Hrishikesh Thite

If you have a future professor or armchair astronomer in your life, these gifts will help them hone their skills and pursue their passion. We’ve covered all ages, abilities, and budgets so you can add to anyone’s laboratory.

1. Meet Science: Magnetism and Electricity App; $6.99

This middle-school-level phone app will give your budding physicists a head start on mastering two of science’s trickiest topics through a series of interactive animations and games.

Find it: App stores

2. 3Doodler; $99 

You can you use this three-dimensional pen for everything from arts and crafts to minor home repairs, but we like its potential for making more accurate scientific models and providing an opportunity for hands-on learning. 

Find it: The3Doodler.com

3. Micro Fi Wi-Fi Handheld Microscope; $219.95

The portable, ergonomic quality of this 80x magnification microscope isn’t even the coolest thing about it. A Wi-Fi module allows you to connect the feed to up to three smart devices—phones, tablets, or laptops—making it perfect for collaborative experiments or teaching demonstrations. 

Find it: Amazon.com

4. Veho Discovery LCD Microscope; $299.95

If your scientist isn’t a fan of squinting into eyepieces, the LCD screen on this microscope shows you what’s going on below, 1200 times magnified. Time-lapse photography capability allows you to create incredible videos of bacteria growth or decay.

Find it: Amazon.com

5. LittleBits Space Kit; $189

LittleBits creates modular kits that help children and adults alike understand electronics by building functioning systems. For this latest product, they teamed up with NASA to bring you the opportunity to build miniature models of the Mars Rover or International Space Station and carry out scaled-down versions of real NASA experiments. 

Find it: LittleBits.cc 

6. Mindflex Duel Game; $134.95

Okay, this head-to-head contest of “mind-eye” coordination is more recreation than education, but it’s sure to inspire even the most reluctant scientists to wonder about the future of technology as they control the movements of a foam ball using just their brain waves. 

Find it: Mindflexgames.com 

7. Elenco Snap Circuits SC-300 Physics Kit; $66.99 

Get kids as young as eight years old to understand the basics of electrical circuits with this brightly colored, easy-to-follow kit for building things like doorbells and a simple radio.

Find it: Amazon.com

8. LEGO Mindstorms EV3 31313; $349.99 

LEGO has come a long way from simple building blocks. This splurge set lets you build and control a walking, talking robot with an infrared sensor system and intuitive software that connects to either a remote control (included) or your smartphone. 

Find it: LEGO.com

9. Thames & Kosmos Eco-Battery Vehicles; $69.95

Toy cars are great, but can they teach you about sustainable energy sources? These customizable cars run on just magnesium plates, salt water, and the oxygen in the air. 

Find it: Amazon.com 

10. Genographic Project Participation and DNA Ancestry Kit; $199.95

Learn about your genetic ancestry while participating in real, ongoing scientific research about the origins of humanity. Find out if you’re descended from Neanderthals or Denisovans and get a detailed understanding of your own personal genome.

Find it: NationalGeographic.com

11. Star Walk App; $.99

Give the gift of unlimited astronomical information for less than the price of a stocking stuffer. Learn about the stars directly above you at any given moment and have your map update in real time as you move about. 

Find it: App stores

If we can get smarter, so can technology. That’s what innovation—like Intel®  RealSense™ technology with immersive chat and 3D scanning—is all about. Learn more here: intel.com.

In this video, C.G.P. Grey explains the Single Transferable Vote, a system in which voters get to specify a second choice in case their primary choice candidate doesn't win -- which can lead to a much more representative result. This system is used around the world, most notably in Australia. (Indeed, when I first heard about this kind of voting, it was explained to me as an "Australian Ballot.") To keep things safely abstract, Grey uses a fictional animal kingdom as a way to talk about different constituencies.*

If you haven't seen Grey's 2011 video The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained, that's a useful starting point in case you don't get why there's a problem to begin with. Once you're prepared to get nerdy about voting, let's enjoy some monkey business:

See also: What's Up with the Electoral College?

