Comments

  • Entertainment & Gaming

    Video Games that Beef Up the Brain

    By Christina Hurtado Posted on 12.30.2008 2 Comments

    In a recent study from UC Berkeley, scientists revealed significant physical differences in the brain development of children from different socio-economic backgrounds.

    12.30.2008 at 12:55pm - Comment by kdaviper

    oh man, the Oregon Trail. that was good stuff.

  • SciTech

    If a Train Leaves New York at 5pm . . . Will it Teach a Kid Math?

    By Posted on 5.5.2008 9 Comments

    We have all at one point or another learned some variation of a mathematical formula involving trains and their timetables. For example: if a train leaves Boston for New York at 7am and travels at 60mph, will it beat a train leaving Providence at 6am traveling 45mph? The idea behind this kind of "story" problem is to engage a student with a real-world example to which they can relate. The thinking follows that that engagement will solidify the mathematical concept. It's one of those conceits that has hung around for seemingly as long as math has been taught. And it may very well be completely wrong.

    5.5.2008 at 09:16pm - Comment by kdaviper

    A train leaves the station at 5:00 due east going 55mph. Another train leaves a station 600 miles away heading due west at 4:30 going 40 mph. How does this make you feel?

  • Military, Aviation & Space

    How It Works: The Best View From Space Yet

    By Posted on 3.13.2008 3 Comments

    When the GeoEye-1 surveillance satellite comes online this spring, its advanced optics will produce more-detailed images than any commercial satellite, capturing objects as small as home plate on a baseball diamond and filling in the fuzzy spots on Google Earth.

    3.14.2008 at 03:03pm - Comment by kdaviper

    Aww, I want a sixty-thousand megapixel camera!!!

  • Military, Aviation & Space

    The Real-life Death Star

    By Posted on 3.7.2008 6 Comments

    Friends of the Dark Side, your time may soon be at hand. It seems we have a literal death star aiming in our general direction. The culprit is part of a binary star system—two stars which orbit each other—by the name of WR 104. Both are massive and very, very hot. One will eventually explode into a harmless supernova, providing us with a lovely astronomical light show. The other, however, might be deadly.

    3.7.2008 at 09:50pm - Comment by kdaviper

    technically, these stars could have already exploded, maybe even thousands of years ago. We only get to see stuff in the universe that has already happened x years ago (where x is the distance in light years).

  • Entertainment & Gaming

    Human Tetris

    By Posted on 3.4.2008 1 Comments

    Tetris is one of the all-time classic video games, but its best suited to people with a lot of free time on their hands. Apparently, though, maneuvering those little polygons around a video screen still wasnt enough of a time suck for Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond. So, he set to work on a real-life version of the game with people in place of pixels.

    3.5.2008 at 02:20pm - Comment by kdaviper

    ...and this is science?

  • Entertainment & Gaming

    A Cure for Subscription Fatigue

    By Posted on 2.26.2008 8 Comments

    Perusing my cable/Internet bill this month from my local de facto monopoly, I picked my jaw off the floor and found myself on the horns of an ethical dilemma: To be a bandwidth thief, or not to be? That is indeed the question, as the fleetfooted Roadrunner has once again jacked prices through the stratosphere, leaving us folk on terra firma scratching our heads. The deal is, I get the same TV channels, and less bandwidth, but for more money. Genius! Tallying the rest of my monthly bills up against my humble paycheck, I started to get queasy, lightheaded and tired, and then I realized what it was. Ive got a full-blown case of Subscription Fatigue.

    2.26.2008 at 10:58pm - Comment by kdaviper

    Yea, I watched a program on PBS that informed me about how the telephone industry owes the american people a free information superhighway that they were supposed to pay for with the money that they were saving by not having to pay taxes on services like caller ID and call waiting.

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