Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More

I'm eager to see Monsters, Gareth Edwards' film about a man escorting a woman through a zone made deadly by the after-effects of an alien invasion. But wait�that film was made before!

Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, The Tree of Codes, has a marvelous title. But the real marvel begins when you turn the cover to find that the story is literally carved out of another work�namely, The Street of Crocodiles, the 1934 cycle of short stories by martyred Polish writer Bruno Schulz. There's a gadget angle to all this, but you'll have to follow the jump for it.

Narwhals don't go to graduate school, and they're not much use as grant-writers. But they're able to do a few things oceanographers find challenging�such as dive to depths of nearly six thousand feet beneath the ice of Baffin Bay in winter. So scientists have enlisted them in gathering climate-change data in the Greenland Current.

The latest animation from the Story of Stuff Project paints a stark picture of the afterlives of our obsolescing gadgets. Video after the jump.

Not too long ago, this pylon appeared unheralded in my too-quaint neighborhood of tiny, turn-of-the-last-century brick and stucco houses in Boston. It's not the Bunker Hill Monument. But what is it?

�Repair is green�repair is joyful�repair injects soul and makes things unique.� Those are some of the claims of Ifixit�s "Self-Repair Manifesto," which is not a self-help tract but a hacker�s call to arms.

The Tokyo-based Shimizu Corporation is one of the world's leading construction and engineering contractors. It's also a prolific producer of corporate science fiction: fanciful, high-concept design projects that offer glimpses of astonishing futures. Its "Luna Ring" envisions such a future for the moon�and for Shimizu.

The New York Times bestseller list not only measures book sales, it also sells books; millions of readers make selections based on what they find there. Starting early next year, the New York Times Company will try to bring that clout to bear on the electronic books market.

A great series of videos made by the chemistry department at the University of Nottingham in England�one for each of the elements in the periodic table, 118 in all. It's full of insights�and it will have you wondering about the activation energy of professor Martyn Poliakoff's hair.

Oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico? Mysterious astronomical phenomenon? Tattoo run amok? Answer after the jump.