We all have those thoughts, the ones that come to us in the small hours of the night. Who am I? Why are we here? What if my cellphone ran on vacuum tubes instead? Randall Munroe has the answer to, well, only one of those questions, but also the answers to a whole bunch of others collected together into What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Yes, that is a T-Rex eating an airplane. In the excerpt below Munroe examines what it would take to haul an average sized human in a chair over Australia's tallest skyscraper, using only the power of pigeons. Lots and lots of pigeons. Penguin Random HouseExcerpted from What If? 2 by Randall Munroe. Copyright © 2022 by Randall Munroe. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.How many pigeons would it require in order to lift the average person and a launch chair to the height of Australia’s Q1 skyscraper?In a 2013 study, researchers at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics led by Ting Ting Liu trained pigeons to fly up to a perch while wearing a weighted harness. They found that the average pigeon in their study could take off and fly upward while carrying 124 grams, about 25 percent of its body weight.The researchers determined that the pigeons could fly better if the weights were slung... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2022-09-18 15:00:37 UTC ]
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The holiday travel season is once again upon us! It's the magical time of the year that combines standing in airport security lines with incrementally losing your mind as the hands of your watch perpetually tick closer to a boarding time that magically moved up 45 minutes since you left the... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-12-04 15:30:19 UTC ]
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The impact of Japanese RPGs on pop and gaming culture cannot be overstated. From Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star to Chrono Trigger, NieR, and Fire Emblem — JRPGs have spanned console generations, bridged the Japanese and North American markets, spawned entire universes of IP and delivered... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-11-06 15:30:37 UTC ]
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Women have faced gender-based discrimination in the workforce throughout history, denied employment in all but a handful of subservient roles, regularly ignored for promotions and pay raises — and rarely ever compensated at the same rates as their male peers. This long and storied socioeconomic... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-10-30 14:30:31 UTC ]
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General Motors has been in business for more than a century, but in its 112 years, the company has never faced such challenges as it does in today's rapidly electrifying and automating industry. The assembly line jobs from Detroit's heyday have been replaced by legions of automated industrial... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-10-23 14:30:06 UTC ]
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After Mary Sears and her team had revolutionized the field of oceanography, but before Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson helped put John Glenn into orbit, a cadre of women programmers working for the US government faced an impossible task: train ENIAC, the world's first ... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-10-16 14:30:01 UTC ]
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Apple's Watch Ultra, with its 2000-nit digital display and GPS capabilities, is a far cry from its Revolutionary War-era self-winding forebears. What sorts of wondrous body-mounted technologies might we see another hundred years hence? In his new book, The Skeptic's Guide to the Future, Dr.... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-10-01 14:30:47 UTC ]
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Lethal Tides tells the story of pioneering oceanic researcher Mary Sears and her leading role in creating one of the most important intelligence gathering operations of World War II. Languishing in academic obscurity and roundly ignored by her male colleagues, Sears is selected for command by... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-09-04 15:00:53 UTC ]
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I’m Glad My Mom Died details the abuse the iCarly actor suffered as a child star. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2022-08-18 20:31:47 UTC ]
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C. J. Hauser’s memoir-in-essays is a frank exploration of intimacy and romance that doesn’t always lead to a happily ever after. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-07-05 13:21:38 UTC ]
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More than a million new titles are published annually in the US, far more than even the most bibliophilic secret agent could get through. Even with a weekly publishing schedule, we can only bring you 52 Hitting the Books each year. To help shine a spotlight on all the fantastic stories that... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-06-22 17:30:23 UTC ]
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A tough year for the stock market got worse in April, leading the Publishers Weekly Stock Index, now down to only six companies, to drop 8.8%. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-05-06 04:00:00 UTC ]
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After decades on the decline intro, America's labor movement is undergoing a massive renaissance with Starbucks, Amazon and Apple Store employees leading the way. Though the tech sector has only just begun basking in the newfound glow of collective bargaining rights, the automotive industry has... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-05-01 14:00:34 UTC ]
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From domestication and selective breeding to synthetic insulin and CRISPR, humanity has long sought understand, master and exploit the genetic coding of the natural world. In The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology authors Amy Webb, professor of strategic... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-02-19 16:30:24 UTC ]
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Feeding the planet's 8 billion people is challenge enough and our current industrialized commercial practices are causing such ecological damage that we may soon find ourselves hard-pressed to feed any more. For decades, scientists have sought out higher yields and faster growth at the expense... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-02-05 16:30:43 UTC ]
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The Silent Era of cinema was perhaps its most equitable with both hearing and hearing-impaired viewers able to enjoy productions alongside one another, but with the advent of "talkies," deaf and hard-of-hearing American's found themselves largely excluded from this new dominant entertainment... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-01-29 16:30:45 UTC ]
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With modern consoles offering gamers graphics so photorealistic that they blur the line between CGI and reality, it's easy forget just how cartoonishly blocky they were in the 8-bit era. In his new book, Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Arcade Games, legendary game designer and programmer... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-12-25 16:30:11 UTC ]
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The Every by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton) took the media by storm this week picking up mentions in The Guardian, Telegraph, Sunday Times, Times, iNews and Scotsman. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-22 14:18:03 UTC ]
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It may not contain our recommended daily allowance of Vitamin R but milk — or "cow juice" as it's known on the streets — is among the oldest known animal products repurposed for human consumption. Milk has been a staple of our diets since the 9th century BC but it wasn't until a fortuitous... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-10-23 15:30:38 UTC ]
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Amazon is the Standard Oil of the 21st century. Its business operations and global reach dwarf those of virtually every other company on the planet — and exceed the GDP of more than a few countries — illustrating the vital importance innovation has on the modern economy. In his latest book, The... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-10-16 15:30:33 UTC ]
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Amazon’s audiobook service Audible and phone apps for reading the holy books of Islam and Christianity have disappeared from the Apple store in mainland China Continue reading at ABC News
[ ABC News | 2021-10-15 21:01:46 UTC ]
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