What’s weird and wonderful in science this week?

• Researchers believe your armpits stink to attract bacteria and leave your other orifices alone.
• There’s a new book detailing that your not being a morning person might have more scientific basis than just you hating your job.
• Here’s why so many fossils have a lot of uranium in them.
• Remember when you heard sperm counts had been halved by 1990. Turns out, not so much.
• To predict earthquakes, we need to stop looking at the ground and start examining tides.
• Not thinking about pain doesn’t just help you deal with it emotionally…it makes the brain divert pain signals and release pain-killing chemicals
• We drive like idiots, there are more cars on the road than ever, and yet it turns out that we’re actually dying in cars a lot less.
• After years of trying, we’ve finally got the signature of plutonium-239, meaning we might finally be able to store nuclear waste safely.
• And finally, the importance of an infamously unsolvable problem.

Anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

image courtesy cometstarmoon on Flickr

“Battleship” is going to get sunk this weekend by “The Avengers”, but it doesn’t matter: it’s already a hit. It cost $209 million and it’ll probably make $400 million across the world when all is said and done, meaning that the studio will break even on the movie.

And, since this is Hollywood, that means A) they’re already writing “Battleship 2″ and B) that board game season, not to mention card game season, is officially open. Here are ten games that Hollywood’s probably already optioned, along with a few taglines that we tried to make as horribly uncreative as possible, so when their marketing departments do use them, we can sue.

We also expect them to define any game that comes in a box as a “board game”, even if it’s a roleplaying game.
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I live in Boston, and Curt Schilling had a brief moment there where he was like unto a God for finally breaking the Curse and redeeming the faith of Red Sox Nation.

Which was before the man, who came out against government handouts, threw a massive hissy fit about how Massachusetts was, like, totally going to lose all its video game money unless it gave him a massive tax credit. You know, trifling little studios like Irrational, Harmonix, Rockstar, Turbine, Zynga, they were all going to dry up and blow away. No, Massachusetts needed to support his startup, and their sure to be epic MMO, “Kingdoms of Amalur.”

We just want to note here that between 2004 and 2008, Curt Schilling made $80 million in salary off a beloved sports team before he flipped the entire state the finger and went south to Peter Griffin territory.

That’s relevant because 38 Studios not only stiffed its employees on payroll, but the reason they stiffed said employees, to pay the state of Rhode Island back $1.12 million on the $75 million the studio got to move to the state, bounced.

It’s worth noting here that Amalur’s sales were about in line with the game: unspectacular.

So, basically, an extremely rich game studio owner has just screwed his employees, and will likely screw the state of Rhode Island out of a good high eight figures, after crying about how he doesn’t have the money to support developing video games because those mean old states won’t pay him to make them. Oh, and considering Big Huge Games went to 38 Studios, that could mean “Rise of Nations”, a franchise gamers actually care about, is in trouble as well.

Hey, Curt, Activision might be hiring. You’ll fit right in.

image courtesy EA

Let’s see here:

• Sloppy editing in the first ten seconds? Check. If the stuntman whiffs a take, redo the take, guys. Don’t use a cutaway, and especially don’t use THAT cutaway.
• That just gets worse later in the clip? Check. And those tennis balls were dropped by who, God?
• Intentional or not, reference to “Batman Begins”? Check. (To be fair, it’s not like there are a lot of creative ways to shoot grinding metal.
• Moments showing off the hero’s abs and chest for the fangirls? Check. Really, he should be doing this in bicycle shorts; you can’t tell us this show won’t have lots of boobs, so we might as well have equal opportunity ogling. I guarantee you this guy’s Ninja Warrior climb will be a gif by the time you read this.
• Godawful voice-over acting and recording? Check. Use a pop screen and for God’s sake, tell him to at least try and not sound like he’s reading off the page.
• Even worse sound editing? Check. (Listen when he’s firing the arrows: it sounds like he’s whiffing every shot.)

We weren’t really expecting that much, and we’re assuming that this is solely to get some buzz started and the pilot will be cleaner. But yeesh.

The clip for your delectation under the cut.

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Anybody who grew up in the ’90s remembers Toonami. Arguably, it was one of the best things to ever happen to anime in the United States, introducing a huge number of people to high quality work like “Cowboy Bebop”.

Well, guess what? It’s back.

Adult Swim, of course, spent April Fools Day yanking everyone’s chain about this, and asked fans to weigh in if they really wanted the anime block back.

Well, apparently they did. AS is being pretty cagey about the coming lineup; right now there’s nothing on the Toonami site except a Twitter widget. But we’ll see exactly what they’ve got up their sleeve come May 26th.

We don’t often think about microorganisms, except when they’re making our lives miserable.

But, amid the bugs that keep you out of work and the teeny buggers doing something gross in your fridge, there’s also the wonder of biotechnology. It turns out that microorganisms are capable of way more than we thought.

How much more? As we harness these viruses, and unlock their potential, there are, quite literally, world changing possibilities. Electricity from squeezing things. Encryption done with biological processes. And, of course, using microorganisms to clean up other microorganisms, which isn’t new but is getting crazy advanced.

Here are five ways tiny little buggers are going to make the future awesome.
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