The ability to quote...

Sam Reveles, North II, 2013

When you're rich - really rich like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos - you spend your money on interesting hobbies. Like recovering from the ocean floor the F-1 engines from Apollo-era Saturn V rockets.

July 4, 1969. I was seven. Our street, a cul-de-sac, was preparing the annual 4th of July block party. At some point, looking up at the sky, it became clear that wasn't going to happen. I remember watching some of the proceedings from our back porch with my father. But memories are faulty and I had always recalled the event as a tornado when it really was only differential advection.

The science of loneliness. tl;dr

A photo essay about building a monument to the victims of the 1989 crash of UTA Flight 772 in the middle of the desert.

NASA is funding research toward 3D printed pizza. I'm fairly certain when the federal government gets involved in food production, their pie will make Papa John's look like the Gramercy Tavern by comparison.

Proof #55 that innovation is not dead. The only thing strange about Beardvertising is that no one has thought of it before.

Two things caught my eye in this photo essay titled Ruins of Super Science (catchy, eh?). First, that's a B-1 bomber in the photograph of the ATLAS-1 EMP test stand. Second, Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower shares a name with an album by guitarist Allan Holdsworth.

You can follow Starfleet Academy on Facebook. 

Let's get ready to rumble. In a geek-off between Star Wars and Star Trek nerds, which spaceships are faster?

To boldly go where no wurst has gone before. You must click through to see all the pictures.

If processed meats are too dangerous for human consumption, at least they're good for space travel (see above).

R'ha - 6 minute, scifi, animated video. Watch it.

For the vintage animation junkie, here's the GI Bill of Rights from 1946 including photos of the storyboards.

I really wanted to like SPIN's list of the 100 greatest drummers of alternative music. But the whole thing was meh punctuated occasionally by bleh.

The evolution of 007. See the animated version here.

In a case of chest-thumping ignorance that can only cause head shaking, the fine people of Portland (home of more strip clubs per capita than anywhere else in this fine nation and soon to be home of more strippers with bad teeth than anywhere else) rejected fluoridation of their water supply for the fourth time since 1956. Keep in mind that the CDC calls water fluoridation one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century. (I suppose the "rationale" in Portland was that it's now the 21st century so we ought to move along.) This ranks right up there with parents who don't get their children immunized and the whole faux-panic about immunization causing autism. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why science knowledge is important. This is a case where politics trumped public service. Insert your favorite "purity of essence" joke from Dr. Strangelove.

Before the nut-jobs in Portland decide to ban chlorine for water purification they should read this study indicating that at least half of swimming pools (public and private) sampled in Atlanta tested positive for E. coli, the source of which is good ol' human poo poo. According to science, each person carries 0.14 grams of doodie into the cement pond.

Places where Soviets couldn't go when visiting the U.S. during the Cold War.

Wanna get scientists all frothy? Show them a big meteor impact on the moon.

I'm starting to love this guy: retiring Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis is quoted as saying "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."

A for effort, D for execution. But why should Taylor Swift have all the fun? Here's Daft Punk's Goat Lucky.

What do Kepler and Daft Punk have in common? How about Debussy and wind? I think this guy's on to something with music to visualize data by.

From goats to bears. Contrary to what you've heard, a bear did not eat a video camera it only chewed on it. So if you have a fetish for the inside of a bear's pie-hole, this video's for you.

Beer Mapper for iPad - mapping all the types of brew.

I suppose it's time to recycle the story about color associations and their use in marketing. Where's my purple robe?

Real world, real time statistics - Worldometers.

Why is it when you get older it seems hair grows everywhere except where it should?

How does a toilet work?

I started with a beautiful painting and I'll end with a painting of another sort. John Currin, Bea Arthur Naked, 1991. Recently sold for $1.9 million at auction.

...is a serviceable substitute for wit. ~W. Somerset Maugham