Science | Blog.OneRiot.com - Blogging the Pulse of the Web

How to Have Fun….IN SPACE

11/18/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Because We Feel Like it, Science

The Story: Spending all that time in space has got to get a little boring for the crew of Atlantis, so OneRiot has provided them a list of fun things they can do while up there. Hope they get WiFi.

The Search: Atlantis

Spending time in space may sound great in theory. You get to see the rest of the universe from a perspective witnessed by only a handful of human eyes. However, while you may get to go for a couple of spacewalks and repair a few things, in the end it usually boils down to being stuck in the same spot with the same views for days on end with very few options for entertainment. With Atlantis docking today at the International Space Station, a motley crew of six astronaut dudes will be joining a lone female for eleven days spanning over the Thanksgiving holiday to perform experiments and other boring science stuff. While we’re not sure how much free time they’ll have, we’ve got a list of suggestions of fun things to do when you’re outside of Earth’s atmosphere that are made that much cooler by the knowledge that any activity sounds better with the word “space” in front of it.

Space Invaders- We don’t mean play the video game. Simply see how much you can invade the personal space of your fellow astronauts until it makes them angry. Helluva way to pass the time.

SpaceBall- It’s like baseball but with zero gravity and lots of fancy dials to damage that might result in you never returning home again. (more…)

Tags: Atlantis, Science, Space

Earth Avoids Deep Impact Sequel

11/12/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Science

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The Story: An Asteroid narrowly missed crashing into earth. OneRiot gives you a survival guide to avoid becoming space-toast in future impact situations.

The Search: Asteroid Misses Earth

While the likes of Kelly Osbourne and Aaron Carter might suggest that the concept of stars moving gracefully is a fairly new concept, the Earth’s existence in a veritable minefield of asteroids and comets is proof positive that Dancing With The Stars has been a vital element to our planetary survival for billions of years. Every so often one of those soaring celestial bodies threatens to bring our civilization to a crashing halt with little to no warning. Such was (almost) the case on November 6th when the Catalina Sky Survey noticed that an 23-foot wide asteroid known as 2009 VA missed the blue marble by a mere 8,700 miles. Although we weren’t quite prepared for impact this time, we have a few suggestions in the case a similar E.L.E. (extinction level event) were to threaten your well-being in our OneRiot Guide to Asteroid Survival.

1. Be Smart- If you are in school and get good grades, the government will most likely pick you to join their earth re-population colony. You will be notified only a few days prior to impact, so study hard because you never know when the big one is about to hit. (more…)

Tags: Science, Space, Survival

Cryogenics Coldly Abusive, Says Former COO

10/02/09 - Posted by Abdullah Saeed under Health, Science

picture-2316 Though major religions describe the human body as an empty vessel void of the entity that made it a person, many with the means called bullshit on that theory by having their remains cryogenically frozen so that future, smarter generations could reanimate them without any groggy, zombie side effects. Many people, including late baseball legend Ted Williams, entrusted the treatment of their corpses to Alcor, a company that can be identified as a scam upon examination of its business model. Alcor responded to this trust by getting the Splendid Splinter’s head stuck in a tuna can. (more…)

Geo-Engineered Solutions Potentially Hold Potential

9/01/09 - Posted by Abdullah Saeed under Science

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In the face of perils brought on by climate change, human thinking follows a digressive pattern: concern, solution, doubt, super-grandiose schemes, then back to concern, becoming slightly more intense and less hopeful with each cycle. After a period of attempting to reform our over-consumptive lifestyles, we’ve finally reached the valid realization that we just won’t go through with it. It’s time for something extravagant. (more…)

The Swines Hath Wings II

8/25/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Health, Science

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OneRiot readers, we remind you that if you’re feeling funny, be afraid - or at least be cautious.

When life’s best case scenario is the fact that we’re all gonna die someday, it seems kinda pointless to pay attention to the worst case scenario, which is something along the lines of “we’re all going to die in the next three minutes!” Fortunately, the latter of those two scenarios usually only threatens to rear it’s ugly head in the form of nuclear warfare, alien invasion or anything that occurred in a film released during the summer blockbuster seasons of the mid to late 1990’s.

