Science and Technology

MakerBot's Mark

The Crucial Mistake Most Bands Are Making With Facebook

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you ... More >>

The Tangled Web We Watch: A Bizarre Episode of Father-Son Bonding in the 21st Century

Shelf-Help Books

Hard Sell: For Matt Damon and company, the message is the message in Promised Land

Does Spotify Mean the End the iPod and Your Music Collection?

When I bought my first iPod--this was the first iPod, when the scroll wheel actually spun around--it was a severe blow to my nerd-cred, which I guarded pretty jealously at the time. (It was the only cred I had.) Relying on iTunes and its untouchable database to maintain my MP3 collection, instead of ... More >>

Wash. U. Archaeologist Discovers Tomb of Mayan Warrior Queen

At the end of the seventh century, the Mayan queen K'abel was the most powerful ruler in northwestern Petén, Guatemala. Not only did she reign with her husband K'inich Bahlam for nearly twenty years, she also bore the titles Supreme Warrior and, most awesomely, Holy Snake Lord -- which meant her au ... More >>

Elvis' Producer Spent Time at Webster University's Recording Studio, and So Can Local Musicians

Settled in Webster Groves, Webster University is making big noise in the sound recording field. For 24 years, the University's Department of Audio Aesthetics and Technology has been offering professional quality recordings to international and local musicians. Webster's classes take a hand on app ... More >>

New Mississippi River Bridge Could Threaten Excavation of Newly-Discovered Cahokia Suburb

Even 900 years ago, big cities had suburbs. The biggest city in North America then was Cahokia, and its suburbs stretched westward across the Mississippi River and north across most of what is now East St. Louis. We know that the Cahokians had a nasty habit of using their suburban neighbors as human ... More >>

2012 St. Louis Food Blogger Bake Sale April 28 at Sappington Farmers' Market

Warning: The mental images produced by the following descriptions of items offered at the 2012 St. Louis Food Blogger Bake Sale might cause uncontrollable cravings and excessive salivation. The second annual St. Louis event is part of a national effort to benefit Share Our Strength, the nation's lea ... More >>

Astronaut Andre Kuipers Should Be Your Twitter Friend

Andre Kuipers is part of the 31st permanent crew on the International Space Station, and only the second Dutch astronaut to make it to space. In addition to being a doctor, a scientist and teacher, Kuipers is also a photographer. His bilingual Twitter feed is a daily treasure trove of scientific won ... More >>

The Five Most Memorable Last Suppers Served Before History's Most Avoidable Disasters

Yesterday, Gut Check shared our thoughts on the Fabulous Fox Theatre's tasteless $500 fundraising event that recreates the eleven-course meal that Titanic's first passengers ate the night the ship sank. In honor of the iceberg that shortchanged Titanic's maiden voyage, Gut Check has compiled a list ... More >>

One Nation, Under Tacos: How Mexican food conquered America

The International Space Station -- and Beyond

Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention: Inside the World of Wank-Craft

​ Most conventions are pants-mandatory kinds of affairs -- even those of the adult nature. For the world's first virtual porn convention, however, I'm not wearing any (relax...I'm in my PJs). This past weekend, XBiz and Red Light Center hosted the Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention, porn's fi ... More >>

Missouri Gets a C in Science Education -- And It's One of the Better Students

​The Thomas B. Fordham Institute for Advancing Educational Excellence just released its comprehensive State of State Science Standards 2012 report, which grades each state on how it teaches science to students, and Missouri ranked in the top twenty. Sadly that's no better than a C grade, as the Fo ... More >>

Wash. U. Scientists Use Brain Scans to Prove ADD Meds Really Work

courtesy Washington UniversityA sample PET scan. The image on the right is brighter, which means it shows lower dopamine levels.​Though it seems like every kid who used to be labeled "hyperactive" now has attention deficit disorder, not all forms of ADD are the same, and some treatments can wo ... More >>

Steve Jobs' Six Best Music Innovations

Apple (the Beatles record label) once sued Apple (the computer corporation). After initial squabbles over the right to name their companies after the same fruit, the two agreed that all was good as long as Steve Jobs and crew never entered the music business. As you can probably guess, as you likely ... More >>

One in Three Missouri Teens Don't Wear Seat Belts

Maybe it's time to bring back the crash test dummies?​Missourians continue to lag the nation when it comes to using seat belts, according a new report.The study found that just 79 percent of the general population in Missouri wear seat belts. The national average is 85 percent. Missouri's ranking ... More >>