* = VOTE MONKEY 2014 ALL THE WAY (my name is Monkey McChimperson, and I endorse this message).

At one time, potatoes were only eaten by Americans. Then Columbus came along, and potatoes spread all over the globe, where people eat them in all manners, but none more than fried. Hot fried potatoes, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, are so universal that they are often just called “fries” in the local language. But once you’ve cooked them and named them, the method of eating them varies from place to place. Of course, in any country there are many different preferences, but tradition and taste fall into different styles in different places.

Belgium

Photograph by Jon Åslund.

Belgium is considered to be the birthplace of the fried potato. Belgian fries (frites) are the centerpiece of a meal, not just a side dish. And Belgian chefs are very proud of their fries, competing to serve the best in their chip shops, or frietkotten. They are served hot in cardboard cones to make them easy to eat as you stroll, and a variety of sauces are offered to top them.

Netherlands

Photograph by Flickr user David Kosmos Smith.

Fries in the Netherlands are cooked in the manner of Belgian fries, but Americans may be dismayed by the Dutch choice of condiment: mayonnaise. Dutch mayonnaise is a little spicier than American mayonnaise, and Yanks who’ve lived there become used to the flavor on their fries, and often grow to love it.

France

Photograph by Thierry Caro.

Although a variety of sauces and dips are available for pommes frites, rémoulade is very popular, not only in France, where it originated, but in Denmark, Iceland, and Scandinavia. Rémoulade has a mayonnaise base, with the addition of pickles, horseradish, curry, anchovies, or other flavorings. It was developed for use on seafood, somewhat like tartar sauce, but is used on a variety of dishes. The flavor and appearance of rémoulade varies by region.

Japan

Photograph by Flickr user Derek A.

In fast food restaurants in Japan, fries (furaido potato) are offered with seasoning powders to sprinkle on top. The toppings come in a variety of flavors made with dried soy or other sauce, ground seeds or seaweed, and spice mixtures. A few fast food outlets will provide a bag in which to shake your fries with the flavoring powder of your choice. This custom is also followed in Hong Kong, Singapore, and other Asian locales where fries are sold in fast food outlets.

Philippines

Fried potatoes in the Philippines are served with banana ketchup. When fried potatoes were introduced to the country by Americans, they were served with tomato ketchup. However, disruption in supplies led to a tomato shortage during World War II. Instead of doing without sauce, Fillipinos turned to what they had, which was bananas. Mashed bananas with vinegar, sugar, and spices made for a fine ketchup substitute, which caught on and is still in use today. Why import tomatoes when you have a home grown crop that instills national pride? Banana ketchup is used on other foods as well, like chicken and spaghetti. Those who’ve had banana ketchup says that it is sweet and spicy and tastes nothing like bananas. The red color is artificial, but you can make homemade banana ketchup without it if you like.

Canada

Photograph by Jonathunder.

In 1957, French Canadian chef Fernand Lachance took fries and make them into a heavenly mess called poutine. Hot fries are topped with gravy and cheese curds, all served hot so the flavors will meld. Poutine became a hit, although some call the calorie-laden snack “junk food.” It spread across Canada, and is even served at some fast food chains. There are annual poutine festivals held in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Fredericton, Drummondville, and even Chicago. 

United Kingdom

Photograph by Edwardwexler.

In Britain, fries are called chips, as in fish and chips, and chips as we knew them are called crisps. Chips are traditionally eaten with a sprinkling of malt vinegar and then salt. Chip shops once served them on newspapers in lieu of paper plates, and today paper is often used instead of boxes or plates. However, as this recent article points out, there are regional differences and a newer tradition of curry chips, due to Indian influence on British food. Some prefer non-malt vinegar or HP sauce. As the thousand+ comments point out, there is no consensus on the matter.

United States

Photograph by Flickr user Robert Terrell.

