A mirror made of wood. No, really. Watch the video. // An impressive collection of navel lint. // African frog with “Wolverine” claws. // Fish acoustics. // The 56K modem emulator. // Musical furnishings. (h/t, Coudal,) // Vintage Bang & Olufsen. // Botanical gardens, Medellín, Colombia. More. // Bicarb: clears drains, detects cancer. (h/t, AC1.) // “Medieval waste studies” – an exciting new arm of academic enquiry. (h/t, Cookslaw.) // The Medieval Sourcebook. // Early visual entertainments. The anorthoscope, the choreutoscope and other phantasmagorias. (h/t, Drawn!) // Build your own Galactus, parts 1 & 2. Not actual size. // Bird’s nest, enlarged somewhat. // The biggest self-portrait on Earth, drawn using GPS. // The International Space Station, seen from 360km below. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // Good news about bad guys. // Terry Glavin on the politics of opposition. // Theodore Dalrymple on multicultural Britain. // Do women really get paid less than men? // Impressive bank vaults. // View any website as a graph. // The UfoCap. // Designer gasmasks. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Xiao-Peng Jiang and the Chinese Orchestra of Shanghai Conservatory. 

CDs, microwaved. // Bacon mints. // Tea in hot water. // Bulb garden. // Shadow bulbs. // Illuminated cities, seen from above.  (h/t, Coudal.) // Snapshots of Soviet Russia. // Poland’s Buttonarium. // Embroidered felt typewriter. // The Mobile Museum of Gem Sweaters. Sweaters, with gems. // Piercing necklace. // Interiors by H.R. Giger. Château St. Germain, Gruyères, Switzerland. // Crime scene PanoScan. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // Remote control flying penis. // The moral compass of Michael Moore. // Science, unsettled. // Nixon meets Elvis. // Comedy clogs. // Classic games, rewritten. // World’s largest colour LED display, powered by the Sun. // Sony’s Rolly mp3 player. Pointless, but charming. // Robot beat combo. // Margate’s mechanical elephant. (h/t, Things.) // Some fetching Japanese scooters. // The Shadow of Fu Manchu. (1940) // And, via The Thin Man, a real taste of the Orient.

Imagine you make bidets for a living. Got that? Bidets. Now ask yourself the inevitable question: How would you advertise them on Korean television?

Via the Reciprocal Crap Exchange.

When called on to babysit, I’ve found it helpful, indeed necessary, to have a good supply of felt tips, paper and crayons. The crayons in particular evoke a certain nostalgia. Maybe it’s the pleasing feel of them, the spectrum of colours, or their distinctive, familiar smell.

Here are some things I didn’t know about them. 

In the last 98 years, more than 100 billion Crayola crayons have been made.

And,

The average child in the United States will wear down 730 crayons by his 10th birthday. Kids, ages 2-8, spend an average of 28 minutes each day colouring. Combined, children in the US spend 6.3 billion hours colouring annually.

And,

According to a Yale University study, the scent of Crayola crayons is among the 20 most recognisable to American adults. Coffee and peanut butter are 1 and 2.

An illustrated index of Crayola colours, in alphabetical and historical orders, can be found here. There is, of course, a Virtual Museum of Crayon Collecting, with a section devoted to Crayola products and a helpful essay on how to display your collection of crayon boxes. Some, like Pete Goldlust, prefer to carve their crayons.

See also: The Thrill of Pencils and The Thrill of Carpeting.

Charge your phone with a solar-powered bra. // The tobacco-free rechargeable cigarette. // Lovely, toxic nudibranchs. (h/t, io9.) // Enduring hardship in a darker age. // Joshua Hoffine’s nightmares. // Turkey’s evil Spider-Man. He’s evil, and cheap. // The museum of black superheroes. // Iron Man titles. // Iron Man fan. // Crotch weapons. More. // The barbecue sword. // Abandoned Russian tank base. // Robot oddments. // BSG: Guess What’s Coming to Dinner? // Pixelporn. (sfw.) // Brian Micklethwaite on an age of political landslides. // Norman Geras on the Guardian’s fondness for Hamas. // WorldWide Telescope™. // Lunch Inside the 12 Galaxies. (h/t, Candice.) // James Burke’s The Day the Universe Changed. Western civilisation and the habit of invention. (h/t, Maggie’s Farm.) // Self-balancing electric unicycle. // The a.frame.fix concept bike. Or the Strida, which folds. // Vintage broadcast microphones. (h/t, Coudal.) // Music and Life. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Astrud Gilberto.

