Manoj Bhargava. Photo by Eric Eggley. This story appears in the Feb. 27 edition of Forbes magazine. In one corner of Manoj Bhargava’s office is a cemetery of sorts. It’s a Formica bookcase, its shelves lined with hundreds of garishly … Read more
Scientists recently analyzed a Peruvian 10-cent piece with an unexplained origin. A decade ago, a funny money mystery fell into the hands of scientists and students at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. The university had been acquiring … Read more
Why is this bridge here? This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport. It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It’s not in an area that is … Read more
FAIRFIELD, Calif. (KGO) — The United States Air Force is investigating a company that’s purchased $800 million of land near Travis Air Force Base, one of the most critical military bases in the U.S. But after eight months of investigation, … Read more
Explore A quarter-mile below the ocean’s surface, in the borderless realm of the midwater, two blue-green orbs illuminate the inky black. They glow for a few seconds then disappear. When they return, it’s for the same duration. The same disappearance. … Read more
On September 16, 2011, an anime fan posted a math question to the online bulletin board 4chan about the cult classic television series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Season one of the show, which involves time travel, had originally aired … Read more
@Bioreconstruct is a Twitter account that seems to post almost daily aerial (and ground) photos of Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort, particularly construction projects. Here is a photo of the construction of Super Nintendo World, which is part … Read more
In the six decades since the publication of the original Dune novel in 1965, the science fiction franchise has gone through many different typographic identities. Notable examples include the use of Giorgio for the British paperbacks by NEL (c. 1968) … Read more
Last night, YouTube suggested a video for me. It was a raw clip from a news helicopter filming a police chase in Kansas City, Missouri. I quickly noticed a weird interference in the audio, especially the left channel, and thought … Read more
Scientific American has a new article today about the supposedly mysterious fact that electrons have “spin” even though they aren’t classical spinning material objects. The article doesn’t link to it, but it appears that it is discussing this paper by … Read more