Today, however - after a viewing of the 1995 film Outbreak - the White House stoked doomsday fires as though a giant pig-shaped asteroid were hurtling towards Washington DC. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has announced that 30,000 to 90,000 people could conceivably die of Swine Flu, more than doubling the yearly average of flu season fatalities. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and company are doing their damnedest to just kinda let us know that we could foreseeably end up in the hospital or even dead by years end…probably neither…but it’s totally a possibility.

So OneRiot readers, we remind you that if you’re feeling funny, be afraid or at least be cautious. And if you kinda feel sick, go to a doctor. In closing we’d like to thank the White House for transforming our state of blissful ignorance on matters of the inevitable into our current state of hypochondria. Maybe now we’ll feel motivated to get more done seeing as we might go at any moment.

Looking Out for Bill

8/18/09 - Posted by Abdullah Saeed under Science, US

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It’s exhausting to keep up with all the players this hurricane season. There was Guillermo, Claudette, Sanjay, not to mention Prakatkiet, Alangatulakay, and Bubbaloo out on the Pacific. Well, fret not. The next scourge to slap the islands with 110 mph winds has a simple name: Bill. Correction, don’t fret unless you live somewhere in the Carribean. And if that is where you live, then you’ve had a pretty sweet life thus far. Time to give it up to nature. (more…)

Chevy Volt Breaks Gas-Electric Barrier

8/11/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Science, US

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Americans have put a man on the moon, sent a pothead to the Beijing to collect an ungodly amount of Olympic gold medals, and even briefly nurtured the careers of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer - but by all accounts we’ve still had very little reason to collectively hold our heads up as a nation… until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, an automotive company from the United States has broken the 200 mpg fuel barrier - that’s 230 miles per gallon city to be exact - so suck on that German engineering and Japanese discipline. It was good ol’ fashion red, white, and blue elbow grease that built the new Chevy Volt. (more…)

Organic Food Not So Special, Says Study

7/30/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Health, Science

picture-730 A crushing blow was dealt to the neo-hippie movement recently after a study by the British Food Standards Agency, examining food data over the last 50 years, concluded that the health value of organic food was neither greater nor significantly different from that of that which is considered non-organic. The announcement didn’t prompt the immediate shutdown of specialized grocery stores with monikers touting their earthiness, but nonetheless there are some immediate positive effects as a result of the report which has since been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The study severely hinders your favorite restaurant’s ability to overcharge you for “organic Cobb Salad,” and you’ll no longer have to deal with that uppity hippie friend whose moral and ethical superiority is inexplicably linked to the fact that they “only eat organic.” Thank you British Food Standards Agency, we owe you one.

Ed Note: As an uppity hippy myself, I’m compelled to point out that even if the positive effects of organic food on the human body are negligible, the positive effects on the earth (and global warming) are not.

Nerds Caravan to a Whales Va- Uhm, San Diego

7/22/09 - Posted by Jennifer Hodges under Gossip, Science

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They come in droves, leaving their natural habitats of parents’ basements, GameStops, and computer dens everywhere to make a Frodo Baggins-like epic trek to the mystical land of San Diego. Super villians, Twilighters, Trekies, Jedis, and a couple of Sailor Mooners, all geared and ready to attend 2009’s International Comic-Con, running July 23rd-26 at the San Diego Convention Center (with a sneak preview opening tonight). Autographs will be signed, action figures will be traded, Battle Star Galactica will be discussed, and maybe even a few new romances will be born at this epic yearly meetup. (more…)

Aussies Discover New Scar on Jupiter

7/21/09 - Posted by Evan Kessler under Science

picture-1724 The crew of the Endeavor may actually be up in space doing space-y things, but it wasn’t an astronaut or even NASA that made this week’s big celestial discovery. While they were out screwing docks together, eating space ice cream and unclogging space toilets or whatever it is they do up there; A computer programmer and amateur astronomer from the land down under found an impact zone the size of Earth on the surface of Jupiter while stargazing with a 14.5-inch reflecting telescope from the confines of his backyard. In other words, people in space didn’t notice the planet-sized thing plowing into another planet, but the guy on his lawn did.
(more…)

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