Russian soft-drinks explained: tastes like forests, rye bread, licorice, bubblegum

On Metafilter, Deathalicious rounds up links to some of the more interesting drinks mentioned in two videos by YouTube user 513755, explaining the various uniquely regional Russian and ex-Soviet soft-drinks.

Beautiful photos from the Hubble Space Telescope

Testing spacesuits beneath the Earth's surface

 The Eisriesenwelt—the "World of the Ice Giants"—is an Austrian cave that stays cold enough year-round to freeze any water that gets into it. As a result, the cave is full of massive ice formations. On April 28th, it was

Powdered human baby shipments seized

South Korean customs officials plan to increase customs inspections for powdered human baby flesh after 17,500 capsules were smuggled in less than a year. Powdered human baby flesh cures disease and boosts stamina. [BBC]

House built upside-down in Austria becomes tourist attraction

REUTERS/Dominic Ebenbichle

An interesting way to explain radiation exposure and risk

Science blogger Lee Falin has a potentially useful analogy for putting radiation dose and risk into perspective

The lament of the taxonomist

The good news: A recent study of preserved museum specimens revealed that the Caribbean is home to 39 different species of skink, rather than the previously-accepted six. The bad news: Turns out that 16 of those species are already extinct. (Via Tim Heffernan) 

The New Yorker: A Technological Solution to Global Warming?

The May 14, 2012, issue of The New Yorker is the "innovators" issue, with articles about the rise of drones in the United States, an artificial leaf that mimics the way plants convert solar energy, and a look at the promises and risks of geoengineering our way out of global warming. Plus, a beautiful cover by Bob Staake.

A unicycler's guide to physics

Watch this video and you'll better understand both some of the basics of Newtonian physics and how to ride a unicycle successfully.

The Open Laboratory: Best Science Writing on the Web 2012

Last week, I mentioned The Open Laboratory—an annual anthology of the best science writing on the Internet. Now the 2012 edition is available for pre-order. This is a great place to start if you want to expand your science RSS feed, discover trustworthy sources of science news, and learn lots of interesting stuff in a format perfect for reading on the bus or train. Bonus: A couple of BoingBoing posts made it into this edition!

Super Moon was, in fact, pretty super (big photo gallery)

REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

The full "super Moon", scientifically known as a "perigee moon", rises over Los Angeles, California May 5, 2012. A "super Moon" lit up Saturday's night sky in a once-a-year cosmic show, overshadowing a meteor shower from remnants of Halley's Comet, the U.S. space agency NASA said. The Moon looked especially big and bright, because it reached its closest spot to Earth at the same time it was in its full phase, NASA said. Below, the full moon rises behind a mosque as birds fly in Amman.

Make's latest weekend project - two solar-powered BEAM bots

[Video Link] Here's MAKE's latest weekend project - two solar-powered BEAM bots. BEAM stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics. From Wikipedia: "This is a term that refers to a style of robotics that primarily uses simple analogue circuits, such as comparators, instead of a microprocessor in order to produce an unusually simple design (in comparison to traditional mobile robots) that trades flexibility for robustness and efficiency in performing the task for which it was designed."

Skillets in the shapes of each of the continental states of the USA

FeLion Studios, an ironmonger with style, has made a set of 48 interlocking "Made in America" skillets, in the shape of each of the continental states. Buy them one at a time or get the whole set (which, admittedly, would probably be a little impractical to store in most kitchens -- it's 500lbs including a maple mounting block).

AAirpass: American Airlines's all-you-can-eat lifetime first class ticket, and what became of it

The LA Times's Ken Bensinger tells the fascinating, dirty story of American Airlines's AAirpass, a too-good-to-be-true lifetime first-class-ticket-to-anywhere-anytime pass that the airline debuted in 1981 at $250,000 (the last one offered, in the 2004 Neiman-Marcus Christmas Catalog, was priced at $3,000,000, but none sold). Purchasers could also buy companion tickets they could use to fly anyone along with them.
The men who bought them -- the article only mentions men -- went a little bananas. They started flying everywhere, all the time. They'd pick random people out of the check-in line and give them free first-class upgrades. They'd fly to Japan for lunch and back to the States that night. One of them was costing the airline more than $1,000,000 a year.
The airline decided to get rid of them. They put private eyes and internal investigators on them. They sued. They extorted passengers who'd flown on companion tickets for confessions that they'd paid for the "gift," and froze their frequent flier accounts, saying they'd only restore them once the passengers fessed up. The ugly tale ends in limbo with the airline's Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. But on the way, it has a lot of odd and colorful twists.

The honeybees are still dying

The eerie mystery of the vanishing honeybees has not been put to rest.
In the last few weeks, three separate studies explored the effect of insecticides on honeybee and pollinator health. One paper linked neonicotinoids, a new class of systemic insecticides that have come into widespread use in recent years, to impaired honeybee navigation; a second noted the effects of low levels of the pesticides on bumblebee reproduction.

Big Gulp: Flaring Galaxy Marks the Messy Demise of a Star in a Supermassive Black Hole

A close look at a distant cataclysm indicates that the black hole's victim was a red giant star

By John Matson  | May 2, 2012 | 38

FLARE UP: A computer simulation shows the remains of a star, torn apart by the gravitational pull of a black hole, being pulled into the black hole. Image: NASA, S. Gezari (JHU) and J. Guillochon (UCSC)