INVENTIONS

What's the Deal With the Black Box?

I have spent my life on Mars, in a cave, with my fingers in my ears. What, pray tell, is a flight

Scrabble Word Records

Here at the _floss, we love Scrabble and have written about it often. Among others, there's Stacy's post on Scrabble words that will help you win, my post on how Alfred Mosher Butts, inventor of Scrabble, couldn't spell very well, and even a quiz by Jason

Airing Tomorrow on PBS: OBJECTIFIED, a Documentary About Things

Objectified airs on PBS stations in the US on Tuesday, November 24, as part of the Independent Lens series. I highly recommend that you set your DVR to record this film, if you're interested in: documentaries, computers, how things are made, how things

The Ames Window - A Bizarre Illusion

The Ames Window is an optical illusion, in which a strangely-shaped window (with a stick running through it) is rotated slowly. Because we assume it to be a normally-shaped window, our brains perceive the window and the stick interacting in strange ways,

TNT vs. Dynamite: What's the Difference?

If it's a white powder found in sticks, it's dynamite. If it's a yellow crystal, it's TNT.

The Dead Man's Switch

Last night's LOST season finale made mention of a "Dead Man's Trigger," which is another term for a Dead Man's Switch. Although these devices are well known to some geeks, I thought I'd write a little explainer to introduce the notion more broadly. (War

5 Reasons We'll Miss Arthur C. Clarke

The late Sir Arthur C. Clarke was loved by nerds and normals alike for his contributions to literature, film, and technology. Here's a rundown of the five biggest reasons we'll miss him. 1. Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World Clarke kept extensive fil

9 Great Inventions that come from ... Connecticut?

It happens to everyone. One minute you're exchanging pleasantries with a perfect stranger; the next minute they're up in your face talking trash about Connecticut. Well, you don't have to take it anymore. History buff, and friend of the Floss, Streeter Se

5 Ways to Get Closer to Your Garbage

When you throw something in the trash, it's easy to think that it stops being your problem -- your friendly neighborhood sanitation workers take it away, and that's that. Well, until the Garbage Apocalypse of 2062, when GarbageNet becomes self-aware and

In the Beginning: Pre-order it today!

In the Beginning's hitting stores in little over a week, and we're serving up another sample below. Enjoy! The Vacuum Cleaner How can we put this politely "“ the first vacuum cleaners kinda sucked. The Original Clean Sweep You could say that H. Cecil Bo

BBS: The Documentary

Before this whole Internet/Web fad, before AOL, before CompuServe, before even Prodigy, we had the BBS -- dialup Bulletin Board Systems serving communities of computer users. BBSed had their heyday in the Eighties, and they were generally small, homebrew

Peanut Butter Diamonds, Air-Conditioned Shirts and On-Demand Amnesia

Tiffany's? More like Jif-any's!: Researchers at Edinburgh University have created a way to make diamonds out of most carbon-based materials, including peanut butter. They create an oddly-named "stiletto heel effect" by squeezing material between the tips

Advanced Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) Variants

How nerdy can Rock-Paper-Scissors ("RPS" to professionals) get? Pretty nerdy.

For the infant who has everything (but hair)

Here at mental_floss, we know a lot of people (our president included) who have recently had babies. May we present the perfect shower gift, from Baby