Brooklyn Brainery

Brooklyn Brainery is a new kind of night school. It hosts peer-to-peer classes on everything from Applied Meteorology to Paper Arts via Beauty School Dropout (the history and politics of make up), which are described as “book clubs on steroids”. Whilst class tutors know about the subject, their role is more one of guidance than [...]

Design for Health

UK design firm Priestmangoode believe that healthcare could be improved by applying the same design principles to hospitals and clinics that are applied in the luxury travel trade and first class cabins in airplanes.
They have written a manifesto, which revolves around the following principles:

Healthcare doesn’t need to be in a hospital;
Buildings need to be planned [...]

Your Flying Car Awaits

Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century by Paul Milo looks at the world as we (well, scientists, novelists and cultural commentators) imagined it decades ago. Inevitably it contains some laughably inaccurate (with the benefit of hindsight) predictions such as weather that is as controllable as [...]

More Earthquakes on the Horizon

The Washington Post reports that the detestation caused by the Haitian earthquake is unlikely the last we’ll see. Two hundred years ago only Beijing boasted more than one million inhabitants: today there are 381 cities with more than one million residents and several sit on a geological fault line. Geologists estimate that we could see [...]

The Gates of Hell

Visit Atlas Obscura for some of “the world’s wonders, curiosities and esoterica” including an article on The Gates of Hell, a fiery 328 ft wide hole near small village of Derweze, Turkenistan, which has been burning ever since a Russian drilling rig punctured a gas-filled cavern. They lost their rig, as it fell into the [...]

Celebrity Body Scans

Yahoo News India reports that, far from being freaked out by the new all-seeing body scanners at airport security, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan seized it as a PR opportunity. On his way through London’s Heathrow airport on the way to an appearance on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross he signed copies of his x-rays [...]

Maternal Deaths in California

California Watch reports that maternal deaths related to preganancy have tripled in the last decade in California (and possibly the rest of the USA) – making it more risky to give birth in Calfiornia than in Bosnia. Doctors are concerned that the high rate of c-sections or obesity may be to blame. Read the full [...]

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (pub. 2 Feb 2010) is the fascinating and disturbing account of a poor black woman, who died of cervical cancer aged 31 yrs-old. During her treatment, cells were taken (unbenknownst to her) from her cervix, and extraordinarily, those cells are still alive decades after Henrietta’s death [...]

The Sky Online

The BBC is opening up the archives to make 40 years of astronomy programming available to the public The science archives stretch back across the history of the BBC. Charting the course of science’s development over the last century, the archives offer a fascinating glimpse into the changing face of science, with clips from Tomorrow’s [...]

Roxxxy – Techno Sex Doll

The Telegraph reports that Douglas Hines, an artificial intelligence engineer, has invented a life size robotic doll that can perform a range of ahem, ‘activities’, including talking about Manchester United and snoring. Unfortunately, she’s not mastered the art of vacuuming. Punters can specify race and body type and choose from five personalities: Foxy Roxxy, Wild, [...]