This Week in Geekdom

Happy weekend and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! Good googly Cthulu it feels amazing to get back to some semblance of normalcy. The rest of this month should be chock-full of blogging goodness under several different categories.  Very, very excited about all this, but first, the week in geekdom! 

Happy Mother's Day to all our real-life superheros

Comics

DC is desperate for your attention. And by you, they mean anyone with disposable income who is old enough to have even vague memories of Masters of the Universe. The attempts at nostalgia are rife in their latest miniseries, which pits He-Man and his ilk against Superman and the rest of the Justice League. Those grumbles you hear are from disappointed She-Ra fans upon learning that their favorite Princess of Power gets no love in these new comics. The crossover series will hit the shelves this coming August.

Science/Technology

In a thrilling development for lovers of zero emissions/electric vehicles, Consumer Reports released their review of the new Model S sedan by Tesla. The verdict: a near-perfect score of 99/100. See video of the test drive and the full recap here.

Love the affordability of IKEA furniture but hate assembling it? Your fellow nerds over at MIT have you covered. This week, a team of engineers debuted their work on an autonomous robot that can put together several offerings from the Swedish home goods giant. 

Time, Google, and NASA collaborated on this simultaneously beautiful and unnerving time-lapse series of the Earth and the changes thereto that have taken place in the past 30 years.

It's the year 2013...so where are our flying cars? Turns out, they might be right here.

We're just weeks away from the first full update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D.S.M.) since 1994 and already psychiatrists are decrying the as-yet unreleased new volume.

Approximately 2 million people a year die because they did not have access to sufficiently clean drinking water. In order to address this widespread and entirely preventable problem, researchers at the Institute of Technology in Madras, India presented theirwork on a potential solution. Bonus: their device would cost under $3 USD per year to operate.

After 17 years of loyal service, Microsoft announced that it was putting hotmail out to the virtual pasture.

Movies

Ever found yourself vehemently disagreeing with a critic's assessment of a comic book movie? Turns out you're far from alone. Check out this very detailed, semi-studious ranking of 140 recent films that had roots in comics. 

It's been over 35 years since they were used, but apparently the original Tatooine sets from Episode IV are not only still standing, but have been entirely abandoned. Photographer Ra di Martino learned of this and set out for Tunisia to see for himself. These are the images she captured of that expedition.

Games

Fans of Diablo III may have been privy to a digital gold rush this week as a bug in the game metastasized to the point that Blizzard was forced to shut down the game's controversial auction houses. The glitch has since been fixed and the game restored to full functionality.

Ugh, come on EA. We really don't need any more of your evil shenanigans. Not only did the company manage to snatch up exclusive development rights to any and all Star Wars games for the foreseeable future, but they released this attempt at sensitivity.  Yes, you read that right. In the wake of gun-related tragedies like the shootings at Newtown, EA is going to stop paying licensing fees to firearms manufacturers, but continue to use the digital images of the guns in their games. So the pistols and assault rifles will remain; EA just won't pay for them. Right. 

Oh PopCap, when are your wares not wholly addictive? The answer is never. Soon we'll have even more cause to wonder where the last 2 hours went as the company announced that they will be releasing Plants vs. Zombies 2 in July.

Speaking of things that may manifest as click games on social media, remember how last year around this time Zynga tried to keep Facebook's sticky fingers out of their FarmVille cookie jar? Yeah, about that.

General Awesomeness/Feats of Nerdery

The innovative Danes over at Lego announced that they will be producing and releasing a line of Steampunk Legos later this summer. The guys over at Brick Bloggers have the full breakdown, including some gorgeous pictures of what tiny, plastic brick goodness is in store.

Absurdly impressive: take a peek at this incredible homemade Transformers costume. It took the costumer 2 years and nearly $2000 USD to build.

In commemoration of Star Wars Day last weekend, the guys at Etckt.com compiled this extremely detailed periodic table of elements using characters, places, and concepts from the Star Wars universe. Bonus: they crafted their Mendeleev-inspired piece using only elements from Episodes IV-VI