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This Week in Science: Resolution Psychology and Headcrab Physiology

Digging through the web this week, I uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.


I have marked my favorite links with a ∞. Enjoy.


Science to Read, Watch

You can use thermodynamics to make ice fog this winter, just make sure you know which way the wind is blowing

Smart Every Day went to 250,000 frames per second to find out how spaghetti snaps. It’s surprisingly complicated

∞ This half-male, half-female cardinal can’t sing

China just gave us a fresh look at the Moon

The black, goopy history of the dire wolf

Watch the shock wave as two muskox collide

The Songs That Saved The Whales

∞ Psychology can help you keep a New Year’s resolution

No easy way to say it, so… Study addresses what “squirting” is

A lava dome forms in the ruins of Mount St. Helens from 2004 to 2008

∞ My absolute favorite science video this year: “Wanderers

The proboscis worm is a giant ocean floor scavenger that happens to look like guts

Are these flying lizards evolved to look like falling leaves?

Huh. You actually can’t see the cutting edge of a knife

This is a horsehair worm emerging from a praying mantis. I warned you

The wisdom of a bunch of fruit flies

What do we know about the efficacy of police body cameras?

Sloths and armadillos have terrible eyesight. But why?

A galactic collision in the spirit of the holidays

∞ Watching a goshawk fly through the forest is amazing

An interactive of the US’s 250,000 rivers

Some organisms get an economy class ticket on the ISS. It’s not a nice trip

How to make an airbus

 

Extreme Nerdery

This fire pit is fully operational

xkcd’s smartphone

∞ How would we scientifically describe gaming’s most famous parasite, the headcrab?

Why Rudolph Should Have Never Joined Santa’s Reindeer

Robots in disguise indeed

How engineers designed the sounds of Godzilla

Where does Santa “put” all those cookies?

∞ Portal Trick Shots

Why astronomers write down their plans beforehand

PopSci redesigned Santa’s sleigh to be more aerodynamic

Astronomically Correct Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Laser company offering a 3D printer file in case you want to make the trisaber

∞ On the forth day of Majora’s Mask Christmas my true love gave to me…uh oh

 

Sciencey GIFs and Images

Wait, are cats athletic?

Peek-a-owl

Do you even lift bro?

∞ Striking a flint is actually one of my favorite GIFs ever

“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again. But…

∞ This is a vampire bat galloping

I know of a spider who is better at cartwheels than you

This is the average color of the universe

A gorgeous animation of Simon Stalenhag’s gorgeous art

Assuming direct control

Holiday-themed light diffraction lenses turn lights into snowmen

A pregnant daddy sea dragon

The art of Sienna Morris is made of data and equations

∞ I might go comatose watching stabilized rhythmic gymnastics

Proboscis worms really earn their name

You can make pancakes with flubber, apparently

An F-15 at night

These aquarium snails ate every part of a carrot except for the skin

NASA’s NASANuSTAR images high-energy X-rays bursting from the Sun overlaid on an SDO picture

The Cliffs of Comet Churyumov Gerasimenko

How to stop a truck with a pole

Sped-up laser engraving of a keyboard

The world’s population as peaks and valleys

I stared at the 3rd GIF in this Erik Söderberg series for far too long

∞ Professor tells students they can use one notecard for the test, student steps up big time

You don’t need a cannon ball to have a cannon

A decent imgur gallery of some fantastic science images and GIFs from 2014

This lion is *not* cowardly

 

Pop Culture Happenings

Pope Francis makes an edict for action on climate change

∞ Another one of my favorite videos from this year: Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl

Man Buys PlayStation 4 From Walmart, Says He Got Two Bags Of Rocks

What people asked librarians before the Internet

Most of the terms on your egg carton are misleading or meaningless

You could do presents, or you could stare into the abyss with Werner Herzog

It’s OK if you don’t watch The Interview on Christmas, or ever

∞ Paul Rosolie speaks out about what “Eaten Alive” was supposed to be

Re-writing the Ten Commandments

Australian court to finally penalize homeopaths who claimed vaccine alternative

“An orangutan named Sandra has become the first non-human animal recognized as a person in a court of law”

Photographer Spends 20 Years Documenting How We All Dress Exactly Alike

∞ Most decade-specific words in Billboard song titles

The MythBusters never meant to be educational. That’s the magic of the show

Naughty Dog insisted that The Last of Us was play-tested with women (it wasn’t going to be)

Tyson Boop

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