Everything I needed to stalk myself, I bought on the Internet for 65 bucks. I started with a Google search—instant background checks—and hit the first link it returned, people data.com. I entered my credit card info, and the next day

They fell for each other in grade school, in the sweetest of ways. In fifth-grade music class, she played saxophone; he played the snare drum. In high school biology, she held the frog while he wielded the scalpel. It was the sort of love story immortalized endlessly in romance novels and Top 40 long-distance dedications. “I thought when I married him it really would be ’till death do us part,’ ” she says now, still surprised that the marriage ended after 19 years. Ultimately, the romance had sputtered to a close, as so many love stories do.

Keep a log of suspicious interactions—noting dates, times and locations—and use it to discern patterns that suggest which aspects of your life are being monitored. If you’re dealing with a potential snoop, not a stalker, consider implementing the countermeasures suggested below. But be careful. If you think you may be in danger, contact the police or an advocate. And don’t add protective measures to your computer if you may want to file criminal charges, because e-mails and other digital files can serve as evidence.

Think your job´s bad? Try dragging a bedspread around tick-ridden thickets, pausing regularly in the 100-degree heat not to squeegee the sweat from your brow but to tweeze dozens of the tiny pests into a collection jar.

I’ve just stepped onto the factory floor at Segway world headquarters in Bedford, New Hampshire, when two engineers sporting matching jeans (tapered), shirts (plaid) and hairlines (receding) glide by and shoot me matching expressions (grins). “Doesn’t anyone walk around here?” I ask, as the distinctive, almost melodic hum of the Human Transporter (HT) trails off. Segway development engineer David Robinson responds with a different expression, this one more quizzical than the one on his colleagues’ faces. “Would you?” he asks.

Pit a California ground squirrel against an ambushing rattlesnake, and you may be surprised by the defense. The rodent squares off, flails its tail, kicks up sand, even bites. But its most covert weapon has escaped the eyes of scientistsuntil now. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have discovered that the squirrel's tail actually heats up during battle, radiating an infrared signal that can send rattlers slithering.

By 1919, hail cannons had been discredited—but people intent on changing the weather refuse to give them up.

A tiny blue-and-white rocket plane glides 44,000 feet above the Mojave Desert. Test pilot Brian Binnie, wearing a helmet and a navy blue flight suit, is focused on the cockpit’s digital instrument display, stealing only quick glances out the vehicle’s 18 little round windows. With the flip of a switch, he fires the rocket motor, igniting nitrous oxide and rubber. The effect is instantaneous and violent: Binnie gets slammed with four Gs as his craft shoots forward like a Sidewinder missile.

The evolution of life on Earth over the past four billion years may be the most lavish, and successful, R&D program in history. The human being, capable of making tools and solving crossword puzzles, is one remarkable product, but so too is the squid, which mastered jet propulsion millions of years before NASA, and the bacterium—the original inventor, three billion years ago, of the free-spinning wheel. Natural selection has exploited almost every physical and chemical phenomenon, including electricity, which is used by both sharks and the duckbill platypus to sense potential prey.

A: Sure, just get yourself a V-8 Hemi and some hot glue . . . Seriously, the most obvious way to squeeze more speed from your electric scooter is to replace its motor with one that’s more powerful. You’ll need to find a bigger DC (not AC) motor that is rated for the same voltage as your battery pack, or use one that’s rated at a higher voltage and simply install more batteries.