National University of Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab is fast becoming my favorite in cutting edge (and a little wacky - okay, a lot) research. Take, for instance, this project titled Poultry Internet, where a chicken is outfitted with a special dress that lets its owner pet it over the Internet:

The idea was inspired by acts of pets and animal abuse through lack of welfare. This system enables humans to provide care for pets even though they are physically not together. The system enables a human to remotely touch her pet which is kept at home while she is away(in her office), and at the same time monitor the movement of the pet. This is realized by using a doll, which resembles the real pet located remotely, sitting on a mechanical positioning table. The pet owner interacts with the real pet by touching the doll.

http://www.art.nus.edu.sg/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=36 - Thanks Jayne Howley!

If you like that, don't miss the Internet Pajama and the Human Pac-Man

Forget cutesy papercraft, Spitfuls has just come up with disaster dioramas: a set of paper models you can download and fold to depict the sinking of the Titanic and the burning of the Hindenburg!

Link - via Boing Boing, Thanks Jon Jason!

Logo from the Second International Eugenics Conference in 1921

Eugenics is the pseudoscientific belief of improving the human race through selective breeding. Though forms of it still exist today (proponents focus on prenatal genetic screening, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering), its association with Nazism and the use of eugenics to rationalize the Holocaust have caused it to become thoroughly discredited.

Max-Bro blog has a fascinating post about the 33 disturbing but true facts about Eugenics. For example:

• Even with concentration camps, euthanasia campaigns and sterilization wards public knowledge in both Germany and America, early eugenic founders looked on with approval as Nazi Germany enacted brutal racial campaigns against its own citizens. Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia’s Western State Hospital even complained in 1934, “Hitler is beating us at our own game.”
  
  
• The term “moron” comes from the eugenic movement. Coined by Henry Goddard, an early eugenic founder, it comes from the Greek word moros, meaning “stupid and foolish.” We use the term lightly these days as a kind of vague, almost teasing insult. For Goddard and the eugenic community, a “moron” was anyone deemed unfit for life and indeed a target to be eliminated.
  
  
• Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan served as a member of the state board of health and operated a sanitarium known for its unorthodox food regimens. He developed for his patients a natural product made of wheat flakes. In 1898 his brother, Will Kellogg, invented the corn flake and began selling it commercially through a company that would ultimately become the cereal behemoth the Kellogg Company. In the same year as the founding of the company, Dr. Kellogg founded the Race Betterment Foundation to help stop the “propagation of defectives.”
  
  
• For years one of eugenics greatest crusaders, Harry Hamilton Laughlin, fought to sterilize the feebleminded and people diagnosed with epilepsy. He was well known for believing that people with epilepsy did not belong in society. Laughlin was also known among colleagues for his occasional seizures. It turned out the doctor kept a tightly held secret for most of his life: Harry Laughlin, the attacker of the “unfit” and eugenic co-founder, himself had epilepsy.

Read more here: http://max-bro.net/2008/09/02/33-disturbing-but-true-facts-about-eugenics/ - Thanks Max-Bro!

In her (de)light project, Christina Ferraz Rigo creates a lamp that uses liquid as its source of light:

In dark rooms, the liquid glows with intensity when the proper catalyst is mixed with water. Sure, it may not be conventional, but liquid light is some snazzy stuff. The catalyst used is most likely a phosphorescent material, which is non-toxic and unlike glowsticks, it has a decent “glow time” of about 20 hours.

http://butteryblend.com/science/liquid-light/ - Thanks Jesse Chase and Jay Cogen!

Pics or it didn't happen. This woman seemed to have taken the Internet phrase to heart by going to great lengths to take this photo.

Check out what she's doing at the Oddly Enough blog: Link - Thanks Robert Basler!

(Photo: Jim Young / Reuters)

Photo: computationally.intractable [Flickr]

The Royal Pingdom blog has a pretty neat run down of the 23 license plates for geeks: Link - via Miss Cellania

If glossophobia is the irrational fear of public speaking, what is the unusual love of public speaking? Whatever it is, here's the gadget for it: a PA System in a briefcase!

Link | Orator Briefcase PA System

Here's something you don't hear every day: the Klingon victory song "YIjah, Qey' 'oH" performed on the guitar and harmonica.

