Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Drive through the Midwest and it's only a matter of time before you hit corn and soy fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. It's no surprise, really--the U.S. government lavishes the two industries with cash, spending $15.4 billion in subsidies for corn, cotton, rice, wheat, and soybeans in 2009 alone.

In an excerpt from his new book Ten Steps Ahead, author Erik Calonius tells us about Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid Camera, unsung hero of consumer products, and personal hero of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs admits to few idols

In the past 15 months several devastating earthquakes have rumbled beneath the Pacific.

Dear EarthTalk : Instances of people with thyroid problems seems to be on the rise.

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan shortened Earth's day by 1.8 millionths of a second. While this might sound striking, perhaps even scary, don't panic: Earth is shifting slightly all the time, owing mostly to atmospheric and ocean currents. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan on March 11 shortened Earth's day by 1.8 millionths of a second, according to NASA scientists

Back when I was a kid, I sometimes daydreamed about traveling back in time to the exotic Age of Dinosaurs in order to liven up what I thought was a relatively plain and insignificant existence in suburban Connecticut. It's easy to overlook the exceptional qualities of a familiar setting in this way unless someone calls attention to them. That's what has happened recently with our present-day position on the geologic time scale, thanks to a trendy new title

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.--Silicon translates sunshine into electricity--and Earth receives enough sunshine in a daylight hour to supply all of humanity's energy needs for a year. But despite being as common as sand, photovoltaic panels made from silicon--or any of a host of other semiconducting materials --are not cheap, especially when compared with the cost of electricity produced by burning coal or natural gas.

This may be the first step toward the Matrix, wrapped in white ribbons for the Royal Wedding: Google 's tricked-out its Google Earth version of London with super-real 3-D representations of buildings and parks along the procession route. Google's mapping team notes it's "doing our part" to support the upcoming royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29th.

(PhysOrg.com) -- What do a wine glass on Earth and an International Space Station experiment have in common? Well, observing the wine glass would be one of few ways to see and understand the experiment being performed in space.

Dear EarthTalk : What specific issues and protections are covered by the Food Safety Modernization Act recently signed into law? --P.

Dear EarthTalk : I understand that Congress passed legislation not too long ago that protected a few million acres of wilderness areas, parks and wild rivers, in part to help offset climate change.

The tropical rain band that encircles Earth just north of the equator affects rainfall patterns worldwide. By taking sediment cores from pond and lake beds on tropical islands, scientists can determine where the band has been since A.D

In the last few years NASA has built and launched two world-class climate satellites, both of which promised invaluable new data on the natural and human influences on Earth's changing climate. Neither of them, however, will ever deliver the data that climate scientists so eagerly expected from them.

Dear EarthTalk : Isn’t it a waste that we buy water in plastic bottles when it is basically free out of our taps?

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the March 1961 issue of Scientific American. In the days when civilized men believed that the world was flat they had no reason to think about gravity. There was up and down