The Last Space Shuttle Launch And Obsolete Music-Delivery Systems

​Friday morning's scheduled space shuttle launch, the last of 135 missions flown by the orbiters, marks the exact moment at which a space-travel technology from 1981 finally becomes obsolete. That's right: If you'd just overbuilt your music collection like NASA did with Atlantis, you could s ... More >>

Wash. U. Docs Can Tell You What Happened Last Time You Blacked Out

image viaWhere did it go? The researchers at Wash. U. know.​This is a special message for all you folks out there who occasionally drink to excess. A team of researchers at Washington University Medical School has figured out what happened to you last time you blacked out! OK, they can't expl ... More >>

Vandals Destroy Archaeological Dig at Southern Illinois - Edwardsville

SIUE - Archaeology Field SchoolMembers of the school dig along the site in 2010.​Excavating equipment and historical artifacts are missing after vandals looted and destroyed an archaeological dig on the campus of Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville over the weekend. As the Belleville News- ... More >>

Spotify's US Launch Approaches; Which Music Service Are You?

​Music fans in the United States don't have a lot to envy of their European brothers and sisters, at least unless they're big fans of Abba or the kind of sticky, glitter-covered dance-pop that usually just makes me really want to leave the youth hostel and brush my teeth. One exception: Spotif ... More >>

E-Readers May Replace Textbooks in Missouri School District

Gee Sally, I sure would like to carry your Kindle home from school for ya.​It was bound to happen. E-readers, which for the last few years have been embraced by book lovers, are now being used for the sort of reading that isn't quite as pleasurable. The Associated Press is reporting that o ... More >>

Missouri Congressman Wants to Kill Funding for Climate Change

Luetkemeyer: Insert tinfoil hat above.​Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-9th District) is proud of his view that global warming is a myth. So proud, in fact, that last weekend he attached a provision onto a budget bill that would ban the United States from funding the Intergovernmental Panel on Cl ... More >>

St. Louis Photographer Takes Eat-Rite to the Smithsonianan. Again.

In 2007 Jane Linders, an artist specializing in alternative-process photography, took her Polaroid to the corner of Chouteau and 7th to nab a piece of St. Louis' Route 66 history. She captured the original Eat-Rite Diner, still serving slingers and bags of burgers for over 60 years, in a gritty, omi ... More >>

ClaireMcCaskill.com Officially Worth $4,000

How much would you pay for this web domain?​From the Department of Why the Hell Didn't We Think of That?: The Post-Dispatch reports that a Columbia-based web designer named Brennan Hobart noticed that Senator Claire McCaskill's website was called claireonline.com. Hobart suspected that the do ... More >>

New Study Suggests Red-Light Cameras Significantly Reduce Fatal Accidents

Cameras save lives, says study. But at what cost? ​Here's one for all you red-light camera haters: A study released yesterday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) suggests that cameras saved 159 lives in the fourteen biggest U.S. cities that used the technology from 2004 through 20 ... More >>

The RFT 2011 St. Louis Web Awards: Best Food Blog

Mizzou Scientists Watch Memories Get Made

image viaScans of the brain at work during the Semantic Fluency Test in which research subjects were asked to think of words from a specific category, like "food" or "animals".​In order to make more money, people who make digital cameras and printer paper will tell you that their products are ... More >>

Hot Enough For You?

An interview with Vince DiFiore on the eve of (finally!) a new Cake album

Left Bank, Subterranean Books Now Selling Google eBooks

​As of this morning, two of St. Louis's proudly independent bookstores have joined in the digital revolution: Subterranean Books in the Delmar Loop and Left Bank Books in the Central West End and downtown are now offering Google eBooks on their respective websites. Both stores have been selli ... More >>

Chipotle Offers Facebook Users Buy One, Get One Free Deal

...or without eating a few burritos.​Have you seen The Social Network? You should. It's a great movie. One of my favorite parts is a brief moment when Mark Zuckerberg (as played by Jesse Eisenberg) is brainstorming what will become Facebook. On a dry-erase board he's made three columns to compare ... More >>

Just How Tall Were the Dinosaurs?