Sing along:

Bagh Da tuH mogh / ChojaH Duh rHo
yIjah, Qey' 'oH (x3)

majaq. 'o' tugh / jiDaq. majun.
pa'Daq jagh baH! / ou' lo' tlhuHQo'!
tep lagh negh 'uH / mughato' tu'
yIjah, Qey' 'oH (x3)

wo' naj, cha' DIch / Do' chIj, wa'DIch
'ejDo' 'el Da' / Qib'a' bopar

yIjah, Qey' 'oH (x3)

He should do the Klingon Opera next! Link [embedded YouTube]

What's more awesome than a Klein bottle? Why, three Klein bottles inside (outside?) one another! Here's the glass sculpture by Alan Bennett for the Science Museum in London:

It consists of three Klein bottles, one inside another. A Klein bottle is a surface which has no edges, no outside or inside and cannot properly be constructed in three dimensions. In the series Alan Bennett made Klein bottles analogous to Mobius strips with odd numbers of twists greater than one.

Link - via Mad Rabbit, Dead Hare

Aaaw! Star Trek: The Experience, a hoaky but charming attraction at the Las Vegas Hilton is closing:

After a decade at the final frontier, Star Trek: The Experience is going where no Las Vegas Strip attraction wants to go. With a decommissioning ceremony -- as befits any great vessel -- the exhibit and its replica of the starship Enterprise are closing Monday. [...]

In the end, the frontier the USS Enterprise couldn't breach was earthly: The attraction's owner, Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., and the Las Vegas Hilton, its landlord, couldn't agree on a new lease. They worked as a typical landlord and retail tenant, with Cedar Fair keeping all revenue from the attraction, said hotel spokesman Ira David Sternberg.

Trekkies are incensed. They've scrawled reminiscences about the exhibit on the walls inside, and they're calling Cedar Fair and the hotel to complain. But their online rumor that the space the exhibit occupies will become a theater for pop star Michael Jackson is unfounded, Sternberg said. He said nothing's decided.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/09/01/star.trek.voyage.ending.ap/index.html - Thanks Tiffany!

What do you get when you supersize the ghettoblaster and attach it to a car? Behold, the DJ Mobile:

The idea for the DJ Mobile is inspired by the song "God is a DJ" [from faithless] and the car of our HOLY-POPE. These two things were mixed together and there it was the DJ Mobile. The DJ Mobile is a functional artwork with a PA System built in. It can be used for a lot of different events.

http://www.olafmooij.com/paginas/vrij_werk/autosblz/djmobiel/dj_mobiel.htm - via Super Punch

Bad idea: robbing a store
Really bad idea: robbing a gun store ...
Neatorama-worthy: ... with a hidden guard dog behind the counter.

Here's what happened, as captured by the store's CCTV: Link [embedded YouTube]

Photographer and Bluerailroad magazine editor Paul Zollo was riding his bicycle when he saw Kevin in the crowd and noticed him instantly. Here's the story of how Kevin (literaly) lost his face:

I asked him what happened.
"Shot," he said. "Shot in the
face." He motioned a gun
at close range being shot
directly into his face.

So tell me, how did it feel,
after you shot yourself in the
face - and you came to -
and realized you were not
dead?

"Agony. The worst agony
ever."

Man.
"Yeah."

What kind of gun?
"30-aught-six."

Link [Flickr] - via The Love Blog

Tired of all the sugary Hallmark cards? Well, here's something for you: Unmentionables from Luis Medina and Kathleen Orazio of Shinebox Print,
a pre-printed mini booklet of cards with cute monsters that say things you're thinking of, but are too polite to say out loud.

http://www.shineboxprint.com/products/ready/unm/ - via The Urban Recluse

Can't wrap your mind around the Pythagorean Theorem? Perhaps it just hasn't been explained properly to you. Well, don't underestimate the dark side of the triangle.

Here's Darth "Solo is a scruffy looking nerf herder" Vader explaining the Pythagorean Theorem: http://timesonline.typepad.com/schoolgate/2008/08/darth-vader-exp.html [embedded YouTube] - Thanks Erin!