Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More

Squid may be sending each other secret messages by visual means. Whether they use this talent to spam other squid is another question.

The renaissance Vitruvian Man helped to bring about was above all a rehabilitation of the human being as the pinnacle of creation and the expression of a divine ideal; with the discovery of new cultures and ideals that followed, the notion of a single human ideal would be put to the severest test.

The electronic collage-music duo The Books give leisure time one more crank of the handle, and it all becomes funny and vaguely unsettling: an 18-hole course deep in the uncanny valley.

3-D printing is going viral. With 3-D fabrication technology at for the desktop, for LEGOs, and for nanoscale materials, it was only a matter of time before the paradigm found its way into space�and corporate science fiction. But this promising technology still has to prove itself in terrestrial infrastructure first.

Is it play? Turf-defending aggression? Or the dysfunctional behavior of captive animals?

IN 2005, the Japanese probe Hayabusa made its rendezvous with Itowaka, a five-hundred-meter long, sausage-shaped asteroid whose circular orbit intersects that of Earth. Yesterday, Japan's space agency announced that the probe had collected the first material ever gathered from an asteroid and delivered successfully to Earth.

Coffee isn't only a stimulant, but also a social glue and fuel for creative lives. A proposed mobile app would allow caffeinated bloggers, writers, artists, and designers to share their coffeehouse-generated work in real-time.

Kinect hacks are emerging at a rapid pace; it�s hard to recall a mass-market gadget so quickly adapted to new uses. As Bruce Sterling points out, �Microsoft accidentally invented a primo piece of art-installation hardware.� It's this kind of DIY innovation that keeps tech feral.

Don't even think of challenging this poisoned pooch to a staring contest�or the postmen of the Great Northern Railway, who were the early 20th century's answer to the Internet.

The animated GIF may be little appreciated in the world of Web 2.0�but in the right hands, it plays with the unsettling riddle of our mechanical nature.