Five years ago I blogged about the debate over whether the blue-for-boys, pink-for-girls color convention used to be the other way around. My post focused on a 2012 paper by psychologist Marco Del Giudice arguing that the idea of a cultural “pink–blue reversal” in the English-speaking world in the early 20th century is a myth.
Now, Del Giudice has published an ‘update’ revisiting the issue. Based on text data from late 19th and early 20th century American news ...read more
Two ways to look at Tabby’s Star: as intriguing data, or as an invitation to flights of fancy. (Credit: Tabetha Boyajian, left; FantasyWallpapers.com, right)
There’s an old saying: “Great discoveries don’t begin with ‘eureka!’; they begin with someone muttering, ‘That’s odd…’” I’ve long attributed the quote to the great science popularizer Isaac Asimov. Jason Wright gently corrects me. He has researched the line, he expla ...read more
A 509th Bomb Wing B-2 Spirit conducts a fly-by during the Scott Air Force Base 2017 Air Show and Open House June 11, which celebrates the base’s 100th anniversary. The Air Force plans to replace the B-2 Spirit bomber with the similar-looking B-21 Raider bomber starting in the mid 2020s. Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Tristin English
The U.S. Air Force’s future B-21 Raider bomber may have the option to remove the human pilots from the cockpit and effectively become& ...read more
One of the world’s deadliest venomous animals—a female Anopheles gambiae—demonstrating the behavior that makes her so lethal. Photo Credit: CDC/ James Gathany
People are often surprised when I say that mosquitoes are the deadliest venomous animal in the world (the deadliest animal period, really, if we don’t count ourselves). Mosquito bites—and the venoms delivered by them—kill upwards of 750,000 people worldwide every year thanks to the deadly diseases that ...read more
An MQ-9 Reaper performs during an air show demonstration May 29, 2016, at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M. Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Master Sgt. Dennis J. Henry Jr.
More than 15 years after a U.S. Predator drone launched its first Hellfire missile, the United States remains reluctant to sell armed drones to even its closest allies. That hesitation in selling armed drones has left the door open for countries such as Israel and China to dominate military drone sales across the world. Now the U.S. ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
