Best of 2009

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2009. 57 posts.

Science & Space
12

Magenta Ain't A Color

All the colours in the light spectrum have complements that exist within the spectrum – except green. There seems to be some kind of imbalance. What is going on? Is green somehow being discriminated against? The light spectrum consists of a range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Red light has the longest…

14

The New Science of Causation

It seems like each new day brings another one of those headlines: regular sleep “linked to” life expectancy, playing video games “associated with” surgical prowess, bullies “at risk” of becoming criminals, and “does breastfeeding reduce a baby’s blood pressure?” (the old rhetorical question gambit). Sometimes the…

22

How to destroy the earth

Preamble Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe. You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing...