We know what rocket science looks like in the movies: a windowless bunker filled with blinking consoles, swivel chairs, and shirt-sleeved men in headsets nonchalantly relaying updates from “Houston” to outer space. Lately, that vision of Mission Control has taken over City Hall.
Surprisingly, in 2014 the U.S. space transportation picture took shape in the sense that a viable way forward became clearer, although with no guarantee of ultimate success. NASA is not going to directly replace the Space Shuttle. That horse left the barn in 2009. The earlier demise of the Ares launch system as part of the cancellation of the Constellation program made that reality clear. Therefore, the question becomes, what now?
The teenager turned around. He was face-to-face with a teacher of an online course. Well, sort of. The teacher’s face was encased in a small video screen. His body was a four-foot-tall plastic tower on wheels.
People have an “equality bias” when it comes to competence or expertise, such that even when it’s very clear that one person in a group is more skilled, expert, or competent (and the other less), they are nonetheless inclined to seek out a middle ground in determining how correct different viewpoints are.
So rather than rehash the same tired conversation about which films feature the most truthful scenes of combat (the answer, by the way, is "Band of Brothers"), let's look at movies that best capture different individual facets of military life and deployment, of the people and experiences that make up that parallel universe. No movie gets all of it right, but some of them get little parts of it perfect.
It’s my first time at AVN. I’ve wanted to go forever. My lifelong fascination with the adult film industry sprang from my accidental proximity to it; I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, the cradle of filmic pornography since the early ’70s. It’s also my first time in Las Vegas as an adult.
Why does hunger shape so much behavior that has so little to do with food?
The world of online hate, long dominated by website forums like Stormfront and its smaller neo-Nazi rival Vanguard News Network (VNN), has found a new — and wildly popular — home on the Internet.
On the verge of retirement, Egil Ellis, the greatest sprint musher of all time, takes one last stab at the World Championships.
This is what it must be like to be eaten by an amoeba.
"It's a commonsense idea that Republicans and Democrats can both agree on: members of Congress shouldn't be able to charge taxpayers for first-class airfare or long-term personal car leases," said Rep. Gwen Graham, who will likely be one of the most vulnerable House Democrats in the next election cycle.
What does micro-video fame look like in real life?
One of the current aims of AI research is to design machines that can mimic human thinking as much as possible. We want to better understand what goes on in human thinking, especially when it comes to decisions that cannot be justified other than by drawing on our “intuition” and “gut-feelings” — the decisions we can only make after learning from experience.
Over 30 million Africans live in the diaspora. They sent almost $40bn home in 2014, a figure that is likely to grow significantly in the coming years. And the cost of sending this money is high.
If you want to imagine how the world will look in just a few years, once our cell phones become the keepers of both our money and identity, skip Silicon Valley and book a ticket to Orlando.
The Hummer is possibly the most unreliable piece of crap I've ever owned.
A ring-like filament of stars wrapping around the Milky Way may actually belong to the galaxy itself, rippling above and below the relatively flat galactic plane. If so, that would expand the size of the known galaxy by 50 percent and raise intriguing questions about what caused the waves of stars.
In 1963, the young manager of the Beatles secured a deal for his group to headline the "Ed Sullivan Show" — the world hasn't been the same since.
The harsh reality is that America's internet is still fundamentally broken, and there's no easy fix.
It's just like famous song Frank Sinatra used to sing: If you can make it here, you'll find a hell of a lot of Starbucks.
We all know that camouflage is an important tool in the evolutionary toolbox. But it's only one of the ways that butterflies and caterpillars use color to keep themselves safe.
Women predisposed to ovarian cancer can reduce their risk with surgery, but with it comes early menopause. To avoid this, some doctors propose delaying part of the procedure. But is this safe?
How our leaders learned to escape the flip-flop.
An unwrapped moist towelette branded with the Malaysia Airlines logo has been found on a beach in West Australia — and it's now being tested to see if it is the first confirmed piece of evidence from the airline's missing plane.
In the popular imagination the Silk Road is still, if not a metonym for the Dark Web, the entire thing itself. That’s far from the truth.
Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday defended her exclusive use of a private email address during her time as secretary of state, saying that she did so as a matter of “convenience,” to make life simpler by using one device and one email account.
Every year, tens of thousands of untraceable Thai fishing boats ply the sea. Captains buy slave crew and force them to work for years on end to put fish on American plates. This is the story of how a few men — a farmer, a motorcycle mechanic, a construction worker — escaped.
When it comes to statutes prohibiting minors from getting married, the U.S. is more like Latin America than Europe.
The extraordinary life of Janet Vaughan, who changed our relationship with blood.
There are many good and proper ways to eat dates; they are a versatile food.
A federal jury on Tuesday found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lifted "Blurred Lines" from Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" — but they didn't do it on purpose — and awarded more than $7.4 million to Gaye’s children Nona, Frankie and Marvin III.
It's not that hard to score bud with the right amount of finesse. Come with me as I guide you on a keef-paved road to sparking up.
"If I could give them no stars, I would."
If you came of high-school age in Southern California in or after the nineties and spent any time in shopping malls, chances are you celebrated a birthday or driver’s license over barbecue-chicken pizza from California Pizza Kitchen.
The fact that Yellow Tail has only been on the market for about 14 years is probably very surprising to anyone who came of drinking age in the early 2000s.
The Warburg is Britain’s most eccentric and original library. Can it survive?
The authorization makes Michigan State Police the first law enforcement agency to be given statewide license to use drones by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA had only previously granted the licenses to a few municipalities around the country.
HBO’s wildly popular fantasy show will air, as usual, on Sundays at 9pm in New York — which is also Mondays at 2am in London, 9am in Hong Kong, and noon in Auckland. Unusual times to watch a television drama, to be sure, but it will please some fans who can’t wait.
The easiest way to magically* be a total dick to your friends, and then probably pocket their money.
There's a little Lewis Black inside all of us. He's tiny and red and constantly screaming.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told supporters that there is “a tremendous effort, worldwide, to topple” him as Israelis head to the polls next week, according to an audiotape broadcast Tuesday on Army Radio.
The film will be a mix of CGI and live action.
Louisiana tried to sentence five men to death for the murder of a prison guard. It wasn’t cheap.
"Top Gear" host Jeremy Clarkson suspended by the BBC "following a fracas" with a producer.
A century ago, the sea otter was almost wiped out. Now, after decades of conservation, one hunter is trying to bring its fur back into fashion.
For the next 24 hours, a host of Class A drugs are legal (or else in a legal quandary) in Ireland due to an accidental loophole in drug laws.
Today we saw an aging pop singer do unspeakable things to a printer, and it was glorious.
Daniel Vaughn will soon visit his one thousandth barbecue joint in eight years — that’s one thousand different places, not one thousand total barbecue meals.
The second season is just a first act in Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s plan for world domination.
A generation living beyond its means is waiting for the biggest transfer of wealth in human history. Some are waiting more patiently than others.
And so did Hansel. Quite the buzzmarketing for the upcoming "Zoolander" sequel.
In May 2010, a whale showed up on the wrong side of the world.
CGP Grey breaks down how ideas are like a contagion, which emotions make us share things, and why rage can form a balanced ecosystem.
Rude in Tokyo, rude not to in New York — tipping mystifies tourists, economists and anthropologists. Should we stop?
To find the best selfie stick, we put in 20 hours of research, brought in 20 testing models, and took dozens of selfies in various conditions, including frozen-over Niagara Falls.
For the first time in a decade, astronomers have found new dwarf galaxies — ones with just billions of stars or even less compared with the hundreds of billions in our own — orbiting the Milky Way. And they've found nine of them.
The story of your life, told with alcohol.
I owed about $2,000 in state taxes which I can easily pay out of savings. But I also considered another option: paying the taxes owed on a credit card that offered reward points. This could be an easy way for someone who regularly pays off credit cards to rack up some points to put towards a future trip, right? Not exactly.
If you're not speaking up, you're not helping anyone.
Photographer Liza Van Der Stock’s intimate project about a porn-producing family in Flanders was shortlisted for the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards.