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cool and crap awards
Cool and Crap Awards of the Week
At least two things happened in the world of science and science fiction last week. One was cool, the other was crap.Coolest excuse to talk about human-robot love, or bot-on-bot love, without seeming like a total chromosexual pervert. The release of Wall-E, a robot love story, has stirred up everybody's memories of great robot love stories past. Now, for a brief time, you can talk about robo-love without coming across as a futuristic kinkster like David Levy, that guy who wrote the book on how we'll all be banging and marrying robots in a decade. Wired's Jenna Wortham even did a feature on the best robot love stories, though sadly she left out two of our favorites: Heartbeeps (accounting bot Andy Kaufman falls in love with hostess bot Bernadette Peters in the only movie Kaufman ever starred in), and Making Mr. Right (1980s-era John Malkovich as a nerdy space robot who romances a cute PR lady). Click through for the crap. More »
wall-e
Wall-E Has Gotten Loose And Is Roaming L.A. Streets
Disney's adorable robot was spotted wandering the streets of L.A., in a fully animatronic version that looks just like the animated incarnation. Watch the video as he rolls up on the tips of his tracks, peers into the videographer's lens, and waves. WALL-E even fields a few questions from passer-bys on the sidewalk . But don't give him any money because he'll probably just spend it on booze. More »
weird food moments
The Tastiest Food Moments in Science Fiction
A juicy virtual steak convinces Cypher to betray Morpheus, Trinity and Neo in maybe the most famous non-bullet-y scene from The Matrix. When you start paying attention, you notice how important food is in science fiction, whether it's dehydrated Pizza Hut, orgasm inducing desserts or fish biscuits. Even condiments get shout outs: in Dune the special mineral wasn't just Melange, but Spice Melange. That being said, you know that steak tasted like bitter hatred in your mouth After the jump a list of some of the weirdest things stuffed into the mouths of our beloved scifi characters. More »
nanotech
Nanotech Precisely Measures Spiciness So Your Tongue Doesn't Have To
The Scoville Units you see on the side of chili sauce bottles are measured subjectively by taste testers, who determine how hot a given hot sauce really is. But now a new nanotechnology will allow food scientists to quickly and cheaply measure the exact amount of capsaicinoids — the active component in chili peppers — in each spicy sample. Science gives us many wondrous things, but you probably never thought it would help prevent you from making bland chili. More »
dystopia
The Food Riots Are Getting Worse
Prices for cornmeal and rice have doubled in Somalia since January, and on Monday food riots wracked the Somalian city of Mogadishu. Thousands of people protested the insane prices for staple foods, and eventually police shot and killed two protesters. Earlier this year, food riots broke out in the African nation of Senegal as well. What's causing these conditions, which sound like the precursors to the apocalyptic food-shortage flick Soylent Green? More »
hormone tampering
Fast Food Joints Add Hormone to Food That Makes You Want to Eat More
When you ingest a stomach hormone called ghrelin it causes your brain to respond to food the way junkies respond to drugs. You are filled with an intense desire for it, and eating it becomes far more memorable. Researchers at Montreal's McGill University studied people's reactions to food after they had ingested ghrelin, and discovered that it made them crave whatever food they were shown in pictures — even if they had just eaten. Drugs that tamper with ghrelin are just around the corner. More »
future veggies
Seawater Crops Could Solve Food, Water Shortages
Imagine going to the beach, looking out across the ocean, and seeing an endless stretch of...tomato plants. Those days may still be years off, but the case for using seawater for farming is getting stronger. Italian researchers reporting in the Journal of the American Chemical Society say that when tomato plants are watered with a 12% saltwater solution, they produce sweeter, tastier fruit that's also higher in vitamins A and C. More »
future food
X-Prize Hits the Meatpacking Industry
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are putting their money where their mouths are with a million dollar contest to see who can grow edible, tasty chicken nugget meat in a lab by 2012. The prospect of lab-grown meat has a lot of promise, but has been around for years without much progress, probably because of a lack of funding. With the prize money on the table, PETA hopes to do for in vitro meat what the Ansari X-Prize did for commercial spaceflight. It's a terrific idea, but one wonders if they've thought this through well — part of the process involves 10 PETA judges tasting experimental, lab-grown chicken nuggets that may not be ready for prime time yet. Image: Flickr
tissue engineering
Vat-Grown Meat About to Hit Your Local Market
In five years, you'll be eating a hamburger that no animal died for. Instead, that burger will have been grown from a tiny sample of cells in a plant-and-mushroom bath. The cow who donated the cells will be frolicking in a meadow somewhere, having long forgotten the annoying poke from a tissue engineer with a syringe. At a meeting in Norway of the In Vitro Meat Consortium late last week, scientists and entrepreneurs gathered to discuss the future of "cultured meat," or meat that's essentially grown like cultures in a lab (pictured here). This meeting, the first of its kind, signaled the beginning of a viable industry around the production of vat-grown meat. More »
art
Photoimagist Carl Warner depicts what the apocalypse and beyond might look like in a captivating series of food shots staged to look like scenery. In this piece, a black olive-and-watermelon ship sails through a sea of cabbage seeking revenge on vegetarians who have virtually annihilated the entire fruit and vegetable population. More vegetable landscapes below.
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Postapocalyptic Images Made Out of Food
Photoimagist Carl Warner depicts what the apocalypse and beyond might look like in a captivating series of food shots staged to look like scenery. In this piece, a black olive-and-watermelon ship sails through a sea of cabbage seeking revenge on vegetarians who have virtually annihilated the entire fruit and vegetable population. More vegetable landscapes below.More »
triviagasm
Now You're Cooking With Tachyons: The Best Scifi Kitchen Gadgets
According to 1950s newsreels, the wonders of our age are supposed to include a dream kitchen that uses ultrasonic waves to clean our plates, automatically cooks our food for us and does all the shopping. But so far, all the best kitchen toys are still in science fiction. Check out our roundup of gadgets from the kitchens of the future that we want to see in our homes today. More »
triviagasm
The Truth Behind the V Franchise
We mentioned earlier that V might be heading back to television. The big news is that the book that could inspire this V resurgence will hit store shelves tomorrow. But how well to you remember this show and its creator? Creator Kenneth Johnson gave us the original Bionic Woman, and we all know how that recent retread has been going. Would a new V series fare any better? Go behind the scenes with some V trivia in the list below which is rife with decades-old spoilers. More »
retro futurism
The Future Will Taste Like Space Food Sticks
1969 was a great year to be seven-going-on-eight: astronauts were getting ready to land on the moon—and for spellbound earthlings, there were Space Food Sticks. As this vintage ad explains, Space Food Sticks were developed "to meet the demands of a long spaceflight" by the nice folks at Pillsbury. (Can you imagine any product today proclaiming on its box that it was "developed . . . under a government contract"?) More »
clones
By Next Week, You Could Be Eating Clonesteak
The FDA is on the verge of approving cloned cows as safe for eating. That means you could be eating cloned cow's milk and thick beef clonesteaks by next Friday. Yum! According to a rather sober assessment in the Wall Street Journal, however, it's not likely that Black Angus will start having clone cuts on their menus. It's so expensive to clone cows that the consumer market will see few of them. Instead, companies are planning to use them as breeding stock. The whole thing makes me think of Margaret Atwood's chickie knobs in Oryx and Crake. More »
molecular gastronomy
In a Brussels restaurant, this chef dipped raspberries in liquid nitrogen, fished them out, then chopped them into fruity cocaine on a flash-frozen piece of wood. Fans of sweetness and molecular gastronomy consumed the confection by sucking it through frozen glass straws.
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Raspberries and Liquid Nitrogen Create Cocaine-Style Dessert
In a Brussels restaurant, this chef dipped raspberries in liquid nitrogen, fished them out, then chopped them into fruity cocaine on a flash-frozen piece of wood. Fans of sweetness and molecular gastronomy consumed the confection by sucking it through frozen glass straws.
More »
archaeology
