Scientists Figured Out How The Pyramids Were Built

Physicists from the FOM Foundation and the University of Amsterdam have discovered that the ancient Egyptians used a clever trick to make it easier to transport heavy pyramid stones by sledge. The Egyptians moistened the sand over which the sledge moved. By using the right quantity of water they could halve the number of workers needed....

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Before Silicon Valley Got Nasty, The Pirates Of Analog Alley Fought It Out

A patent drawing for the Range Keeper, Hannibal Ford's analog fire control computer. The history of information technology has a way of repeating itself. Every era's corporate competitors elbow each other for success, try to better the other's ideas, and sometimes just plain steal from one another. In that light, it's no surprise...

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What I Saw Running North Korea's Marathon

The official guidelines we receive, printed on a single side of A4 paper, tell us that the closing ceremony will be at 1 p.m., exactly fours hours after the start of the race. This will take place in the 50,000-seat Kim Il-Sung Stadium, which will also be the marathon’s start and end points. Since finishing is very much what I have in mind, I figure I’ll need to clock in at under four hours or risk not finishing at...

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We Didn't Believe In 'Artisanal' Toast Until We Made Our Own

Leave it to San Francisco to turn one of the simplest â€" and cheapest â€" dishes into the trendy snack du jour. We're talking about toast. "Artisanal" toast is made from inch-thick, snow-white or grainy slices, lathered in butter and cinnamon or peanut butter and honey, then wrapped individually in wax paper. And you think that latte is expensive. Each one of these slices will set you back at least...

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How To Live Forever

If more and more people are living past 100, how much older can we survive to, in theory, asks Frank Swain. And what would it take to achieve this in practice? On the Art of Prolonging Life was penned by a Dr Huseland (“one of the soundest minds in Germany”) in 1797, concluding eight years of study on the topic. He identified...

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Snowden’s Camp: Staged Putin Q&A Was A Screw-Up

Even the NSA leaker’s closest advisers now say his appearance on a Kremlin call-in show, which touched off yet another international firestorm, was a mistake.NSA leaker Edward Snowden instantly regretted asking Russian President Vladimir Putin a softball question on live television about the Kremlin’s mass surveillance effort, two sources close to the leaker tell The Daily Beast.“It certainly didn’t go as he would’ve...

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The World’s Most Exclusive Club

There’s a great scene in North Dallas Forty, from all the way back in 1979, when the owner of a fictional football team is watching practice with business associates. He worries aloud about his team’s playoff chances, so one of them responds, “Christ, you make more with your manufacturing division in one week than you do on this goddamned football team in the whole year, even if they DO win.”...

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This 1981 Computer Magazine Cover Explains Why We’re So Bad At Tech Predictions

Robert Tinney's cover for the April 1981 issue of Byte magazine Internet Archive If you were passionate about personal computers between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, the odds were high that you were a reader of Byte magazine. And if you read Byte, you were surely a fan of Robert Tinney, the artist whose cover paintings...

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Why I Fixed Fights

SI fixed a lot of fights over the years. In two I didn't fix but should have, people paid heavily for my carelessness. Even though I set up Mitch "Blood" Green and Leon Spinks cushion-soft in their comeback fights, I managed to get one embarrassed and the other nearly killed. There had been opportunities for them, deals that came undone...

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