Unnerving to some, educational and brilliant to others
In the tradition of Richard Feynman’s ode to orange juice, but spiced with actual information.
 

 
California law specifically forbids early termination charges
In a preliminary ruling Monday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Bonnie Sabraw said Sprint Nextel must pay California mobile-phone consumers $18.2 million as part of a class-action lawsuit challenging early termination fees.
Though the decision could be appealed, it’s the first in the country to declare the fees illegal in [...]

 
Using Sun’s Energy to Split Water Means Solar Power All Night
A U.S. scientist has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night.
A new catalyst produces the oxygen and hydrogen that fuel cells use [...]

 
Shopping is becoming more complicated
While some consumers in the US are shopping online to avoid driving, even those visiting stores in person are hitting the Web first.
Eight out of 10 respondents who had recently made consumer electronics purchases in a brick-and-mortar store said they had visited the store’s Website first, according to a May 2008 [...]

 
Best all time selling camcorder
Pure Digital is proving that simplicity sells. The company says it has now sold 1 million of its Flip video cameras in less than a year, and the NPD Group has listed the Flip Ultra as the top-selling video camera in June.

 Amazing arrogance!
A New York City police officer has been placed behind a desk after being caught on tape deliberately pushing a man off of his bike during a Friday Critical Mass event in Times Square.

A clockwork machine hailed as the supercomputer of the ancient world provided a calendar for the Olympic Games and may have had a link with Archimedes, one of the greatest names in science, investigators believe.

 
 E-textile Pants
A pair of pants may help determine if elderly individuals have a high risk of slipping and falling by sensing fluctuations in their walking gait.

 
 
Getting access to drinking water is a daily challenge for more than one billion people in the world. Desalination may help relieve such water-stressed populations by filtering salt from abundant seawater, and there are more than 7,000 desalination plants worldwide, 250 operating in the United States alone. However, the membranes that these plants use to [...]

 
Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s gothic construction vehicle sculptures show what a world after the industrial revolution could have looked like if it was shaped by the same minds that put gargoyles atop imposing spires and buttresses in European architecture.
 

 
Butterfly wings, peacock feathers, opals and pearls are some of nature’s jewels that use nanostructures to dazzle us with color. It’s accomplished through the way light reaches our eyes after passing through the submicroscopic mazes within these materials.