geekosystem

In the search for immortality, humans have built great monuments of stone, had songs sung about their great deeds, and been frozen. However, there may be an easier path. NPR's Robert Krulwich (who comprises one half of the amazing Radiolab program that you really should be listening to) and Adam Cole posit that the fastest way to immortality is simply to have your name become a noun. However, it's not without drawbacks. Sit back, relax, and enjoy toe-tapping etymological madness. (Krulwich Wonders via @JadAbumrad)

After decades as the workhorse of particle physics in America, the venerable Tevatron shuts down today. While the high costs of maintaining the structure are cited as the primary reason for the closure, the rising star of the Large Hadron Collider no doubt played some role in the Tevatron's demise. The 3.9 mile long particle smasher was completed in 1983 for the breathtaking cost of $120 million. Built in rural Illinois as part of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Tevatron was at one point the highest-energy particle collider in the world. During its decades of operation, the Tevatron has confirmed the existence of the Top Quark, discovered a new particle called the "bottom Omega baryon," and even partook in the chase for the elusive Higgs boson. Though the main structure of the accelerator may be used in future experiments, and there are reams of data yet to go over, the Tevatron ended its scientific life today at 2 P.M.. Farewell, Tevatron. We'll spill some for you tonight. (via Wired)

Q&A session regarding Mojang's upcoming game Scrolls (reddit) South Park creators admit to dropping acid before cross-dressing at The Oscars (Mediaite) What exactly is Deja Vu? (Lifehacker) Whatever happened to Lassie and 8 other showbiz dogs? (Mental Floss) 5 ways your bad habits might save your life (Cracked) A rare flu virus is on the rise. Quick, get paranoid! (Medical Xpress) The AT&T Galaxy S II may have a pretty ridiculous security flaw (TechCrunch) (title pic via reddit)

Valve has announced that the long-awaited free co-op DLC for Portal 2 will be releasing next week, on October 4. The pack, entitled "Peer Review," will be launching on PC, Mac, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and if you missed it before, will be free. Players will resume the role of P-body and ATLAS, everyone's favorite adorable, emotive Aperture testing robots, and the story will apparently pick up where the co-op campaign left off, which, for anyone who played the co-op campaign all the way through, will know why that is a little confusing.

The expansion will also include a new Challenge mode for both co-op and single player, and will throw a leaderboard into the mix to keep it competitive. In case you were nervous about it, GLaDOS will be back to guide and antagonize our two robotic heroes through the pack, so we can once again be soothed by the dulcet tones of a murderous, lying computer.

(via Joystiq)

Da Vinci, the four-armed robot seen above, has two main jobs. First, it performs surgery at Southmead Hospital. 450 robotic radical prostatectomies and 30 bladder removals so far. Second, it strikes fear in the heart of prostates everywhere. Despite its intimidating appearence, da Vinci is a remarkably dexterous robot, and in hopes of spreading awareness of mens' cancers, the urologists of Southmead Hospital have released footage of Ramesh Thurairaja using the contraption to gingerly peel a grape.

At the controls, Thurairaja can control all the robot's arms, including one with an endoscopic camera that has two lenses for providing a total stereoscopic view. David Gillatt, lead clinician for urology at Southmead, described the footage this way:

We hope that by bringing a robot similar to our own out of the operating theatre and into a public setting we can raise awareness of the advances that have been made in treating prostate cancer.

A nice thought, but now I can't stop being aware that someday, something like that might want to do things to my insidey-parts. Video after the jump.

The season finale of Doctor Who is tomorrow, so we're all very happy to get to see the culmination of the season's efforts. After that, however, we'll have to wait around a year to get another full season, which makes us very sad. Until then, we need something Who-related to tide us over, so wouldn't it be great if things from the Whoniverse invaded everything else to keep our appetites whet until next fall?  Well, we here at Geekosystem thought so, and wondered what it'd be like if one of our favorite adorably hilarious aliens from Doctor Who, the Ood, invaded entertainment media and became movie and television stars.

Just when the Internet was able to get images of popular workout device the Shake Weight out of its collective head, the Free Flexor arrives to resume the innuendo-drenched assault on your sensibilities. Using something called "circular strength technology" the large, red spheres of the Free Flexor apparently makes your muscles contract a whole lot. Which I guess is helpful. There is every possibility that this is fake -- the website looks shifty enough to go either way -- but the video for the product will not leave you wanting. Except possibly wanting a cigarette. Or a shower. Or to throw your computer out the window. Read on below!

This console generation, more than any other, looks back at its predecessors with an incredible amount of nostalgia. There’s never been quite so many ways to play the games of years past as there are currently. Even most handhelds can play games from their prior iterations via digital downloads. The Nintendo 3DS has a way to do this and the PlayStation Network allows for downloads of PSOne Classics. But over the past two years, and it seems like more of the same for the near future, retail versions of remastered collections have begun cropping up at an ever-increasing rate. Just off the top of my head, there’s been The Sly Collection, the God of War Collection, and the recently released ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection. That’s just counting Sony. Microsoft’s Halo: Anniversary, Nintendo’s Star Fox 64 3D, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D are part of the same trend.

