Keep toiletries from exploding during airline travel – with plastic wrap under the cap

Nothing’s worse than coming home from a long flight to find your shampoo all over everything in your bag. Redditor thinkadinky has an easy fix: put some plastic wrap under the caps of your bottles. Even if you use Ziploc bags as required by the TSA, this method still saves you from losing all that shampoo/lotion/whatever, and …

Maps of Southern California’s – Marine Protected Areas

A map of all the Southern California MPA’s (marine protected areas), defined as: A space in the ocean where human activities are more strictly regulated than the surrounding waters – similar to parks we have on land. They are supposed to form a network of safe areas for marine life ro repopulate and bring back …

Warner Bros. releases a 13-minute featurette for The Dark Knight Rises

  Can’t wait two more weeks until the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy hits theaters? You’re in luck. Warner Bros. has released a 13-minute extended sneak-peek for The Dark Knight Rises, featuring interviews with the cast, a behind the scenes look at the movie-making process and scenes from the flick set to hit …

Modern world: Bookstores with cafés increase sales – those without decrease

As Independent Booksellers Week gets into full swing, the Booksellers Association has released figures to suggest outlets with cafés are likely to have higher sales than those without. Figures based on a survey of 40 BA members reveal that bookshops with cafés saw a 3% growth in overall turnover in 2011, whereas those without experienced …

The best pictures of June from National Geographic

 

The Unites States of Pie – yum!

We hold this truth to be self-evident: America loves pie. Food writer Adrienne Kane celebrates that right. She has gathered those regional pie recipes into a new cookbook, United States of Pie. Some excerpts from the interview: Bakewell Pie: “is adapted from the very common English dessert, Bakewell Tart. I found the Bakewell Pie recipe …

Jane Austen’s beautiful 200 year-old ring goes up for auction

A ring once owned by author Jane Austen will be auctioned by Sotheby’s later this month. Austen, the author of the much-loved novels “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma,” never married or had children, but the ring has remained in the possession of her family since her death in 1817. Scholars had been unaware of …

Southern California ends rainy season in a drought – El Niño possibly coming

The 2011-12 rainy season — which ran from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012 — has come to an end with less than impressive numbers, according to figures compiled by the National Weather Service. None of the six key sights where the weather service records long term precipitation reported above average rainfall. San Diego …

A map of the world’s undersea cables – as $5 billion-worth more comes online

…The rest of the world is continuing to demand more broadband, and the industry of undersea cables and long haul broadband providers has spent up to $5.5 billion to meet that demand with new cables coming online in 2012 and 2013, according to TeleGeography. The analysis firm released its latest submarine cable map that shows all of the …

Environmentalist, and wealthy cofounder of Burt’s Bees, fights to create America’s next National Park

Burt’s Bees cofounder Roxanne Quimby wants to hand the government a new national park in northern Maine—election-year politics and residents’ NIMBYism be damned. Brian Kevin investigates the boldest conservation plan in decades. Technically, this Idaho-shaped chunk of land, which contains a 30-mile stretch of the International Appalachian Trail, is known as the East Branch Sanctuary. …