Swans on Tea

Skulls in the Stars: Lord Kelvin vs. the Aether! (1901)
[T]hese speculations resulted in a number of interesting results. For instance, we have noted previously that Earnshaw’s theorem (1839), an important result in electromagnetic theory, arose from an attempt to determine the forces that hold the aether together. In 1902, Lord Rayleigh attempted [...]

The Bloop, which has its own Wikipedia page (OK, what interesting subject doesn’t, the Wikipedia Paradox notwithstanding?)
Aaaaanyway …
[T]he sound is believed to be coming roughly from 50oS; 100oW. After reading that, I wondered how close that was to the coordinates given in “The Call of Cthulhu”. Allow me to quote: “Then, driven ahead by curiosity [...]

OK, not really.
Dec. 30, 1924: Hubble Reveals We Are Not Alone
Hubble used Leavitt’s formula to calculate that Andromeda was approximately 860,000 light years away. That’s more than eight times the distance to the farthest stars in the Milky Way. This conclusively proved that the nebulae are separate star systems and that our galaxy is not [...]

A little kinetic sculpture for you
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Tongue in Cheek
In 8-year-old lore, it’s metal poles and mailboxes that you have to watch out for. Frost on wood or rubber doesn’t present such a high risk. Why doesn’t your tongue freeze to your glove when you eat a bit of snow off of that? Why not?

Security Theater
Here’s a little perspective: FiveThirtyEight: The Odds of Airborne Terror
Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.
There is an underlying Maginot mentality to the way the [...]

The Oatmeal: Why It’s Better To Pretend You Don’t Know Anything About Computers

Large version available at xkcd

That’s ice fishing

Lara Croft vs Indiana Jones
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Uncertainty in Science: It’s a Feature, Not a Bug
People tend to think of scientific progress as always advancing in a straight line, with new facts being added permanently to our body of knowledge as they are discovered. “They do not understand that, instead, research is an ungainly mechanism that moves in fits and starts and [...]

Best Man Rigs Newlyweds’ Bed To Tweet During Sex. Not Kidding.
Read the entire tweet stream from the bottom up if you want the full story. But basically, this guy was watching his friend’s house while they went on their honeymoon and he placed a device under their mattress. This device, which is similar to the [...]