In a mere five years, microblogging/messaging service Twitter has gone from being written off as a flash in the pan to being a central part of the Internet today. In their infographic, Masahable takes a look back at some of the major milestones for the service, and also reveals some surprising facts about its user base. For instance, 30% of Twitter's users apparently make over $100,000 a year, so maybe there's hope for @qwikster yet.

When NASA launched the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging satellite (or MESSENGER, demonstrating some truly hamfisted government acronym crafting) in 2004, Mercury has a pretty low profile in planetary science. For years, the innermost planet was assumed to have a quiet, boring life and was thought to be similar to our own moon. But after a mere six months in orbit around the planet, MESSENGER has produced enough information for a whopping seven papers published in the magazine Science that soundly dash those hum-drum expectations. With this new information, the MESSENGER probe is forcing planetary scientists to reassess their assumptions about the planet's volcanic history, geological processes, magnetic field, and overall composition. The principal investigator behind the project Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institute for Science, described it thusly: "In the history of exploration of our planetary system, the first spacecraft to orbit a planet has always yielded stunning surprises, and MESSENGER has been true to that pattern."

Surprisingly enough, functional LEGO guns are totally a thing. This LEGO gun, however, is particularly amazing because it pretty accurately recreates one of the most iconic, menacing guns in gaming today: The Gears of War Lancer. This replica, by PLUM B, is not only life-sized (and presumably to a scale of some sort) but also fires rubberbands and has a chainsaw that can do its chainsaw-y thing. On top of all that, the LEGO Lancer seems like it would be pretty inaccurate at a distance and do minimal damage, so it's almost a perfect recreation of the in-game weapon! Now if someone could just make a LEGO M-92 Mantis my life would be complete.

So as you may be aware, NPR crowd-sourced a list of the 100 greatest sci-fi and fantasy novels. As you might also be aware, 100 novels is a lot of novels. Chances are you've read or at least heard of some of them before, but let's say you want to pick a new one, something you aren't familiar with, something that will be an exciting surprise, but more importantly, something you'll actually enjoy.

Well you don't have to choose arbitrarily based on title or cover art any more; SF Signal has created an exhaustive, infinitely useful flowchart that'll help you find the pick that's right for you. Also, it's funny, which is always a plus. Whether you're interested in diving into the annals of post-apocalyptic Catholicism thousands of years in the future or an epic fantasy series with at least ten books under its belt, this flowchart is sure to lead you to the right choice. Take a look after the jump.

You've been horrified by BigDog, DARPA's creepy robot canine that could one day carry cargo for troops traveling overland. You've cooed with delight over LittleDog, the little brother robot that looks like a Dustbuster come to life. Now meet Boston Dynamics' AlphaDog, the head-honcho of the pack. This massive quadraped robot has the same cargo carrying mission as BigDog, but with significantly increased range and payload. Boston Dynamics says that when finished, AlphaDog is expected to carry some 400 pounds of equipment for 20 miles. This video of the prototype shows off the AlphaDog, already carrying a hefty payload, retaining its incredible ability to stay upright despite being kicked by its creators, and of course its unsettling gate. It also packs at least one new trick: A really, really creepy method for self-righting after falling. Careful observers will note that the AlphaDog doesn't sound like the horrific spawn of a two-cycle motor and demonic bees straight from Satan's honey farm, as the early videos of BigDog demonstrated. While I'm certainly no expert, AlphaDog appears to be connected to an external power supply and thus lacks the irritating noise. When the final version of the robot is scheduled to debut in 2012, we'll know for sure. In the meantime, read on below for a video of AlphaDog in action.

We were just too excited about the Psychonauts update yesterday evening to leave you with an uplifting end of the day video, so we thought we'd help everyone start their day with the above video of Tank, the English Mastiff who didn't know how to dispose of incriminating evidence, but when his owner returns home, immediately realizes that maybe he should've tried to dispose of said evidence a tad harder, with said realization manifesting pretty clearly on the Mastiff's face. Dogs seem to be pretty good at knowing when they've done wrong.

(via reddit)

Yesterday, IBM's market value rose to $214 billion, which passed Microsoft's $213.2 billion to become the world's second most valuable tech company, launching IBM to be the world's second most valuable tech company, trailing only Apple. This is the first time since 1996 that IBM has passed Microsoft in terms of market value, possibly representing a shift in market trends away from the personal computer. Not only did IBM pass Microsoft to become the second most value company in tech, but it also became the fourth largest company by market value. For those wondering what IBM has been doing all these years, or for those remembering that they used to be a household name, IBM sold its PC unit back in 2005, calling it "commoditized." IBM has spent over $25 billion investing in its software, consulting businesses and computer-services, and is currently the world's largest computer-services provider. IBM is also focusing on everyone's favorite Internet buzztheme, the cloud, realizing where the current market is headed. Though yet another competitor has managed to sneak passed Microsoft -- who was worth more than three times as much as IBM back in 2000 -- the Windows purveyor probably isn't too worried, considering it seems to be the benchmark by which other companies' successes are measured. (Businessweek via Techmeme)