Facebook is growing an unstoppable digital graveyard

At some point, there will be more dead Facebook users than living ones – and for those left behind, it is transforming how we experience the death of those around us.

The Painter who entered fourth dimension.

When mathematician Thomas Banchoff received a message in 1975 asking him to contact Salvador Dalí, his colleague told him: “It’s either a hoax or a law suit.” Yet it turned out to be the start of a collaboration that lasted almost a decade. Each year, Dalí visited New York and called on the Brown University professor for advice, setting him challenges for artworks that he hoped one day to complete – including a statue of a horse made up of three parts that were kilometres apart.

Numbers that are illegal to share.

Jon Johansen’s program worked. The Norwegian teenager watched as it downloaded 200 megabytes of a recently released movie, The Matrix, from a DVD onto his computer. The program that he and two anonymous others had created that year, 1999, was called DeCSS. But their project was about to cause something of a ruckus. DeCSS allowed people to unlock content on commercial DVDs without the publisher’s permission, so it instantly became the subject of legal objections from the movie industry.

The bizzare way Echidnas survive fire

Bushfires are an ever-present threat in Australia, but short-beaked echidnas have found a surprising way to survive them

In the tinder-dry bush of Australia, wildfire can tear through vegetation at terrifying speeds, incinerating almost everything in its path and leaving little more than blackened desert in its wake.

How the rich stay rich.

Getting and staying rich...

When many of us have a little cash to invest, we might buy a mutual fund or a stock — if we don’t blow it on the latest tech gadget. Not the truly wealthy, however. They often put their money in property, art, businesses and other investments that the rest of us can only dream of owning. How this rarified group uses their cash differentiates them from the rest of us — and keeps them in the black. 

Pheromones are probably not why people find you attractive.

In 2010, dozens of people gathered in a Brooklyn art gallery to smell each other’s unlaundered t-shirts. This was no fetish party, but an attempt at seduction through smell. The premise of the “Pheromone Party” was simple: unzip one of the many numbered bags containing someone else’s previously worn t-shirt and take a sniff. If you like what you smell, a date with the owner could be on the cards.

What is a 'normal' sex life?

Let’s face it, human sexuality is complicated. There are probably as many different sexual peccadilloes as there are flavours of food – and like our culinary tastes, our preferences vary from country to country, individual to individual, and day to day.

Some disgusting fact about how the body works

We recently explored the mysterious and fascinating properties of earwax – from how it can trace ancient human migration patterns, to its use as an early lip balm. It proved to be a really popular story – perhaps more so than we anticipated for a rather disgusting topic.

The Irishman who faked his own kidnapping

Image copyrightRTE

When a bedraggled man appeared at the side of a road in Ireland claiming he had been abducted, a bizarre tale of fraud and a fake kidnapping started to unfold. A new documentary, The Many Lives of Kevin McGeever, made by Brian Carroll tells the story.

French female ministers decry sexual harassment

Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGES

Image captionFormer French Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin was one of the signatories

Seventeen women who have served as ministers in France say they will no longer be silent about sexual harassment in politics.