Bill Watterson, the famously reclusive creator of beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, returned to your newspaper's comics page this week, and you probably didn't even notice. The sub rosa comic strips – three of them, to be exact – are the first Watterson has illustrated and published in almost 20 years.
An unusual arrangement of particles has been discovered in the cells of chicken eyes. It's the first time scientists have seen such a system in a biological system — one that allows materials to behave like both a crystal and a liquid.
    
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The King in Yellow, an 1895 collection of short stories by Robert Chambers, is now a bestseller on Amazon, where it hit number nine on its list of top-selling books thanks largely to io9's article on its role on True Detective.
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Já pensou que admitir o fracasso pode ser um sucesso?
Você é autoconsciente?
Biophysicists theorize that plants tap into the eerie world of quantum entanglement during photosynthesis. But the evidence to date has been purely circumstantial. Now, scientists have discovered a feature of plants that cannot be explained by classical physics alone — but which quantum mechanics answers quite nicely.
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Carrie Arnold in National Geographic:
Six months ago, visitors to the Peruvian Amazon discovered a mysterious picket fence structure nicknamed Silkhenge. Despite watching the structure for several days, naturalists at theTambopata Research Center couldn’t figure out what type of animal (or fungus) was building it.
When scientist Troy Alexander first announced his find, all he had to show for his discovery was a series of intriguing photographs. He had no idea what Amazonian critter could have created the circular hideaway with a spoke-like outer wall.
After consulting with several entomologists, Alexander hypothesized that it was likely built by a type of cribellate spider, which are known for building elaborate structures.
When we first posted news of the picket fence, readers flooded the blog with suggestions for what had built it and what scientists should name the potential new species. While many of you agreed with Alexander’s hypothesis that the fence was built by a spider, others of you weren’t so sure, guessing that a fungus or caterpillar may have built it.
More here.
While Peter Jackson's vision of Middle Earth may be the dominant one right now, artists have long put their own spin on J.R.R. Tolkien's world. Dresden Codak cartoonist Aaron Diaz shares his own visual interpretation of Tolkien by illustrating each character of The Silmarillion, as well the book's characters and creatures.
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I don't care how many Chinese zither-based covers of Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy soundtrack you listen to today, I feel quite confident that Michelle Kwan's adaptation of "Derezzed" is going to top your list. I know, it's a bold statement, but I stand by it.
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There has been a lot of eerie experimentation over the years, but few experimental journals touch Edwin Katskee's diary. Katskee decided that he would go ahead and test the effects of cocaine. He took far too much, and then documented his own overdose.
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In 1920, rocket scientist Robert Goddard wrote up an article postulating how we could use rocket fuel to launch a ship into space — perhaps even all the way to the moon. His ideas did not meet with a warm reception in the media, where he was roundly mocked. 49 years later, Apollo 11 took-off to the moon, triggering The New York Times' to print the greatest newspaper correction ever to run.
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Using a remote-controlled camera disguised as a sea turtle, marine biologists watched as young dolphins got themselves stoned by ingesting a nerve toxin released by puffer fish. And as if sharing a joint, the dolphins could be seen passing it around.
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What a difference a quarter century makes. This comparison of Shanghai from 1987 and 2013 was posted the other day on the HistoricalPics twitter, and it shows just how much the Pudong region has gotten built up into something insanely futuristic.
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The Oxford English Dictionary has a fun little web toy that lets you see a word that was first used during the year of your birth. What's your birthday word?
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China deserves all the congratulations in the world for landing its first spacecraft on the Moon. It's a big deal – both for China and humanity at large. But can somebody please explain why the background image at this exhibit for China's recently deployed Yutu Rover depicts a massive mushroom cloud over Europe?
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You may know when you're awake, but you can't prove it scientifically. That's because there's no objective way to distinguish between a "conscious" and "unconscious" brain. But now, scientists may have discovered the telltale neurological signature of a mind that's awake.
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Charles Stross has canceled the third book in his Halting State trilogy because reality has caught up to his near-future visions. Specifically, the NSA spying in Warcraft.
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Rudy Rucker's latest novel, The Big Aha, is pure transreal Ruckeriana featuring extreme biological and quantum technologies, steamy techno-sex, nasty aliens from higher dimensions — and all soaked in the unique atmosphere of the magical 1960s.
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