60% of people can’t go without WiFi access for more than a day.
Addiction to the internet is real. In the United States, it is said to be more pervasive than alcoholism, and debate is raging over whether it should be officially classified as a mental illness.
Continue reading… “WiFi is the new cigarette: Infographic”
Homeowners who aimed their panels toward the west, instead of the south, generated 2% more electricity over the course of a day.
Solar panels should face in the general direction of the sun. You would think that would be easy to do. But most installers of solar panels, especially the ones for homes, follow conventional wisdom handed down from architects, which holds that in the northern hemisphere, windows and solar panels should face south.
Continue reading… “Most solar panels are facing in the wrong direction: Study”
71.2 percent of used cars in metro Detroit get 22.5 mpg or less.
If you are in the market to buy a used Toyota Prius, don’t go shopping for one in Detroit. According to a new study by iSeeCars.com, the Motor City has the worst fuel economy among used cars.
Continue reading… “Can you guess which city has the worst gas-guzzling used cars?”
There are three major ways that drones could be saving lives in the wake of the Philippines’ Typhoon Haiyan.
The first mainstream use of quadcopter drones has been to develop ways to end lives, unfortunately. Because, in natural disasters like Typhoon Haiyan, they could be invaluable for saving them.
Continue reading… “Drones could save lives in the Philippines – but why aren’t we using them?”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Sx34swEG0[/youtube]
What if you could carry a single credit card device in your wallet that would digitally store up to eight credit, debit, membership, and gift cards and lets you switch between them with just a push of a button? Companies like Apple and Google have tried to give us digital wallets, but nothing has really caught on. People still feel tied to their physical wallets.
Continue reading… “Coin: High-tech card could replace everything in your wallet”
“The Illusion of Choice,” via Reddit, is a chart of corporations that create a chain of smaller brands that can all be traced from the 10 mega companies featured here. We assume that you have heard of the biggest brand names and their products that you bring home all the time, however, it’s incredible to know what these giants own and control. Their influence is staggering as shown in this data visualization.
Continue reading… “The 10 mega corporations that control almost everything you buy”
Don’t be afraid to be weird (you probably are) — at least you’ll be remembered.
Hedwig von Restorff, a German psychologist, made an important, though not very counterintuitive, discovery in the 1930’s: things that somehow stand out are remembered more easily than typical things. Suppose we read the following list to a group and then asked them to recall it:
apple, truck, necklace, tomato, glass, dog, rock, umbrella, butter, spoon, Lady Gaga, pillow, pencil, chocolate, desk, banana, bug, soup, milk, tie
Continue reading… “The value of being the “weird” job candidate”
Why do scientists have no faith in science?
Those who claim that science and religion are compatible tend to argue that science, like religion, rests on faith: faith in the accuracy of what we observe, in the laws of nature, or in the value of reason. Daniel Sarewitz, director of a science policy center at Arizona State University and an occasional Slate contributor, wrote this about the Higgs boson in the pages ofNature, one of the world’s most prestigious science journals: “For those who cannot follow the mathematics, belief in the Higgs is an act of faith, not of rationality.”
Millions of schoolchildren around the country go to school every day without Internet or broadband connections.
Only 39 percent of public schools in the U.S. have wireless network access for the whole school. But perhaps the greatest offense—up to this point, at least—has been apathy about the problem.
Suhad Abu Fiad gets a prenatal ultrasound at a clinic in the West Bank city of Nablus.
During a routine sonogram, Suhad Abu Fiad immediately tears up at the sight of her unborn baby’s tiny feet and fingers. She’s hoping for a girl but, as she’s only four months pregnant, it’s still too soon to tell.
Continue reading… “Palestinian prisoners smuggle sperm out of jail”
Workers in cubicles with high partitions were the most miserable.
Is your work station an invading overlord? Do your belongings march across the long desk you share with other workers, spilling out of your space and encroaching on the neutral zones abutting your colleagues’ work areas? Don’t worry, thanks to recent research by Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear at the University of Sydney, that mess probably doesn’t bother your coworkers all that much. In fact, of all the myriad annoyances of office life, workspace cleanliness bothered scarcely 10% of workers — although workers in offices where there are no partitions, coworkers were bothered slightly more.
Continue reading… “Cubicles are the worst: Study”
Even before they hacked your emails and phone calls, the NSA had you under serious scrutiny!
Quote of the Day: “Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.” — Dame Edna Everage
Continue reading… “Top 13 Photos of the Week”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.