The most common way to eat fries in the U.S. is with ketchup, although that may be because restaurants rarely offer any other choice. There are plenty of other toppings, including cheese, chili, hot sauce, barbecue sauce, onions, ranch dressing, and the sauces used in other nations. In restaurants, you often have to pay extra for them.

In researching fries in other countries and in the US, a couple of generalities came up again and again. Food critics and chefs agree that the best fries are cooked twice: first frying them at a low temperature or boiling them to make the potatoes tender, and then frying at a hotter temperature to make the outside hot and crisp. And most agree that animal fat makes better tasting fries than any vegetable oil. Enjoy your fries!

With today's technology, anything can be transformed into an instrument. An increasing number of musicians are using found sound to push the limits of what music can be. Electronic musician Matthew Dear has teamed up with GE Acoustics Engineer Andrew Gorton to create something really novel: Together, they recorded sounds from a number of different machines, including airplane engines, locomotives, and power turbines, and turned it into a song: "Drop Science" aims to showcase these amazing man-made sounds. 

According to GE's Fabian Dawson, every machine has a sound that is uniquely its own. Engineers monitor the noises to make sure everything is running smoothly. By listening for problems, they can deduce things they otherwise would not have been able to see. Dear takes these individual and important sounds, and makes them harmonious. The industrial clicks and beeps that the musician experiments with give his track a futuristic feel that you can't replicate with traditional instruments. 

You can listen to the new track below or watch the short documentary here.

There's a ton of games out there, and you probably don't have time to play all of them. So how do you decide which games are worth investing your time and money into? One study looked at over 300 video games to figure out what games held the most true value. The findings offer a look into what the best games are, as well as the difference in value between traditional and downloadable games. These infographics may not end the age-old PC vs. console gaming war, but they might help you decide on your next game purchase.

via eBay Deals

Nicholas Felton measures his life not with coffee spoons but with sensors and apps. Every year, he uses the data he collects about himself to issue annual reports illustrating aspects of his life. For instance, in 2012, he used a custom iPhone app that surveyed him throughout the day, resulting in surprisingly rich data sets like what, and how much, he drank all year (major categories include beer, wine, coffee, and juice...with detailed breakdowns within each).

In this short video from the New York Times, we get a taste of what Felton's life is like—and can reflect on what it means when our lives are measured by ourselves and others:

You can read a bit more from the New York Times and check out his reports (he sells prints; many of the reports are beautiful).

Researchers at Microsoft have developed a method to make smooth timelapse video from head-mounted cameras. That sounds kind of boring until you see it in practice, and you get a taste of the technical problems involved. File this one under "Computers are Pretty Amazing."

In the first video, the researchers show the differences between the source video (super shaky head-mounted GoPro footage), a "naïve" timelapse (just pick every 10th frame and stitch it together), and their hyperlapse process. Be warned, you might get motion sickness if you watch too much of this (especially fullscreen—and it's not full HD quality anyway). Given that warning, behold the might of computation:

Want more technical detail? Oh, there's plenty in this extended version, explaining the lengths researchers had to go through to make this work. It involves deducing the path the camera traveled, choosing a new (stabilized) path, and combining multiple frames to make that path work.

There's more information on this method from Microsoft Research, including a technical paper (35MB PDF). If you just want to check out more cool hyperlapse videos, I recommend: Google Street View Hyperlapse; New York in Hyperlapse; and a collection of hyperlapse videos from around the world.

On election results day, outgoing PM Manmohan Singh, reportedly trolled UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. Here are pics showing how it happened:

Possibly Related News:

1. Manmohan Singh overheats after reading Baru’s book, Sonia Gandhi takes him to robot repair shop
2. Exclusive pics of Manmohan Singh vacationing during Lok Sabha elections
3. After appointing new Army Chief, outgoing UPA appoints Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister
4. Frustrated of being ignored in the elections, Manmohan Singh to fight from Varanasi as independent candidate
5. Manmohan Singh to be new Chief Economic Advisor, Rahul Gandhi PM

the project is a metaphor of how architecture and engineering are a fundamental piece in the of identity of urban places and of people that inhabit them.

