A 2.5% increase really means a LOSS of value. This year's (this month's!) dollar has lost value compared to the previous period. A recent article noted that Thanksgiving's dinner this year will cost 18% more than last year's.

Click on a link in order to see a Julia Roberts video?

When I was a teen, my brother hid a "tickle stick" (9v battery w/ high oscillating circuitry) under my desk chair with the bare wires taped to the front and back of the chair. I don't remember what it felt like, but I remember hitting the floor and twitching for a few seconds.

Image #3: Not only is that grid eighteen miles long, when you zoom in a couple of steps there is a perpendicular grid making a huge "T".

They're testing whether anyone cares anymore.

It's pretty short. The Shuttle & ISS have been operating at between 170 & 280 miles up. The moon is almost 24,00 miles away.

Very nice work, quite enjoyable.

What kind of butterfly did it metamorph into?

Can I get mine in Yellow?

if you had posted this two weeks ago we would have had a Historic Halloween

RTFA??? Why would anyone do that????

OK, the "Lava-Lamp" effect was pretty cool, but the most important thing about starlings is that They Don't Belong In The Americas!!!!! They were intentionally brought over by some misguided schlump and now they are displacing dozens of native songbird species. Pack them all up and send them back to England!!!

They don't stand a chance!!!!

FrankN.Stein - needed this.

Not at all. I'm just being silly

"A plausible end-of-the-world scenario you’ve probably never thought of" - God does what He said he would. Plausible? Not to you, because you refuse to consider it. But it is plausible to millions of people. "Never thought of" because you've never really read what He said He would do.

There's never a reason to feel dumb at io9. this is all about discovering cool new stuff. Everything is new to us when we first find out about it.

Since this is io9, we all ought to know Silicon [en.wikipedia.org] does not equal Silicone [en.wikipedia.org]

Thanks for that! Makes them far less scary than what my head was making them out to be. Hard to think that's a single eucaryotic cell, but so is an ostrich egg.

Link in article goes 404. Better link (I hope):