Articles by Jess Zimmerman

Car-crushing mayor wins an Ig Nobel prize

Remember Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, who ran over a Mercedes parked in a bike lane USING A TANK? He's just won an Ig Nobel prize, the coveted award for research (or, you know, a mayoral publicity stunt) that first makes people laugh, then makes them think.

WSJ: We can't trust climate science because neutrinos might go faster than light

Someone at the Wall Street Journal read a press release about a scientific finding! And then decided that since people are evidently still discovering things, climate science is probably going to turn out bullshit.

Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might—repeat, might—travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein's theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth's atmosphere. 

People love smart cities, as long as you don't call them smart cities

The vast majority of Americans — almost 80 percent — are totally on board with living somewhere that's close to jobs and schools, where the environment is clean and you don't have to spend much money on gas. They just don't want to live in places that are "sustainable" or involve "smart growth," because that […]

Tolkien parody turns recycling into an epic journey

What I know about Lord of the Rings can basically be summed up in a single Flight of the Conchords song, but someone clearly had a terrifically good time making this recycling-based parody, so I still think it's pretty super. I haven't yet stayed awake through an entire Lord of the Rings movie but I […]