National Geographic: thousands fish (and eat) from the extremely toxic Anacostia River

In case you thought no one fished (and ate the fish) in the Anacostia River, here is an article from National Geographic: Fishermen were casting their lines into the urban waters of Washington, D.C., into a river notorious as one of the dirtiest in the nation. What’s more, according to a recent study, they represented …

Japanese government begins plans for driverless driving by 2020

Japan’s Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry will soon embark on a project to realize an “autopilot system” for automatic driving, a system for guiding motor vehicles on expressways without human assistance. The system is expected to contribute significantly to such goals as alleviating drivers’ fatigue, preventing road accidents and easing traffic congestion. It would be for vehicles …

Voyager I – about to leave our Solar System

Last week, in the corners of the Internet devoted to outer space, things started to get a little, well, hot. Voyager 1, the man-made object farthest away from Earth, was encountering a sharp uptick in the number of a certain kind of energetic particles around it. Had the spacecraft become the first human creation to “officially” …

Most of the translation on the planet is now done by Google Translate

“In a given day we translate roughly as much text as you’d find in 1 million books. To put it another way: what all the professional human translators in the world produce in a year, our system translates in roughly a single day. By this estimate, most of the translation on the planet is now …

The Scale of the Universe – a fun, educational animation

An interactive Flash animation titled “Scale Of The Universe 2“, covering everything in the universe from the fabric of space-time to the estimated size of the universe, was posted earlier this year, and it is awesome. A month or so later, it went viral, but why…so popular? First, the actual scale of the universe is mind blowing …

United Nations has gone mobile – so many apps for world peace and development

The United Nations has gone mobile…in a big way. In just a few clicks I found more than 10 iPhone apps covering everything from news to statistics to global photos. Plus, a very cool short video about the apps from Jess3:   I’ve just downloaded all these apps and haven’t yet played with them, so …

SpaceX test fires the new SuperDraco propulsion engine

SpaceX successfully test fires SuperDraco, a powerful new engine that will play a critical role in efforts to change the future of human spaceflight. These engines will power a revolutionary launch escape system that will make Dragon the safest spacecraft in history and enable it to land propulsively on Earth or another planet with pinpoint …

Man flies like a bird for 100 meters – using “selfbuilt wings”

Subtitles from Dutch I was running…and…(breathing heavy) At one moment you see the ground moving away, and then suddenly you’re free, a really intense feeling of freedom. The true feeling of flying. A **cking magical moment! The best feeling I have felt in my life.   From the project website, humanbirdwings.net – Right here, on this blog I …

The seal looked just like a man

…and it freaked me out! No kidding. I’m sitting in the water and I turn around: there are two human-looking heads staring right at me. Their heads are smooth like slicked back hair. I blink once, twice and then it occurs to me…they’re not human. Yet we are still staring at each other. It’s one …