Innehållsförteckning för Dec-15 från WIRED

The Best of WIRED on Star Wars Can’t wait for the Force to awaken on December 18? Go to WIRED.com to access our stellar Star Wars coverage— from a 2005 interview with George Lucas to our predictions (and hopes) for the franchise reboot, plus one writer’s tale of finally watching the original movies for the first time. ON THE WEB: WIRED.com/tag/star-wars VIDEO Better Drinking Through Chemistry Make awesome cocktails this holiday season, with science! WIRED articles editor Adam Rogers, author of Proof: The Science of Booze, joins some of the Bay Area’s smartest bartenders as they harness the power of chemistry to make tasty, pro-quality drinks at home. ON THE WEB: video.WIRED.com WEB + PRINT The Future of Football The Super Bowl is 50, so WIRED and Sports Illustrated are…

ALPHA SHOUT IN 1990, scientists in Italy published a study comparing the efficacy of two heart medications. After looking at more than 12,400 cases, they concluded that the newer and more expensive drug provided no significant improvement in health outcomes. The study was controversial and, not surprisingly, contested by Genentech, the company behind the costlier option. It also kickstarted a conversation about the rising cost of medicines. The price tag of the new drug in the study was $2,200 per dose, after all. ¶ How quaint. Today, many drugs cost more than $30,000 a pop. In the past 50 years, prices for cancer drugs have increased a hundredfold, and spending on specialty drugs is forecast to double yet again by 2020. The industry’s riposte to any criticism about pricing is…

SLIDE SHOW MASHSTUDIOS LAX SERIES ENTERTAINMENT SHELF $980 EVEN THE BEST HOME THEATER GEAR CAN BE AN OFFENSE TO THE EYE. THIS SLEEK WALNUT CONSOLE HAS A SLIDING ALUMINUM PANEL (SHOWN IN WHITE) TO HIDE YOUR MORE HIDEOUS PIECES. AN OPENING IN BACK ACCOMMODATES THE CABLES. TEAPOT..............................................................$20 CHROMECAST..............................................$35 COCKTAIL GLASS......................................$75 GLASS CARAFE........................................$100 MODULAR HEADPHONES..............$145 ALARM CLOCK/LIGHT........................$190 HAMMOCK....................................................$195 EARBUDS.......................................................$199 TABLE LAMP...............................................$350 WIRELESS HEADPHONES...............$500 LOUNGE CHAIR........................................$900 ENTERTAINMENT CONSOLE........$980 WIRELESS MUSIC SYSTEM.......$3,295 65-INCH OLED 4K TV......................$5,000 Kick off your shoes, pour yourself something nice on ice, and hit Play to fill the air with some calming grooves. It’s you time, and with these beautifully designed products, the living is easy. YOUR DOWNTIME IS WHEN YOUR BEST IDEAS COME TO LIGHT. Great Awakenings WITHINGS AURA $190 This alarm clock/lamp hybrid greets you every morning…

WITH AL WAYS. US. ULISES FARINAS KATHLEEN KENNEDY HAS HEARD A LOT OF MOUTE PITCHES. For decades she worked with Steven Spielberg, producing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, the Jurassic Park series. You get the picture. So it probably wasn’t a surprise—it was cool, even—when, right after Kennedy took over as head of Lucasfilm, the company George Lucas founded to make Star Wars, John Knoll walked into her office. Knoll is not nothing, either. He’s the chief creative officer at Lucasfilm; he did the visual effects on the Star Wars “special editions” of the 1990s and a couple of Star Trek movies, among others. Along the way he cocreated Photoshop. This was 2012, and even then, it was pretty clear Lucasfilm was going to make more Star Wars…

“What is the friggin’ deal with those Jawas?” I remember thinking to myself. I was scared, and who could blame me? Those chattering little bastards were menacing: a skosh taller than me, beady yellow eyes glowing like cinders under their dark burlap hoods. They surrounded a slightly paunchy Darth Vader, one Jawa clinging to his leg, which was odd in retrospect, because even though Vader grew up on Tatooine, there is no cinematic evidence of his ever hanging out with Jawas. But there they were, a few story-line-challenged cosplayers standing in line at a West Texas strip mall in the summer of 1980—terrorizing the likes of 4-year-old me. My dad hadn’t planned for me to be terrified when he brought me to see The Empire Strikes Back, of course. He…

Hot Wheels BUDNITZ NO.1 SCORCHER TITANIUM $6,440 The disc brakes and maintenance-free carbon belt drive on this city bike make it great for commuting, but Budnitz’s murdered-out Scorcher isn’t ready to hang it up at quittin’ time. The burly titanium frame and knobby Schwalbe tires are just as capable at shredding singletrack as they are cruising the bike lane. Plus, with that matte-black paint job and inverted handlebars, it just looks mean. SLAM DUNK SPALDING ABA BASKETBALL $126 You can’t go as hard in the paint as you used to. But with a piece of hoops history, you can still school opponents on the court. Turn back the shot clock to the early ’70s and the glory days of the American Basketball Association with the league’s iconic redwhite-and-blue ball. LANTERN/BATTERY............................$100…