The post federico babina illustrates countries operated by architecture appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Good news (for us at least): our new book is done! It’s called Think Like a Freak. It will be published on May 13; but you can pre-order now on Amazon.com, B&N.com, iTunes, or any of your finer online bookshops.

Think Like a Freak is, like our two earlier books, a blend of storytelling and data. But Think has a slightly different mission than Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics. Here’s how we explain it in the first chapter:

The first two books were rarely prescriptive. For the most part, we simply used data to tell stories we found interesting, shining a light on parts of society that often lay in shadow. This book steps out of the shadows and tries to offer some advice that may occasionally be useful, whether you are interested in minor lifehacks or major global reforms.

Although we tell a million stories in Think,  the emphasis is usually on problem-solving:

It strikes us that in recent years, the idea has arisen that there is a “right” way to think about solving a given problem and of course a “wrong” way too. This inevitably leads to a lot of shouting—and, sadly, a lot of unsolved problems. Can this situation be improved upon? We hope so. We’d like to bury the idea that there’s a right way and a wrong way, a smart way and a foolish way, a red way and a blue way. The modern world demands that we all think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally; that we think from a different angle, with a different set of muscles, with a different set of expectations; that we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like—ahem—a Freak.

Here, on the left, is how the book will look in the U.S. and Canada; on the right is the U.K. cover (yum!):

You can get the flavor of the book by checking out the Table of Contents, below. We can’t wait for you to read the book, and tell us what you think. On our “Upcoming Appearances” page, you can find the details of our U.S. and U.K. book tours (come say hello if we visit your city), as well as media appearances (like the Reddit.com AMA I’ll be doing on May 12). Once the book is out, we’ll start offering free signed bookplates so you can turn your standard-issue Think Like a Freak into an autographed edition. And keep your ear out for Freakonomics Radio episodes based on our favorite stories from Think, as well as a Think Like a Freak Book Club, in which Levitt and I will answer your questions about the book — and teach you, if you’re willing, to think like a Freak.

Think Like a Freak Table of Contents

1. What Does It Mean to Think Like a Freak?

An endless supply of fascinating questions . . . The pros and cons of breast-feeding, fracking, and virtual currencies . . . There is no magic Freakonomics tool . . . Easy problems evaporate; it is the hard ones that linger . . . How to win the World Cup . . . Private benefits vs. the greater good . . . Thinking with a different set of muscles . . . Are married people happy or do happy people marry? . . . Get famous by thinking just once or twice a week . . . Our disastrous meeting with the future prime minister.

2. The Three Hardest Words in the English Language

Why is “I don’t know” so hard to say? . . . Sure, kids make up answers but why do we? . . . Who believes in the devil? . . . And who believes 9/11 was an inside job? . . . “Entrepreneurs of error” . . . Why measuring cause-and-effect is so hard . . . The folly of prediction . . . Are your predictions better than a dart-throwing chimp? . . . The Internet’s economic impact will be “no greater than the fax machine’s” . . . “Ultracrepidarianism” . . . The cost of pretending to know more than you do . . . How should bad predictions be punished? . . . The Romanian witch hunt . . . The first step in solving problems: put away your moral compass . . . Why suicide rises with quality of life— and how little we know about suicide . . . Feedback is the key to all learning . . . How bad were the first loaves of bread? . . . Don’t leave experimentation to the scientists . . . Does more expensive wine taste better?

3. What’s Your Problem?

If you ask the wrong question, you’ll surely get the wrong answer . . . What does “school reform” really mean? . . . Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia? . . . Maybe it’s the parents’ fault! . . . The amazing true story of Takeru Kobayashi, hot-dog-eating champion . . . Fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes! . . . So how did he do it? . . . And why was he so much better than everyone else? . . . “To eat quickly is not very good manners” . . . “The Solomon Method” . . . Endless experimentation in pursuit of excellence . . . Arrested! . . . How to redefine the problem you are trying to solve . . . The brain is the critical organ . . . How to ignore artificial barriers . . . Can you do 20 push-ups?

