Let's face it. It's hard to design a new exotic supercar. The most timeless shapes were spoken for years ago, and every exotic since then has been just a derivative mishmash of science fiction and aerodynamics optimization (especially the homemade ones). That's not to say a car like the Lamborghini Gallardo isn't good looking in its own way, or that the Aston Martin DB9 isn't a luscious piece of eye candy. It's just that those traditional parameters of automotive beauty—see any Ferrari built before 1972—no longer exist.

In today's gadget blogosphere, there are few if any new products that aren't upon release subjected to an immediate "unboxing"--a thorough and, some may say, pathologically obsessive series of photographs documenting exactly what is implied by the name: taking a shiny new object out of its multiple layers of packaging, step by exhaustive step.

For those leaning more toward the "pathologically obsessive" reasoning here (there are in fact entire blogs dedicated to the practice), the question is: Why does this happen?

Starting next week, nanophysics and biomimicry get celebrated alongside sculpture and painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. “Design and the Elastic Mind,” MoMA’s most science-centric exhibition to date, explores recent collaborations among scientists and designers. The results—teddy bears impregnated with the chicken pox virus, lollipops that deliver a visual explosion with every lick—are sometimes far out.

What happens to airplanes when they die? Though it's fun to imagine them flying up to some big hangar in the sky, the truth is that of the 200 that are retired worldwide every year, most end up in scrap-metal graveyards. Some are even simply abandoned to rust next to landing strips, becoming the FAA equivalent of junked front-yard jalopies.

TIMEKEEPING

Accompanying the Vex Robotics kit, featured in this month’s What’s New section [page 24], is the Vex Robotics Design System’s Inventor’s Guide. The guide is more than just a stapled pamphlet with instructions on how to build a cookie-cutter robot. It introduces and explains basic engineering concepts relating to the Vex system, penned under direction from the Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.