Extraterrestrial life gets invoked in some study or another every three months - astrobiology approaches astronomy levels of hype with its over-the-top claims about incremental studies.
 
But a rock wall in a South African mine near where "radiation eating microbes" were found a mile underground may be something else entirely.   

The wizards at the Czech Technical University's Department of Control Engineering created a machine to show off how their servo motors can be used for precision tasks - and so they made it juggle.  Juggling is, of course, both easy and hard.  Anyone can do it, like playing golf, but doing it will is something else entirely.  Jugglers often have to move to keep the balls in the air because of subtle changes in throwing force and angle.  Not so this Juggler machine:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has created another cultural tizzy because some people persist in an irrational belief that anyone in the UN knows anything about anything. 

Recently, WHO issued a fuzzy statement saying maybe, perhaps, alarmism about cellphones and cancer was right after all.   This, despite no quantitative data, no published study, no absolute risk factor and even no definition of "limited evidence" hidden in a footnote

Literary genius — or at least competence — never blossoms in a vacuum. As much as many creative types like to pose as a mysterious lone wolves skulking through the fringes of society without ever becoming a cog in the machine, man, even their works have been shaped by their external experiences up to that point. Fred Lapides notes that soaking up advice through any reads available opens up new worlds and ideas and can help mold a work from just OK to just plain awesome.

iWatch calls them Limousine Liberals but funding outreach to encourage the common people to ride bicycles while government people remain too important for that and need limousines is a progressive trait, not a liberal one.

Lest the science world think slamming Satoshi Kanazawa is solely the purview of Science 2.0, I present this piece about his ignorant screed on the alleged inferiority of black female attractiveness.

The Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard's flagship, is believed to have run aground in the shallow waters off Beaufort, North Carolina in 1718. The ship was discovered in 1996, with recovery of artifacts intensifying only a few years ago.

Friday, an expedition off the North Carolina coast hoisted a nearly 3,000-pound anchor, one of three belonging to the Queen Anne's Revenge from a location under just 20 feet of water, according to the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.  The anchor joins approximately 250,000 artifacts from the site, including cannons, gold, platters, glass, beads, shackles and rope, according to the state.

Boy or girl?  For most people - and all of science - that is a simple issue of biology.    Kathy Witterick and David Stocker disagree and say their baby's gender is no one's business - not even his.  Or hers.

They're taking sexual politics to a whole new level and say their four-month-old baby "Storm" should be able to develop its own sexual identity without having to conform to social stereotypes or bow to predetermined expectations associated with gender.

How do you make a restaurant great if the food is bad?

You have an owner who is such an astute purveyor of psychology, the human condition and interpersonal relationships, so good at it that she knows who you would most like to talk with - and can make it happen.

The social scene was the hallmark of Elaine Kaufman, who ran her namesake Elaine's restaurant for 48 years before dying in December.    It didn't just apply to celebrities, any person who walked in alone would be introduced to someone.    Over time, regulars would know many other regulars, which is what made them...regulars.   Celebrities, athletes and a substantial local clientèle would return despite the spotty food.