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A Look At Japan's Retro-Future


Those Robots Are Still Nicer Than Nuns :  via Pink Tentacle
As much as we love the actual future here at Popular Science, we love the past's vision of the future almost as much. So we basically freaked out when our good friends over at Pink Tentacle discovered this spread from a 1969 issue of the Japanese magazine Shonen Sunday.

These pictures show a predicted 1989 where computers have changed how we live. The above photo depicts a classroom full of children learning on computers, watching a video of a teacher, and receiving beatings from enforcement robots.

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Your Filthy Keyboard

Eat lunch at the desk? Your computer may be harboring more germs than a toilet

We've all heard of the five-second rule when having dropped food on the floor—if you pick it up before five seconds have passed, it's safe to eat. In recent years, scientists have put that folk wisdom to the test and the results fell somewhere in the middle. If bacteria are present on the floor, researchers found that five seconds is plenty of time for it to attach to your food. However, most floors harbor very little bacteria, so unless you're unlucky enough to drop your toast on a tiny patch of e. coli, you'll probably be fine to eat it. If you were to drop that bread on your keyboard, though, that's another story. You'd maybe want to back away slowly and reach for the nearest tongs.

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December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

Check out the best of what's new here.

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