This is a map of "all meth clandestine laboratory incidents including labs, dumpsites, chem/glass/equipment" in the U.S. in 2012, by state. It was created by the DEA and is freely available on the website of the Department of Justice. Here, in no particular order, are some things we can take away from this map:

A recent still from Star Trek: Into Darkness shows Benedict Cumberbatch surrounded by redshirts. This, we surmised, could only mean one thing. Anyone with a hint of SF-savvy knows that the grisly fate of a Starfleet crew member clad in crimson is as certain as Cumbermouth's tubercle is sharply defined; in the Star Trek …

Languages are like species. They evolve in mostly predictable ways, splitting into new species or dying out over time. Now, a group of linguists and computer scientists in the US and Canada have created a piece of software that can analyze enormous groups of languages to reconstruct what the earliest human languages…

This is excellent. Last night a friend sent us this post by redditor TheIndieArmy, who observes that "the popularity graph for the name Bruce looks awfully familiar."

Death rates from cancer have gone down 20% since 1991, according to data in a new study published this month. This does not mean that fewer people are developing cancer, nor does it even mean that fewer people are dying of it — it just means that, year by year, fewer people are dying of the disease. Possible reasons…

Gun laws are strict in Chicago. In fact, until 2010, there was an outright ban on handguns. But you wouldn't know it from the number of firearms seized in crimes and unpermitted uses in 2012 (7,400 to New York City's 3,285), to say nothing of the city's staggering gun violence.

The complex computer models we use to predict the weather be used to predict illness, too. According to a new paper, these models could help us know weeks in advance just how bad this flu season will be.

Nate Silver is the talk of the internet today, and for good reason. When every news outlet on the planet was presenting the presidential race as a dead heat, the NYT's political stats guru was giving Obama a greater than 90 percent chance of clinching a second term — a call he's been making for weeks. In any case: the…

As we approach the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack, we can be grateful that nothing like it has happened since. But that doesn't mean that something very much like 9/11 — or even worse — couldn't happen again. In fact, new research suggests that we may be seriously underestimating the risk of another…

It is one of the greatest moments in televised history — excited friends and family members tear through the Berlin Wall, reuniting East and West Germany after decades of separation.