do-it-yourself-tech
Here is an Entire Rap Video About Rooftop Solar Power
By and large, the hip hop community has remained curiously silent on the topic of rooftop solar installation. This is a shame. Fortunately, that coal-powered silence is about to be broken. I give you Sustainable John, and his new eco-rap video "Occupy...
Abraham Lincoln Was an Internet Nerd
Abraham Lincoln did "not":http://natestpierre.me/2012/05/10/hoax-abraham-lincoln-invented-facebook/ invent Facebook. But he did rely on the Internet to win the Civil War. Just ask Tom Wheeler, a civil war historian who also happens to be the President...
Chimp Nut-Smashing Techniques Explain Our Proto-Culture
Conventional wisdom makes a big deal about the cultural gap that sets humans apart from apes – that giant chasm between nut-smashing and Beethoven.
The 1-Bit Camera App Is Cool, But Here's a Whole Movie Made With the Game Boy Camera
About a month ago an app called the "1-Bit Camera":http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1-bit-camera/id505119307?mt=8 arrived, promising images with fidelity low enough to make Instagram look like HDR. The nostalgia it delivers is a bit more recent than...
Meet the Six-Legged Monster That You Can Drive
I grew up in rural Northern California, and up in those parts you see a lot of trucks. Really BIG trucks. Never mind that the smaller, lighter 4x4s I drove -- a Pathfinder, a Trooper -- were better at racing around orchards and fields Dukes of Hazzard...
How to Replace the Kilogram, the Last Physical Unit of Measurement
Of course, the whole anthropocentric measurement thing is rather imprecise (Can you imagine designing a microprocessor with cubits?) so, over time, we've come to define units of measurement with various mathematical constants. A meter, for example is...
Sex Gadgets of the Rich and Shameless
Sex sells. A lot. Put aside all the exciting teledildonics hype for a second and remember that the old-fashioned sex toy industry is valued at $15 billion and growing. And if you believe sexuality counselor Ian Kerner, sex toys have now gone mainstream...
The Chinese Amazon Now Has Hookers Delivering Packages
Taobao is the Chinese equivalent of Amazon or eBay, with a couple hundred million users all selling each other random knick-knacks and bootleg electronics. Thanks to its massive potential customer base, Taobao is huge: CrunchBase claims that the site...
Metamaterials Are the Wolf in Electromagnetic Clothing
Invisibility is one of the oldest concepts in our mythology. Years before Harry Potter put on his cloak or Tom Cruise pranced behind an invisibility tarp, Plato recounted the myth of the ring of Gyges, a poor and honest shepherd who discovers a ring...
How to Throw an 800 Pound Paper Airplane (Use a Helicopter)
When I was a kid, my friends and I used to spend hours inventing and constructing different paper airplane models in my basement during sleepovers. Sometimes we brought along the latest "book of templates":http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?rh=i...
Two-Hundred Fifty-Six Colors Over Chicago
A continual "cum shot":http://cantpray.tumblr.com/post/19583439264/godbless-the-u-s-a (NSFW) to the Statue of Liberty’s face. A "flickering celestial ass":http://missholloway.tumblr.com/post/17381506251 (again, NSFW) bent over and spreading her cheeks...
The 300-Step Competitive Balloon-Popping Machine Totally Blew It
When you spend six months and 5,000 hours perfecting a "300-step, Guinness Record-breaking Rube Goldberg contraption":http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/general/2012/120331RubeNational.html, it's gotta be a bummer to come in second place to some wimpy-ass...