Friday Links!
For your work-avoidance pleasure.Twenty-four new species have been discovered in Surinam, including a shockingly cool fluorescent purple toad. Read about it (and see the toad) here.
Five-inch nipple hair. It's apparently a new world record. The owner of this hair says "It's mostly a genetic gift." Much to my dismay, there's a photo with the story, and it's all here.
This is way off the beaten path, but if you ever wondered about the origination of the Miranda decision, a long and interesting story is here.
Nathan Sawaya is a Lego artist, and some of his work is absolutely amazing. A CNN article is here, and be sure and check out the gallery link in the story.
Scott Moore sent in a link to a story in the Washington Post (via MSNBC) about a cold-war espionage plan to blow up a Soviet pipeline by letting them steal booby-trapped technology. It's a fascinating story, and you can read it here.
Geoff Engelstein sent in a link to an article in Wired about teaching "field sense," which is defined as "anticipation, timing, and an acute sense of spatial relations" in sports. It was generally believed that such a skill was innate and not learnable, but that's being challenged now, and you can read all about it here.
Michael Grimm sent in a link to a show titled "Star Wars: the Legacy Revealed" on The History Channel. Here's a description:
STAR WARS: THE LEGACY REVEALED, a 2-hour special exploring why the emotional impact of the Star Wars Saga remains as relevant as ever.
Through interviews with politicians, academics, journalists and critics, we'll learn about the similarities between the tales of Luke Skywalker and King Arthur and Buddha and Yoda. We'll see how Star Wars' intensely compelling stories - borrowed from diverse traditions, from Greek mythology and American westerns to the Bible and even Vaudeville - force us to explore some of the biggest questions of our time.
From the main page, you can see about twenty-five minutes of the show (in segments--click on the video option), and there's all kind of interesting reading as well. Take a look here.
Gloria is a complete Star Wars geek.
Brian Witte sent in a story about fungi that use radiation to make food. How would anyone figure that out? Why, Chernobyl, of course:
The research began five years ago when Dr. Casadevall read on the Web that a robot sent into the still-highly-radioactive damaged reactor at Chernobyl had returned with samples of black, melanin-rich fungi that were growing on the reactor's walls.
It's a very interesting story, and you can read it here.
Finally, from Nate Carpenter, a link to a Milkscanner. It's ridiculously cool, made out of Legos, and you can see it here.
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