Now here’s a thing. Pixeloo has produced a striking, indeed alarming, rendering of a certain cartoon patriarch. Click image for full effect.

The artist adds,

Slightly less disturbing are the renderings of Mario and Jessica Rabbit. The “untooning” process can be seen here.

San Zhi, Taiwan. Forgotten houses of the future. // Tales of Tomorrow. Leslie Nielsen mines Martian uranium. (1952) // More boomerangs in space. // The Beast in Space. Cheesy sci-fi porno. (sfw) // Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four. Crap, redefined. // Superhero fashion. Gas masks, girdles, a jaunty hat. // Cutie Honey. She fights crime, I think. // Ophelia Benson on God, types 1 and 2. // Mary Jackson on Boris Johnson. // Charles Murray on educational romanticism. // Deogolwulf on the sound of one hand slapping. // Slow motion raspberry. And. // More robotic exoskeletons. // The android keyboardist. (1985) // The Spirit. // Bomb shelters of Nazi Germany. // Smoking tourism. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // San Francisco panoramas. Sunset, dawn and twilight. // Lamps made from sheep stomach. // The Anatomical Theatre. Morbidity and wax. // Tulip farms. // Plant rights now! Two legs bad, no legs good. // The Internationale in 40 languages. Sing, comrades, sing. // Design for despots. (h/t, Things.) // Retro design. // The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRs. (h/t, Coudal.) // Wooden shortwave radio. Mp3 compatible. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s the Reverend Robert Wilkins. 

Until The Thin Man brought this to my attention, I’d been blissfully unaware of the cat paddling phenomenon.

Apparently, it’s become a thing. 

More.

Air jelly. // Neo Cube. (h/t, Artblog.) // Nano photos. // Molecule-sized switches. // The tunnels of Niagara Falls. // Architecture in Dubai. // Tokyo’s automated multi-story bike parking. // When galaxies collide. // Brian Greene on superstrings. Vibrating in 11 dimensions. // Heather MacDonald on poisonous “authenticity”. (h/t, Cookslaw.) // PoMo professor threatens to sue ungrateful students. They “discriminated” against her by pointing out she’s incompetent. More. // Parody of gender studies flyer constitutes “violence”. // “My epiglottis is full of bees.” // Bubble cars. // Traffic jam shockwave. // Iron Man: Secret Origins. 1, 2, 3, 4. // The museum of unworkable devices. (h/t, Maggie’s Farm.) // Muppetstar Galactica. // Magic lanterns. Brass, glass and kerosene. // Unusual plants. (h/t, Ace.) // Orange Sunshine. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // The Hendrix sex tape. He’s dead, Jim. (h/t, Protein Wisdom.) // The Kleenex Pillow. // Ten annoying alarm clocks. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s a footwear thing.

Busy for much of today, but here are a few items of possible interest. Feel free to add your own.

Gail Heriot notes the fallout of affirmative action and enforced diversity. 

“It didn’t seem to matter that… students admitted with lower academic credentials would end up incurring heavy debt but never graduate.”

Mark Steyn runs his tongue over Michelle Obama.

“Mrs Obama regards state-mandated compensation for previous racism as a new form of [burden] to bear. In an early indication of post-modern narcissism… she arrived as a black woman at Princeton and wrote her undergraduate thesis on the problems of being a black woman at Princeton… [She] embodies a peculiar mix of privilege and victimology.”

And Adam Platt encounters poison of a different kind.

“Tonight, I’ve been told, he’ll be serving that most prized portion of the fugu anatomy known as shira-ko, a.k.a. the engorged fugu sperm sac.”

Do try to keep the place tidy.