Play Blastar!

Enjoy a video game from 1984.

http://blastar-1984.appspot.com/

Was designed by Elon Musk.

Miscegenation

Some intersubspecies hankypanky for sure

Tough guy

Sarah Everts, C&EN:

Smaller than a finger nail, the marine slug Elysia tuca may not seem like a formidable predator. Yet the tiny gastropod has an unwavering predilection for a rather intimidating prey. The slug hunts Halimeda incrassata, a species of seaweed that packs toxic defense compounds and is more stone than flesh—its body is 85% calcium carbonate, the same mineral found in limestone and coral.
…
After finding its prey, the slug pierces the seaweed with a sharp saw-like appendage called a radula, and sucks out the seaweed’s cytoplasm, including its chloroplasts, which the slug then uses to make its own energy from sunlight. “It’s a solar-powered slug,” Rasher says, explaining that it gets 60% of its fixed carbon from these stolen photosynthetic organelles. The slug also steals the seaweed’s toxic arsenal of halimedatetraacetate—one of the compounds used by the slug to track the seaweed—for use as its own defense.

While you’re there, read up on a self-cleaning membrane that could help to pick up oil slicks

The Digital Bodleian

Here

Example:

From Jonathan Jones The Guardian

The Resurrection

We thought this amaryllis was dead. It was not.

Anglo-American policy in the Middle East explained

I received this from a friend.

Just in case you are confused by what is going on in the Middle East, I have obtained this simple explanation of the UK Government’s apparent position:

We support the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS. We don’t like ISIS, but ISIS is supported by Saudi Arabia whom we do like.

We don’t like Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but ISIS is also fighting against him.

We don’t like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS.

So some of our friends support our enemies, some enemies are now our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies, whom we want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they could be replaced by people we like even less.

And all this was started by Blair siding with Bush and invading a country to drive out terrorists who were not actually there until after we went in to drive them out.

A truly useful product.

Leave it to the Japanese to know what we need.

Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian:

The stakes are getting increasingly high in the battle for the weirdest piece of wearable tech. After wifi-detecting hats and smartphone-charging wellies, it was only a matter of time until it all turned to sex – with the arrival of vibrating knickers, dresses that turn transparent, and a Google Glass app that lets you imagine you’re having sex with yourself.

Now, saucy Japanese lingerie brand Ravijour has upped the ante with a bra that pops open when you discover true love. Like a chastity belt for the social network age, the bra remains firmly locked shut most of the time, to defend its wearer from the hordes of sleazy menfolk trying to weasel their way in. But as soon as Prince Charming arrives, it dutifully bursts open with a gleeful spring, saving clumsy fumbling in the bedroom – and potentially taking his eye out in the process.

Wonders of the World

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments

Via Ritholtz, a picturesque guide to rhetoric. For example:

On an episode of the topical British TV show, Have I Got News For You, a panelist objected to a protest in London against corporate greed because of the protesters’ apparent hypocrisy, by pointing out that while they appear to be against capitalism, they continue to use smartphones and buy coffee.

Wonders of the World