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urawaza

How to Outrun Zombies, and Other Ways to Solve Problems Japanese-Style

My new book Urawaza is a collection of over 100 tips and tricks from Japan for honing your survival skills, fine-tuning your appreciation of Japanese culture, and eventually making you superhuman. The book is full of quirky Japanese solutions to common problems, along with scientific explanations of why they work. Imagine, for example, that you need to outrun a flock of zombies, like Will Smith in I Am Legend. With the help of a little old-school Japanese wisdom, you can actually run faster. Find out how!
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2:40 PM on Mon Apr 21 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
13,575 views, 26 comments

Latest by Silver_Back: @Menouthis: I'd imagine if ever there was a sequel to "Shaun of the Dead" or Dawn of the Dead they should apply this logical step to survival! @joemono: I don't know whether it would kill them. It may hinder them as more »

replaced by machines

Will Efficient Social Software Take Your Job Away?

Social software sites like Flickr and Digg aren't just distracting you from your job — they could actually make your job disappear in the next high tech economic revolution. Get ready to retrain yourself right now. A new book by NYU interactive telecommunications professor Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, is a good place to start. Although Shirky predicts the demise or extreme downscaling of a lot of familiar jobs right now — everything from design to procedural legal work — he's also got a lot of telling observations about the future of work, social relationships, and even politics, based on years of researching how people communicate online. We cornered Shirky on IM and asked him about the future of our jobs in a world where everyone can publish and collaborate online for free. More »

4:30 PM on Fri Apr 11 2008
By Annalee Newitz
9,690 views, 21 comments

Latest by Asari: The creative firm i work for occasionally farms out projects overseas. One time, a highly-respected creative team from overseas spent two weeks working only on one project. they didn't come up with anything decent, and the client was not happy. So my more »

to-do lists for futurists

20 Things You Can Put on Your To-Do List Now to Change the World in 100 Years

To-do lists are a great way to plan your week, and it turns out they're also not a bad tool for futurists either. We've put together 20 to-do list items that anyone can use to stop environmental disaster, speed the invention of artificial intelligence, jumpstart a moon colony, and help everyone become posthuman. Usually it seems like ordinary people can't contribute to massive projects that require scientific minds as well as philosophers and other specialists. But there are actually a lot of things you can do. Over the past week we've posted four separate to-do lists for futurists, and now we bring them all together so you can print them out, tuck them in your pocket, and start checking items off to change the world. More »

3:22 PM on Fri Mar 21 2008
By Annalee Newitz
16,132 views, 8 comments

Latest by Cheap Shot: @Grey_Area: I believe global warming and disease will help population control. Living off-world would be the best way to handle this problem but we would probably overpopulate another planet again within time. Humans grow more than twofold. We're like tribbles.[www.trekfrontier.com] more »

conquering sleep

Your Sleep Patterns Are Controlled by Television

Human sleep patterns were once controlled by circadian rhythms governed by day and night. But now, according to a new study, almost everyone in the United States has a sleep pattern that's controlled by when they watch TV. A massive survey on time management conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics shows that most people watch TV between 11 - 11:15, dropping off to sleep when they switch the tube off. The hour when nighttime falls affects this pattern very little. Human sleep patterns are therefore more malleable than believed, and it's possible people could change them as easily as changing channels. More »

3:00 PM on Fri Mar 7 2008
By Annalee Newitz
10,012 views, 18 comments

Latest by SundaySunday: Sometimes, I like to do what I call "Sleeping in the theater", where I put the bedroom TV on Turner Classic Movies or the Starz Western channel and sleep with it on all night. Sometimes it's cool when the TV sound more »

hacking life

This Weekend, Start Building a New Life Form

In a few years, your weekend hacking project will involve bits of DNA and a PCR machine instead of a soldering iron or glue. With the help of the Open Wetware Project, and the Registry of Standard Biological Parts Wiki, you too can become an amateur synthetic biologist. But this isn't about evil mad scientist stuff. People using these new open-source biohacking tools are trying create helpful life forms, like insulin-producing bacteria or drought-tolerant crops. Here's a quick introduction to the biohacking tools everybody will be using tomorrow. More »

4:25 PM on Fri Feb 29 2008
By Annalee Newitz
3,582 views, 18 comments

Latest by CarolynG: Thanks for this post Annalee! I just spent the past hour poking around these websites. Even if I never become a garage Dr. Frankenstein, this information is still fascinating and enjoyable to read. more »

futurism

The Pros and Cons of a Google Brain Implant

In John Varley's upcoming scifi novel Rolling Thunder, everyone has a brain implant that lets them google information constantly. And many futurists are saying this technology will become a reality long before we colonize Mars. The question isn't whether we'll have google brain implants (or the futuristic search engine equivalent), but how we'll handle them. What exactly would be the plusses and minuses of being able to google information instantaneously in your head, without anybody knowing you're doing it? More »