A FEW MINUTES AFTER I meet E. V. R. Raju, a vision pops into my head. I can see him on one of those lists of the World’s Most Important People released by the likes of CNN, Forbes, and Time. Besides the obvious entrants like the president and the pope, the lists always also include a few buzzy, click-generating names: Emma Watson, perhaps, or Bono. Raju is certainly not in either of those categories. He is the environmental manager of a coalfield in northeastern India. The Jharia coalfield, where Raju works, is India’s biggest and most significant, covering some 170 square miles. It has been on fire, calamitously, since 1916; entire villages have collapsed into the smoking ground. Raju’s job is to put out the fire, so that his company…

BUILDING THE FUTURE WHEN WE THINK of innovative design, often it’s discrete objects—a gorgeous tea kettle, a sleek Bluetooth speaker, the original iPod— that come to mind. But for this year’s design issue, we wanted to go big. Our subject: cities. From the gondolas soaring above the streets of Medellín, Colombia, to the museum that spirals into the earth in Shanghai, these ingenious efforts are lighting the way toward a better, smarter future. (That’s literally true in Los Angeles, which is retrofitting 4,500 miles of streets with smart LEDs.) Our list included cities as far-flung as Nairobi, Eindhoven, and Dubai because, as we’ve learned: Inspiration lives everywhere. Re: “Cities by Design” “I READ 23.10 FROM FRONT TO BACK. BOTH CONTENT AND DESIGN WERE OUTSTANDING.” Leon Taylor via email “Not many…

How Loop Works Every ellipse contains two focus points. In theory, if you hit a ball that’s on one focus point (A), it should always rebound in such a way that it crosses the other (B). Bellos devised a pool table with a single pocket at one of those focus points. EIGHT BALL in the corner pocket? Not on Alex Bellos’ billiard table. It has no corner pockets—indeed, it has no corners whatsoever. Bellos, a British journalist who covers sports and mathematics, combined his two obsessions to create a unique game that he dubbed Loop. ¶ While working on his book The Grapes of Math, Bellos became fascinated by the ellipse. “The shape has these wonderful geometrical properties that we’ve known about since the ancient Greeks,” he says. Instructors frequently…

YOU KNOW YOU’VE REACHED peak Islamophobia when a presidential candidate says he’d be uncomfortable with a Muslim in the White House. In response to Ben Carson, Twitter user (and Libyan-American Muslim woman) Hend Amry pointed and laughed, launching the hashtag #How-ToStopAMuslimPresident. (First idea: all-bacon White House.) She’s one of a growing number of Muslim women who are using social media (and a healthy dose of humor) to speak truth to preconceptions. Hend Amry @libyaliberty When Bill Maher claimed that ISIS fighters aren’t outliers in their violence, she tweeted, “Five of the last 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners were Muslim. So according to Bill Maher, we’re all Peace Prize winners!” It was retweeted more than 7,800 times. But her best joke was that Princess Leia is a headscarf short of being…

COASTERS......................................................... $7 BACKGAMMON..........................................$23 COCKTAIL BOOK.......................................$35 SERVING TRAY............................................$40 UNBREAKABLE GLASSES.................$50 TERRA-COTTA CARAFE.......................$65 ICE BUCKET...................................................$90 PORTABLE LIGHT..................................$100 DARTS..............................................................$132 COCKTAIL SHAKER..............................$135 DARTBOARD..............................................$140 INSTANT CAMERA................................$169 UE BOOM SPEAKER............................$199 CITRUS PRESS.........................................$200 SONOS SPEAKER..................................$499 B&W SPEAKER.........................................$699 Entertaining is about the little things: the right lighting, the awesome playlist, the perfect glasses for that punch you’ve been concocting. Set the stage with care and the good times will take care of themselves. NICE SERVE CB2 ROY TRAY $40 AND UP This eye-catching iron tray adds a dash of sophistication to any gathering, whether you’re serving hors d’oeuvres or a fancy nightcap. Raw metal on the outside, enameled blue or ivory inside, it could make even a couple of PBRs look classy. Quick Pics LOMO’INSTANT SANREMO $169 The whole point of an instant camera is to deliver photos…

MASTER BLASTER MAD CATZ L.Y.N.X. 9 MOBILE HYBRID CONTROLLER $300 NOW YOU CAN DO YOUR GAMING SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN YOUR PARENTS’ BASEMENT: MAD CATZ’S NEWEST CONTROLLER WORKS WITH ANY BLUETOOTHENABLED WINDOWS PC, BUT IT ALSO CONNECTS DIRECTLY TO ANDROID DEVICES. SPRING-LOADED GRIPS CAN ATTACH IT TO YOUR PHONE OR TABLET. TAKE THIS CATZ ANYWHERE—IT FOLDS UP SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT IN YOUR POCKET. HEAVY METAL 12-INCH BOROUGH FURNACE BRAISING SKILLET $320 This isn’t your grandmother’s cast-iron pan, unless Grammy ran her own metal-casting workshop. Borough Furnace’s handcrafted skillet is made from recycled iron and arrives preseasoned with flax oil. The slanted sides make it easy to slip a spatula under Nonna’s meat loaf. ROBOT NUTCRACKER..........................$30 PARROT DRONE........................................$99 GARDEN SENSOR.................................$100 TETRIS CUSHIONS...............................$100 BIONIC BIRD...............................................$135 STAR WARS DROID..............................$150 GAMING CONTROLLER....................$300 BRAISING SKILLET...............................$320…