Why didn’t they have this class at my college? (Probably because I went to a tiny liberal-arts school that mainly offered classes like “Examining Limits in Newton’s Principia”.) Anyhoo. At the University of California at Irvine, students can take way-cool professor Michael Dennin’s seminar analyzing the feasibility of the precepts behind, say, Bruce Wayne’s bat belt. But don’t get too jealous of those snot-nosed freshmen. You can order the textbook for the course, by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg, on Amazon. —Megan Miller
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Science is reinventing play, from extreme sports to gamification to ridiculous roller coasters to the playgrounds of tomorrow, and this issue is chock full of fun. Also, on a less fun note: Did global warming destroy my hometown?