5:30 PM on Fri Feb 22 2008
By Annalee Newitz
11,863 views, 74 comments

Latest by Tyreeeeeli: i like turtles. more »

applied cognitive science

How Cognitive Science Can Improve Your PowerPoint Presentations

Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen M. Kosslyn, who studies how brains process images, wants to improve the world with his cutting-edge research. And he's starting with four ways to make your PowerPoint presentations more human brain-compliant. This morning at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston, Kosslyn spoke in a symposium devoted the visualization of data, explaining how breakthroughs in cognitive science have revealed the best way to present information in the PowerPoint format. It was one of the most interesting examples of applied science I've ever seen. More »

10:20 AM on Fri Feb 15 2008
By Annalee Newitz
29,884 views, 26 comments

Latest by null: Comment on How Cognitive Science Can Improve Your PowerPoint Presentations I'd like to address some of the visibility issues brought up. I go back to the days of using 35mm slides (and before). The best rule for those was more »

gtd in space

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Spaceship Captains

If you want to learn good organization skills, look no further than some of the best leaders in the universe: the captains of spaceships. They may be fictional, but they have skills that translate into the real world. After all, you'd follow Admiral Adama into battle, and trust Malcolm Reynolds to have your back. Now you can learn the seven greatest leadership lessons we gleaned from watching shows like Futurama and Firefly. More »

3:30 PM on Wed Feb 6 2008
By Annalee Newitz
51,396 views, 66 comments

nosplice:17

Evolution Explains Why Lolcats Control Your Mind

If you're distracted by lolcats at work all day, new evidence from evolutionary biology suggests it's not your fault. Human visual attention evolved thousands of years ago to track the movements of animals, and even today people are far more distracted by images involving changes in animals than they are by images of inert Mac laptops or moving cars. This research, conducted by psychologists at Yale, goes a long way towards explaining the bizarrely mesmerizing effect of lolcats, despite the fact that there are plenty of other funny, cute things out there on the Web. More »

10:00 AM on Tue Jan 22 2008
By Annalee Newitz
73,613 views, 34 comments

Latest by kezzas2: I love lolcats, so I created a site that allows you to translate any website into lolcat. It's a work in progress, so let me know if you have any suggestions. more »

mad science

Tinkering with the Sleep Gene

Why do our brains need sleep? And can we switch off the genes that make sleep necessary? Medical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say that they've located a gene that regulates sleep, and if they can switch it on and off it's possible that you'll be able to take a pill to eliminate your desire to snooze. Unfortunately, the researchers' work also shows that doing this might drive you insane or reduce your mental abilities dramatically. More »

12:30 PM on Fri Jan 11 2008
By Annalee Newitz
6,412 views, 35 comments

Latest by ivanyouidiot: I highly recommend reading Nancy Kress' "Beggars in Spain" which deals in depth with this issue. more »

space saving in space

Tips on Organizing Your Room from the Zvezda Space Habitat

If you've ever lived in a dorm or a small apartment, you know how hard it can be to cram in all your computers, books, and general stuff while still staying organized. This problem has reached epic engineering proportions in the International Space Station's "living quarters" on the the Zvezda Module. Three people use the 43-foot cylinder for sleeping, eating, relaxing, cleaning up, going to the bathroom, exercising, doing science experiments, and using their computers. What can you learn about space saving from people in space? Turns out there are three basic rules of organization on Zvezda that are useful on Earth, too. More »

11:40 AM on Mon Jan 7 2008
By Annalee Newitz
13,996 views, 9 comments

Latest by Flamsmark: @aspiringexpatriate: Not at all. What better computer technology is there for human use? More sophisticated computer are basically made of *lots* of high-end consumer parts. Laptops are the epitome of compact and powerful computing. more »

diy space porn

Become a Uranographer and Map the Heavens

Uranography is map-making for the cosmos. If you've always wanted to know where you stand in outer space, now's your chance: O'Reilly has a new book called Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders that is one of the most detailed and thrilling how-to books we've read in a while. Just a few days after reading it, you could be photographing the dust of supernovas and spying on neighboring galaxies. More »

11:40 AM on Wed Jan 2 2008
By Annalee Newitz
2,656 views, 3 comments

Latest by annalee: I just love the word uranography, which I learned from this book. You can see why O'Reilly didn't call it Uranography Illustrated, though. Just sounds so wrong. more »