…

Spambots keep shutting down my comments script. Anyone know a good way to solve this?
My comments are down again. I need help! Apparently the spambots are slamming my comment script so rapidly that…

Cool screensaver monitors the health of the power grid
So, you’re living in Florida, and you just suffered through a massive blackout. Want advance warning of the next…

Scientists replicate traffic-jam “shockwaves” in real-world experiment
This is fascinating to watch: A team of Japanese researchers have created “shockwave traffic jams” that replicate the dynamics…

Will DIY geeks save American ingenuity? My latest Wired magazine column
Can you fix things that break in your household? Probably not. Our schools systematically stream “smart” people away from…

$6 million euro robot can make coffee
I’m coming to this one late, but apparently some Italian scientists have spent $6 million euros building a robot…

Video games are “post-Turing”: My latest Wired News video-game column
Last week, Wired News published my latest video-game column — and this one’s about the peculiar relationships we strike…

The neurobiology of the Mona Lisa’s smile
For hundreds of years, art critics have mused over why the Mona Lisa’s smile seems so mysterious. Now the…

Why solitary workers can be faster workers
For years, I’ve worked in isolation — either sitting alone in my office, or, recently, sitting in a rented…

LaRouche report calls me a “degenerate writer”
This is beyond delightful! The LaRouche PAC report — “The Noosphere vs. The Blogosphere: Is The Devil in Your…

Study: Gamers actually enjoy dying in first-person-shooters
Two years ago, I wrote a column for Wired News called “The Joy of Sucking” — about the subtle…

A possible explanation for “email apnea”
Linda Stone, one of my all-time favorite thinkers on the impact of technology on human life, has written a…

Why C-section births might cause eczema in babies
This is just about the oddest bit of research I’ve recently come across: Apparently C-sections might cause eczema in…