Play with the Incredibox. // Anvils and explosives. (h/t, Ace) // The art of noodle making. // Beatniks in Newquay, 1960. // Bath bomb. // Tank chair. (h/t, Steynian) // The iSnort. // Tetris AI. // Stereoviews of yore.  (h/t, Peter) // Sea dragon courtship. // Carnivorous plants. // Cell size and scale. (h/t, Things) // The Astronomer’s Dream. (h/t, Coudal) // The Sun in hydrogen-alpha. // The pentatonic scale. // The real Shaolin. // Robot puppy lamp. // While I was away. // A dangerous substance. // Larry Hagman directs Beware: the Blob! (1972) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Sel Duncan and his Orchestra.  

Yes, I know. You want another of those Classic Sentences from the Guardian. Oh, look. Two stuck together:

Paul McCartney once said: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarians.” Well, if people could see the state of war-torn Iraq, we’d all be cyclists.

That’s one of the profound ruminations of Mr Mark Boyle (pictured below), a “social homeopath,” “pro-activist” and advocate of moneyless living.

Those unfamiliar with Mr Boyle and his intensely radical brain can savour not one but two Guardian profiles, in which we follow our hero’s philosophy and everyday travails: 

To be the change I wanted to see in the world, it unfortunately meant I was going to have to give up cash, which I initially decided to do for a year. I got myself a caravan, parked it up on an organic farm where I was volunteering and kitted it out to be off-grid. Cooking would now be outside – rain or shine – on a rocket stove; mobile and laptop would be run off solar; I’d use wood I either coppiced or scavenged to heat my humble abode, and a compost loo for humanure.

If the term “humanure” is new to some readers, the fascinating details of hands-on sewerless composting toilets can be found here. It’s a world of romantic pre-industrial charm.

Josef Hoflehner’s wide-angle photos of low-flying aircraft at Princess Juliana International Airport.

The Caribbean airport has some interesting signage too.

To promote their literary works at the Frankfurt Book Fair, publishing company Eichborn deployed 200 flies, each attached temporarily to an ultra-light banner.

The banners, measuring just a few centimetres across, seem to be causing the beleaguered flies a bit of piloting trouble. The weight keeps the flies at a lower altitude and forces them to rest more often, which is a stroke of genius on the part of the marketing creatives: the flies end up at about eye level, and whenever a fly is forced to land and recover, the banner is clearly visible.

The results can be seen below.

Hm. A partial success, I think you’ll agree, but promising. Maybe if the project was scaled up dramatically. Say, with 100 million flies. Or maybe just one enormous mutant mega-fly, rumbling through the skies and casting its shadow across entire city blocks.