Everybody knows the dinosaurs were super-tall, but a University of Missouri anatomy professor has just proven everybody wrong. The dinosaurs weren't just super-tall. They were super-duper tall. The extra height, Casey Holliday and his team of researchers discovered, came from cartilage between the d ... More >>

4G Mobile Internet Service Launches in St. Louis Today

Image sourceThe Sprint EVO.​Gosh, and it seemed like only yesterday when everybody was lining up at the Apple Store for the 3G iPhone... Now of course that is all totally passe, especially since 4G service will only be offered through Sprint Nextel and Clearwire, not AT&T, exclusive servicer o ... More >>

Local Protesters of Big Oil to Put Hands Across the Sand, Er, Mud and Silt

Hands Across the Sand​On Saturday, dozens of St. Louisans will gather on the riverfront beneath the Arch to hold hands in a silent protest against offshore oil drilling. Local event organizer Stacey Critzer anticipates 50, maybe even 100 participants. It's not exactly Hands Across America, but the ... More >>

Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms: The Supreme Court Rules, Everyone Claims Victory

Image viaEven Alfalfa is smiling about yesterday's ruling on alfalfa.​Gut Check hasn't read much case law since our high-school debate career ended and our briefcase (and trophies!) went into storage in our parents' garage. However, we were fairly certain that when the Supreme Court issued a rulin ... More >>

Mall Employee Gets Kinda Naked to Protest Oil Extraction in Canada

Lush employee Rachael Wall protests mining the Canadian Tar Sands. Click to view larger version.​Editor's note: Daily RFT sent able-bodied intern Steve Hardy to the Galleria today to report on one of the most earnest protests ever held on a Wednesday afternoon in a mostly vacant shopping mall. Bel ... More >>

Burn! Scientists Say Missouri and Illinois Pay Billions to Import Coal

Image sourceA gift to clean energy advocates from the Union of Concerned Scientists​A report on coal imports from the Union of Concerned Scientists was just about a month too late for the Great Coal Debate at Washington University.,It's a pity too, because the environmental activist group found th ... More >>

Jonathan Katz: Wash U Prof Tapped By Obama to Solve Gulf Oil Crisis is "Homophobe, Climate Change Denialist"

Image sourceJonathan Katz describes himself as "a homophobe and proud"​Washington University physics professor Jonathan Katz is part of a five-man team of the nation's "best scientific minds" assembled by the Obama administration to help BP stem the flow of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. He' ... More >>

How to Identify a Census Worker

Behold a census worker. ​A census worker won't:sell you Girl Scout cookies (or anything else). stalk you, but he (or she) will knock on your door up to three times. come inside your house. (So, don't even ask.)Still unclear about what a census worker will and won't do? You're in luck! Daily RFT ju ... More >>

A Blogger's Baker's Dozen: The RFT staff presents a sampler of St. Louis' must-read contributors to the blogosphere

Global Warming & Meteorologists: A "Hot" Topic?

reedypress.comCorrigan says everything in Missouri is political, even the weather. ​Is global warming real?Finally, somebody has asked the experts. Thank you, Don Corrigan, editor and co-publisher of the Webster-Kirkwood and South County Times newspapers. In his new book, Show Me Nature's Wrath, a ... More >>

Mac Users Get Google Chrome (Finally)

​Yesterday Google made the the beta version of the Chrome Web browser available for Mac and Linux users. This is almost exactly a year after the browser was launched (in beta) for Windows. Why the long delay? Nobody knows. It's very likely the case that Google was concentrating its efforts at aimi ... More >>

Forget Texting While Driving, Local News is all About Sexting (It's Sextier)

Not Sexty: State Rep. Don Wells​ This week, state representative Don Wells (R - Cabool) introduced legislation that would make it illegal for all drivers in Missouri to text while behind the wheel. In August, legislators passed similar legislation that prohibits people under the age of 21 from tex ... More >>

Blurring the Lines of Dis- and Over-Abled

Here we see Steve Austin training for the next Olympic games. But will he be allowed to compete? ​There's an outstanding article over at Gizmodo right now everyone, and I do mean everyone, should read. It's an article by Aimee Mullins, whose name you may not be all that familiar with, but you shou ... More >>

St. Louis Sex Blogger "The Beautiful Kind" Near Tippy-Top of the Heap

Unreal likes to think we knew her when...​Yep, we stumbled across local sex blogger The Beautiful Kind back in early 2007, when she was getting down and dirty with a bull penis.

9.9.09 Beatles or Not? Apple's Big Announcement is Today

​Today is the day when we find out if my prediction that Apple will be the first to release digital versions of the Beatles catalog at the "iPod event" comes true. I'm sort of leaning against my prediction since Apple named the event for a Rolling Stones song; "It's Only Rock'n'Roll" Whe ... More >>

Bad News Teens: New State Law Prohibits Minors From Texting and Driving

​The good news? It's still legal to sext and drive. No. Seriously. Don't do that either. The new Missouri law prohibiting drivers under 21 years in age from texting while behind wheel goes into effect Friday. Missouri is the 23rd state to ban texting while driving, but is one of only nine to sing ... More >>