Took a tour of the Griffith Observatory over the weekend and took in an awe-inspiring show inside its planetarium. It took us through man’s eon-long journey for understanding of the unknown. While I can’t replicate it for you here, I can leave something that will hopefully instill some residual sense of wonder:

Russian viral videos always seem to exploit some clever aspect of science or engineering. Even these bathtub idiots have a better grounding in reality than 99% of American viral fare.

Good morning. Have the highest resolution photo ever taken of a nebula (specifically, this is the Carina Nebula.) Alright, you may now go about your business. Never mind the utter wonderment that is commonplace in our universe. Go get yourself a decaf latte that you might sit and properly worry about the scratched spoiler on your Honda Civic. It really matters. A lot.

Our population doesn’t sound so massive when it’s in those terms, does it? Nor when it is explained that, shoulder to shoulder, the world’s population could fit in Los Angeles. If only we didn’t eat, burn, and crap so much, we could totally sustain this species.

Greg Gets a Mortgage (and Becomes an Adult), Russ Gets a Bear (and Becomes a Psychic), Storey Gets a Twin (and Becomes a Skeptic), Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel Destroy Society One Video Game at a Time, The Meppers Get Immersed, and Everything is Awesome In Sloooooowwww-Moooooo.

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Scientists at the California Institute of Technology claim to be one step closer to mimicking plant-like energy production in the lab. Apparently using a Cesium-Oxygen-Nitrogen mixture, they can create a potent fuel from scratch using concentrated sunlight as the only catalyst.

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A mini-documentary on the Leonardo Da Vinci of the modern era, Nikola Tesla.

Hans Rosling and his team of statisticians organized an unfathomably huge swath of historical health statistics since the beginning of the 19th century. The results are eye-opening.

In the 19th century, British Economist Thomas Malthus, famously predicted that while societal food production can only grow numerically (due to limitations in technological development) population grows exponentially. He concluded that overpopulation would inevitably overburden and overwhelm our resources. And, he may be correct in that projection. But his premise of exponential population growth has taken a few hits recently:

In what is possibly the greatest unintentional cultural commentary of all time by a scientific journal, the Times reported today that the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has removed narcissism from its list of mental disorders, along with four others.

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