Rick Casson isn’t your typical airplane pilot. A student at the University of Saskatchewan and president of the U of S Aerodesign Team, Rick’s not actually behind the stick, and his flying machines are decidedly smaller than the real thing—less than fifteen pounds and remote-controlled, to be...
Get your brushes, paints and palettes ready because in this week’s Rompecabeza we’re headed back to figure-painting class. And yes, the model keeps her clothes on—what kind of school do you think we’re running here? Need a hint? Find one at the bottom of this page. Check back...
To my friends who ran the marathon—you know who you are; actually, everyone knows who you are thanks to the Mylar blanket you wore long after you were warm again—I’d like to say, “Congratulations!” Not that I need to say it again since I screamed it at...
Getting swoll. Doing work. Pumping iron. No matter what you call it, exercising can be tough on your body. There’s a certain degree of pain or discomfort while you’re working out, but the real burn is often felt in the days after your initial trip to the...
Happy June, everyone! We’ve made it to the start of summer, which also means our new, redesigned Bathroom Minutes magazine comes out this month. You know, that cool, foldy insert that you get in your box with the facts about space trash and commencement speeches. If you haven’t...
Idle hands may be the devil’s playground, but a layabout towel is a back-to-back Coachella weekend for bacteria. To prevent germs (and their sidekick, rank odors) from proliferating in the fibers of your monogrammed L.L.Bean, towels should be washed every few days, or as soon as they...
Showering every day might prevent you from smelling like a foot, but it also means using a lot of a finite resource—water. What if, however, you could keep clean and conserve water? Torrey Tayenaka doesn’t see any reason why you can’t, which is why he invented the...
We’re going back to Algebra 1 in this week’s rompecabeza. The puzzle below requires a bit of what you (hopefully?) still remember from high school math. You know, adding, subtracting, exponentiation—all that fun stuff. The number in the bottom circle of each pattern can be determined through a combination...
In the 1970s former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan shared a bizarre idea about how to gauge the state of the economy: the Men’s Underwear Index. Due to underwear’s position as a clothing staple, his theory went, men purchase freshies pretty regularly when money is flowing....
One of life’s cruel ironies is that the occasions when we most desperately want to wash our hands—e.g., after shaking hands with a runny-nosed colleague after a meeting—water and soap are nowhere to be found. Hand-sanitizing gel is sometimes offered as a substitute, but can you really...
It doesn’t help the turtles of Jekyll island that the highest point—and thus prime nesting ground—is atop a high-traffic causeway. Just ask Ray Emerson, a volunteer at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center and guardian angel to the hundreds of nesting terrapins on the island. Since 2012, Ray’s...
This week in PuzzleLand we harken back to every kid’s favorite 15 to 45 minutes of the school day—recess. A simpler time. A time when you were free, free to pull the hair of the girl or boy you liked, free to play in the mud, and free to...
