"Did the Framers have batteries, or did they have to plug everything in?"

A wisecrack question of mine, just now, in the middle of a long conversation about the theory of original intent. Meade — who is not a lawye...

"The toothbrush moustache (also called Hitler moustache, Charlie Chaplin moustache, 1/3 moustache, philtrum moustache, the postage stamp, or soul (mou)stache)..."

"... is a moustache, shaved at the edges, except for three to five centimeters above the centre of the lip. The sides of the moustache ...

"There are three things in life that people like to stare at: a flowing stream, a crackling fire..."

".... and a Zamboni clearing the ice."

"What we found was that people are pretty patient for up to two seconds..."

All right then. IN THE COMMENTS: Levity over my forgetting to include: the link .

Curiosity brushes off a rock.

On Mars.

"The first key to thinking about 3-D printers is this: Do not think printer."

"Think magic box that creates any object you can imagine."

Old news about "news" and dog-powered machines.

In the 19th century, there were lots of inventions like this : I discovered that as a result of having looked up the word "news" i...

Electronic devices on planes are dangerous...

... but not for the reason the FAA seems to want you to believe. If progress [toward changing the rules] is slow, there will eventually be a...

The notion that technology is the reason the murder rate has fallen by half.

"I witnessed light sexual play among officers, a lot of e-cigarette vaping, and a whole lot of officers laughing and clowning in regard to some of your nude images, dear passengers."

What goes on in those sealed rooms where TSA agents look at X-ray images of passengers in screening machines? The agents are isolated where...

"What we are seeing are the early stages of what I call, 'The Appification of Everything.'"

Says Anthony Wing Kosner: This is not about adding more icons to your home screen, though, but about a fundamental shift in how we metaboliz...

"Restoring continental divide in Chicago would be costly, complex."

"If 110 years ago, from an engineering and financing standpoint, we could dig this huge canal and reverse (the river), 110 years later,...

"Feeling a little bit worn? Need to upgrade your body?"

"We've been doing it for a long time. An overview of more recent advances and a near-future timeline."

The man who invented the bar code also "perfected a system for delivering elevator music efficiently."

N. Joseph Woodland was an undergraduate in the 1940s , when he got the idea of "record[ing] 15 simultaneous audio tracks on 35-millimet...

"'The Hobbit' looks really, really strange."

"At least it does when projected in 3-D, at the 48 frames per second rate (known as high-frame rate, or HFR) that Jackson intends as th...

New light.

Invented by David Carroll, professor of physics at Wake Forest University: He says the new plastic lighting source can be made into any shap...

Prof "assaulted by employees of a McDonald’s in Paris who objected to his wearing a cyborg-style eyepiece while eating dinner with his family."

McDonald's claims its people were respectfu l but concerned that he was secretly filming customers and invading their privacy (under Fre...

"If cellphone companies don’t want to take reasonable steps to ensure reliability..."

"... then they should be liable to customers who suffer injury from failed service." Don't people kind of know cell phones don...

An orchestra of outdated printing equipment plays Bob Dylan's "Times They Are A-Changin'."

Warning: it is an ad. PRINTER ORCHESTRA from Chris Cairns on Vimeo . Here's a video about making the ad: Maybe you think an artist s...

Concrete with limestone-producing bacteria...

... self-healing.