doing good
The Inventor of the Treadmill Passed Away, So You Can Stop Pretending to Work Out
To all you goofball exercisers who drive your giant honkin’ SUVs to the gym to fart around on a piece of cardio equipment indoors on a sunny day, here’s one near and dear to your heart: the inventor of the home treadmill passed away last week. William...
Fracking Is Safe, Say University Studies Funded by Frackers
Fracking is horrible for the environment, right? Well, a large body of evidence does say that pumping the ground full of chemical-laced water isn’t a good idea, but as is always the case with science, researchers are now popping up that oppose the...
Motherboard TV: The Exoskeletons of Tokyo's Cyberdyne
The only thing holding me back from being a cyborg -- aside from cost, science, a robo-averse girlfriend, and a fear of being stared at -- is the fact that once you go bot, you probably can't go back. I like being flesh and blood, even if my old sack...
Even Silicon Valley's Prison Inmates Have Their Own Startup Incubator
There's a specific and stereotypical set of activities that spring to mind when you imagine what prison inmates do with their spare time. If there's a yard, they probably hang out, lift weights, get in fights, organize gangs. If there's not a yard...
How a Former DEA Agent Says the Narco Wars Will End: They Won't
He may not formally take office until year's end, but I'll be damned if Mexico's president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto isn't already talking up his retooling the narco-state's counterdrugs policy. It's maybe way, way too early to tell whether his...
Going to the Beach? You're Probably Swimming in Other People's Poop
Beaches, the de facto summertime destination of choice for coastal dwellers and vacationers everywhere, can be disgusting. Anyone who's hopped over loose syringes and clumps of food packaging after veering off the Coney Island boardwalk can tell you...
The Other Hot Dog King of New York: A Chat With Ed Beller, Inventor of Stainless-Steel Pushcarts
Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of hot dogs steaming from a bright, shiny curbside cart. What’s more New York than that? Not much. And seeing as nobody running around this city has time to sit down for a long, wholesome lunch break anymore, today's ever...
33 Years Ago Today, Jimmy Carter Put Solar Panels on the White House
On this very day, June 20th, 33 years ago, President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof. Seven years after that, Ronald Reagan took them down. It was the end of 70s, a decade wracked with stagnant economic growth and a pair...
The CFPB is Bringing Social Media to the Government to Fight Credit Cards
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, just launched a new consumer complaint site today. The dispinterest wall, is a forum for credit card holders, with what I'd say is a pretty stylish and readable design for a bureaucratic agency. But...
Dear Michigan GOP: If 'Vagina' Is Offensive, Quit Legislating Medicine
Now, I’m not one to preach because I just posted a shocking exposé of Samuel L. Jackson’s incredible love of the m-f word, but a story from yesterday out of Michigan still has me really hot under the collar. Apparently an abortion bill was up for...
Stop Defending Soda
In the war on obesity, the battle against soda has taken the fore. Here in NYC, Mayor Bloomberg is trying to ban Big Gulps and the like, which is a spin on his attempt to ban people from buying soda with food stamps that was (idiotically) blocked by...
Here's the Beef, You Drones
Most talk around the Federal Aviation Administration throttling to fully integrate unmanned aerial vehicles into U.S. airspace by 2015 has taken to breathless alarmism.