Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More

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.

The uncanny valley is getting crowded. A female-modeled version of Geminoid, roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro's creepy android, is now appearing opposite a human actor in Japan in a short play entitled Sayonara�as in, "sayonara, humans."

Ford's 2012 Mustang Boss 302 is a high-tech reboot of the muscle car packed with treats. But the key to its real secrets don't merely lie under the hood, but in the code.

The iconic twentieth-century computer game continues to exert an addictive appeal. And if researchers at Oxford University are right, it may be a uniquely therapeutic way to blunt the effects of traumatic experience as well.