4. Like a Bad Dye Job, the Truth Is in the Roots

Why a bucket of cash will not cure poverty and a planeload of food will not cure famine . . . How to find the root cause of a problem . . . Revisiting the abortion-crime link . . . What does Martin Luther have to do with the German economy? . . . How the “Scramble for Africa” created lasting strife . . . Why did slave traders lick the skin of the slaves they bought? . . . Medicine vs. folklore . . . Consider the ulcer . . . The first blockbuster drugs . . . Why did the young doctor swallow a batch of dangerous bacteria? . . . Talk about gastric upset! . . . The universe that lives in our gut . . . The power of poop.

5. Think Like a Child

How to have good ideas . . . The power of thinking small . . . Smarter kids at $15 a pop . . . Don’t be afraid of the obvious . . . 1.6 million of anything is a lot . . . Don’t be seduced by complexity . . . What to look for in a junkyard . . . The human body is just a machine . . . Freaks just want to have fun . . . It is hard to get good at something you don’t like . . . Is a “no-lose lottery” the answer to our low savings rate? . . . Gambling meets charity . . . Why kids figure out magic tricks better than adults . . . “You’d think scientists would be hard to dupe” . . . How to smuggle childlike instincts across the adult border.

6. Like Giving Candy to a Baby

It’s the incentives, stupid! . . . A girl, a bag of candy, and a toilet . . . What financial incentives can and can’t do . . . The giant milk necklace . . . Cash for grades . . . With financial incentives, size matters . . . How to determine someone’s true incentives . . . Riding the herd mentality . . . Why are moral incentives so weak? . . . Let’s steal some petrified wood! . . . One of the most radical ideas in the history of philanthropy . . . “The most dysfunctional $300 billion industry in the world” . . . A one-night stand for charitable donors . . . How to change the frame of a relationship . . . Ping-Pong diplomacy and selling shoes . . . “You guys are just the best!” . . . The customer is a human wallet . . . When incentives backfire . . . The “cobra effect” . . . Why treating people with decency is a good idea.

7. What Do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common?

A pair of nice, Jewish, game-theory-loving boys . . . “Fetch me a sword!” . . . What the brown M&M’s were really about . . . Teach your garden to weed itself . . . Did medieval “ordeals” of boiling water really work? . . . You too can play God once in a while . . . Why are college applications so much longer than job applications? . . . Zappos and “The Offer” . . . The secret bullet factory’s warm-beer alarm . . . Why do Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria? . . . The cost of false alarms and other false positives . . . Will all the gullible people please come forward? . . . How to trick a terrorist into letting you know he’s a terrorist.

8. How to Persuade People Who Don’t Want to Be Persuaded

First, understand how hard this will be . . . Why are better-educated people more extremist? . . . Logic and fact are no match for ideology . . . The consumer has the only vote that counts . . . Don’t pretend your argument is perfect . . . How many lives would a driverless car save? . . . Keep the insults to yourself . . . Why you should tell stories . . . Is eating fat really so bad? . . . The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure . . . What is the Bible “about”? . . . The Ten Commandments versus The Brady Bunch.

9. The Upside of Quitting

Winston Churchill was right—and wrong . . . The sunk cost fallacy and opportunity cost . . . You can’t solve tomorrow’s problem if you won’t abandon today’s dud . . . Celebrating failure with a party and cake . . . Why the flagship Chinese store did not open on time . . . Were the Challenger’s O-rings bound to fail? . . . Learn how you might fail without going to the trouble of failing . . . The $1 million question: “when to struggle and when to quit” . . . Would you let a coin toss decide your future? . . . “Should I quit the Mormon faith?” . . . Growing a beard will not make you happy . . . But ditching your girlfriend might . . . Why Dubner and Levitt are so fond of quitting . . . This whole book was about “letting go” . . . And now it’s your turn.