I dunno if this is a good thing or a bad thing but here are 11 household objects that just got smarter, as the article at The Street says. And they are: your front door lock your door bell the coffee maker (OK, maybe this one is good) the thermostat smoke detector and of course, …

Love all things Game of Thrones? Then get ready for even more of the laughs and crazy hijinks you’ve come to expect in this makeover by Bad Lip Reading. Wait, you don’t usually expect to laugh, you say? Well, it can’t do you any harm. Full story at YouTube via Mashable. Not quite what you see on …

Taking a chance means risking disappointment on the one hand, yet opening oneself up to opportunity on the other. Though each of us can remember those times when the risk we took on someone turned bitterly sour, it’s smaller risks taken every day that could be the key to happiness. The blog Marc and Angel …

If you were expecting Santa to leave you a brand-spanking new collection of craft beers this holiday season, you could be in for some serious disappointment if the government doesn’t get their act together soon. While Congress is busy boozing it up doing, um, something, craft breweries around the country are stuck in a holding …

Like wine? I do, but I sure don’t know as much about it as I should. Isn’t this a great illustration of all the wine types? Wendy MacNaughton sure has done a great job. For a zoomable infographic showing the full spectrum, see here: Brain Pickings. More stories about wine. Photo credit: Wendy MacNaughton

Mama elephants may not spend the twenty-two months they carry their offspring with headphones blasting Beethoven on their bellies, but a recent study shows they measure up to their master mammals in one sense. It turns out, elephants are one of the only other animals that understand what pointing means without being taught, just like …

We assume there’s a class or at least some common sense that comes into play when the photos are chosen to highlight all the wonderful features of your home to potential buyers, but as they say, “Assume makes and a** out of you and me,” and in this case, the seller as well. If your …

Though stocking up on batteries and flashlights is always lurking somewhere on the to-do list, the long lines and empty shelves that precede any disaster are ample evidence many of us are not perpetually prepared for the worst. That’s why it’s always good to know what you can do with those things you probably have …

It might only be the size of a pebble, but in terms of scientific worth, it’s priceless. After eliminating every other possibility, the scientists analyzing a rock dubbed “Hypatia,” after the Alexandrian female mathematician and philosopher came to the conclusion that the pebble found in the Egyptian desert was, in fact, part of a comet’s …

Some people dream small, some dream big, and generations can thank Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky for having a vision as big as the Russian Empire itself. His goal was to make a photographic record of the Russian people, in all their diversity and in color, but it wasn’t simply a matter of point, click, and hop the …

Think getting to your job in the winter sucks? The folks we don’t envy in the least are the clean-up crew from Greek telecom company, Cosmote, who had to deal with extreme weather conditions including this eighty times in one year. “In cases where the height of the snow made it difficult to access base …

When most of us think of enjoying time with a pet, it involves hours of devoted petting, yet a new study testing what conditions caused pets stress showed that some cats — much like some people — would rather have anything but. Prompted by the assertion that cats who live in feline solitude are more …