Several characters together alone in a mansion, all with a hidden motivation to kill and one dead body: it’s formulaic, sure, but why fix what isn’t broken? Especially when it works well, as...
Developed theoretically two years ago, a new camera prototype has now been developed that can see around corners. The camera works by firing laser beams at a wall, which then bounce off and hit an object...
Director Journeys into The Abyss
Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron, who has directed some of the biggest movies of the past 25 years, including “Titanic” and “Avatar,” will...
“I just thought I’d mention before we begin: This is not the Keith Urban concert. If you mean to be at a Keith Urban concert, you will be sorely disappointed.”
So said lead singer Colin...
Iceman had brown eyes, liked long walks
Scientists learned more about the Iceman, a frozen specimen of an ancient human found over 20 years ago, by applying the most modern DNA analysis available today....
Editor’s Note: The Daily Texan talked with Adam Levy, singer-songwriter and bandleader for The Honeydogs, to discuss the band’s latest album, What Comes After, released today. Levy will be...
With an opening track titled “Particles or Waves,” alluding to quantum duality and other songs that make references to Greek mythology and philosophy, one may be tempted to say that The Honeydogs’...
Science and politics make poor bedfellows, particularly when the former is debated in the arena of the latter. The two major areas where the pairing seems particularly gruesome are evolution and climate...
Hamburger Without the Cow
It’s been the subject of science fiction in the past, but a Dutch group is finally in the process of making lab-grown meat a reality in the form of a $330,000 hamburger....
As far as literary value goes, “Voices of the Dead,” a new pulpy revenge thriller by Peter Leonard, doesn’t have much to offer. The prose is terse, telling the reader exactly what’s...
Documents from Heartland Institute, a climate change-denying think tank, have leaked and suggest that the organization is attempting to bring their position into the public arena using the public school...
Computer Knows Not How to Love
While many dating websites, such as eHarmony or OkCupid, profess to use scientific algorithms to find you that perfect someone, a recent review in the journal “Psychological...
As science progresses further and further along, it's remarkable how little we still understand about the big questions of consciousness, which are simple enough to ask, but downright confounding to...
The last word a physicist wants to hear at a cocktail party is “quantum.” The science of quantum mechanics has been so badly butchered and misrepresented by well-meaning writers, that others...
Robot Swarms
The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania has put together small flying machines that travel in complex formations while...
Man's Oldest Friend?
The dog may have been domesticated earlier than we previously thought. Two 33,000-year-old dog skulls have been found in Siberia and Belgium with shortened snouts, indicating...
One of the most baffling philosophical questions of all time is why we’re here. Or, to put it another way, why is there anything instead of nothing at all? Why does the universe exist and if there’s...
Editor’s note: This is a semester-long column recapping some of the exciting new scientific developments of the week. Robert Starr is a Ph.D. student studying physics.
Scientist Sees Dark Galaxy:...
With a watercolor painted album cover by Joe Sorren evoking early Joni Mitchell, one could be forgiven for thinking that Ingrid Michaelson’s latest album, Human Again, might be an artistic foray...
After writing novels for more than 50 years, it might seem like Elmore Leonard would run out of steam or lose the spark that gave him a unique voice, but if his latest, “Raylan,” proves anything,...
The Secret to Multicellular Life, Revealed?:
Scientists at the University of Minnesota have created multicellular life from single cellular yeast in the lab. Starting with the yeast and artificially...
In the realm of ’90s alternative rock, few bands stand on the same tier as the Smashing Pumpkins. Led by guitarist and vocalist Billy Corgan, they produced a body of work epic in scope, focusing...
It’s the end of the semester and, though you promised yourself that this time would be different, you’ve let your work slide, and you’re not prepared for the final at all. Without a minute...
Music is a fairly subjective art form. A piece that somebody may love will leave someone else cold. It doesn’t transcend generations very well, with parents and children forever fighting over which...
The Largo on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles was a magical place — a small hole in the wall with terrible food, no comfortable seats and filthy restrooms that somehow managed to attract impressive...
“Metropolis” is one of those movies that any cineast should see before he or she dies. It’s a remarkable piece of work, released at the tail end of the silent period of cinema and featuring...
Why are you reading this article?
It’s a simple question, but if there’s any truth to the findings of neuroscience, the answer you give is a justification by a part of your brain that had...
While scientists are out there working on the big questions like the nature of matter, the meaning of time and what dark energy is, they’re not working on the truly important questions that affect...
Randy Newman is something of an unconventional singer-songwriter. Aside from his voice, which only really works for Randy Newman songs, his songwriting is difficult to pigeonhole. While many know him for...
Though The Decemberists released a few albums before Picaresque, that was the one that put them on the map.
Strange and wonderful, the album began with whale songs and each track came up with new...
Physical media may be dying, but it’ll be a tragedy for the collector if it ever does. Sure, one could go to Amazon and download a digital copy of Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused,”...
With talk about neutrinos, bosons and muons, the field of particle physics often sounds less like science and more like something out of a Lewis Carroll poem. It’s not just that the field is abstract...
Ben Folds loves his fans, and if they needed any proof, they now have it in the form of his new release, The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective. Not content just putting together a simple “best-of”...
Give a pretty girl a guitar and tell her sing to about heartache, and that seems like all you need to make a solid pop album. Or at least it seems that easy when that girl is Rachael Yamagata. Her...
Fairness isn’t always fair, but sometimes it can be interesting. “War of the Worldviews” pits two writers against each other, each with a different idea of what reality means and how...
Other than sex, few things are more interesting to humans than violence.
We pay good money to watch gory movies and video games, deplore the acts of violence we see on the news (but still can’t...
Children often find themselves drawn to the sciences. Three-year-olds incessantly ask their parents a never-ending series of “whys,” only to be told over and over again to stop asking questions....
The mere mention of the name Richard Feynman causes any physicist’s eyes to brighten. No doubt, Feynman was one of greatest thinkers of the 20th century, but he never acted like one. He was a goofball...
Science has had a tough time in the popular media. On TV for instance, every “Cosmos,” “Mythbusters” or “Planet Earth” has about a dozen Fox specials about alien abductions,...
Rod Lurie’s remake of “Straw Dogs” makes many changes to Sam Peckinpah’s original, some of which improve the story and some that don’t make much of a difference. The biggest...
[Corrected Sept. 11: Changed Lauren Meyers title]
Monster movies are scary, but they aren’t that scary. Sharks, snakes, spiders, mutant beasts — sure, they can kill you, but that’s about...
A man takes your hand, tells you to relax and then traces the lines on your palm to uncover the mysteries of your past, present and future. He tells you that you’re a kind person. That the line over...
