If you're tired of regular, boring houses, you can now live like Ewoks with Free Spirit Spheres. From the website:

Free Spirit Spheres can be hung from the trees as shown, making a tree house. They can also be hung from any other solid objects or placed in cradles on the ground. There are four attachment points on the top of each sphere and another four anchor points on the bottom. Each of the attachment points is strong enough to carry the weight of the entire sphere and contents.

The spheres are made of two laminations of wood strips over laminated wood frames. The outside surface is then finished and covered with a clear fibreglass. The result is a beautiful and very tough skin. The skin is waterproof and strong enough to take the impacts that come with life in a dynamic environment such as the forest.

Link | Discovery video: Living Like Ewoks

In 1984, a bioterrorist attack using salmonella typhimurium bacteria in salad bars in restaurants in Oregon was traced to a cult led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (known also as Osho).

It was the first known bioterrorist attack of the 20th century in the United States.

Here's an interesting the story of the rise and fall of the Rajneesh cult:

http://www.ashe-prem.org/two/davisson.shtml | Wikipedia entry (via GoSleepGo)

Cane toad is such a big problem in Australia that they start to offer free beer if you turn one in...

The RSPCA, Coopers Brewery and the Cavenagh Hotel have teamed up in the name of animal welfare and the result is that toads can be turned into beer.

In a move designed to turn seasoned Top End beer drinkers into lean, mean, toad-catching machines, the three Darwin organisations have got together to set up a toad-for-beer exchange.

``No coupons for squashed toads,'' Mr Wilkinson said.

He was keen to make it clear he wasn't starting a roadkill collection. ``Healthy, live, no squashed cane toads,'' he said.

The RSPCA will then humanely dispose of the pesky toads.

Link (via Evil Pundit)

Andy worked on the CGI animation for the Matrix movies. CGSociety did an interesting article titled "Once a Mathematician, Always an Artist" on Lomas' artwork:

Although long interested in art forms created with genetic algorithms, Lomas began working on the software for “Aggregation” only two years ago. “I was scuba diving in Hawaii,” he says, “and seeing corals and other beautiful natural things underwater. That was the inspiration. I began thinking about how simple a rule could be to generate a complex form.” The inspiration for the rule came from a base algorithm called “diffusion limited aggregation” invented by physicists T.A. Witten and L.M. Sander in 1981. “It’s essentially a random fractal generator,” says Lomas. “A simple physics environment for a digitally simulated growth process.”

Link (via Generator.x)

Wanna take a (virtual) tour of Bill Gates' $50+ million house? Now you can, courtesy of US News & World Report: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/tech/billgate/gates.htm (via Blog Jones)

Apparently, some people get their kicks by dressing their Roomba up in funny costumes!

This one on the left is Roor the tiger, made by myRoomBud, a company "started by kids, built by kids, and run by kids" - the whole thing started when they wanted to buy Mom some cowboy boots for christmas.

Link (via NeedCoffee)

Joel Haas makes whimsical garden decorations, he said:

I make whimsical animals for the garden. Most pieces are welded and forged together from scrap steel parts and painted with rust-resistant primer. The final colors are applied with sign-painters' lacquers which won't fade in sunlight.

Some people have asked me if there is any serious or deep meaning to my work. I say, "I hope not. There're already enough serious and deep meanings in the world to keep thousands of art critics busy."

Checkout his artworks - I particularly like the birds: Link

Update 3/28/06: Joel wrote and suggested a couple other interesting links:

I really think my more interesting web site is www.sculpturewalk.org since it is an "open source" art project. That is, I work with my neighbors to exhibit my sculpture. I can make pretty much any size art work I want to and know it will have a place to be exhibited. This has enabled me to be free of having to deal with galleries, curators, etc. because now my neighbors and neighborhood is my gallery and my neighbors are my curators and helpers in moving, cleaning, and showing my artwork since much of it is in their yards on permanent loan.

I encourage other sculptors to try out this model --adapt it, let me know how it works, etc. Frees us from the gallery and size limitations.

Download the 6 page walking guide and if you're ever in my neighborhood, walk the tour--it's up 365 day a year dawn to dusk.

One of the neatest things about the Neighborhood Sculpture Walk is some Chinese art curators visiting relatives here in Raleigh saw it in late 2004 and I wound up being invited to Taiwan three times to create sculpture there! (You can see the photos of the first trip at www.joelhaasstudio.com/NEWS.htm and the other two trips at www.flickr.com/photos/joelhaas

Stories behind the creation of some of my sculpture (and just plain odd ball stories, too) can be found on my blog at http://joelhaasstories.blogspot.com

From the website:

Diving beetles engage in such exhausting, uncomfortable sex that these insects have actually evolved two different types of females, as well as unusual variations among males, according to a new study.

The find adds to the growing body of evidence that sexual conflict between males and females influences evolution. In many cases, individuals over time develop characteristics that are appealing to the opposite sex.

For diving beetles, however, researchers believe females have tried to avoid the painful sex for so long that some have actually evolved a feature that enables them to spurn most suitors.

Link

MusicThing blog wrote:

The pic above shows Carl E. Walz playing a Yamaha PSR282 keyboard on the International Space Station. You can buy a PSR282 for about £45 on eBay, but getting a 11½lb keyboard into space would have cost NASA around $115,000.

The picture comes from NASA's Space Station Notes about playing music in space:

A lot of astronauts play instruments. There's even an astronaut rock-and-roll band. And a surprising variety of musical instruments have found their way into space: in addition to the keyboard, there's been a flute, a guitar, a saxophone, and an Australian aboriginal wind instrument known as a didgeridoo.

Link (via MusicThing blog)

Take a look at Brian Jungen's artwork, all done with Nike shoes.

This one on the left is called Prototype for New Understanding #16, 2004.

Link (via Consumerist)

Harold and Darrel Allen are twin brothers in Athens, Georgia, who both own septic tank service company. Harold and Darrel recently recorded a new song about their experiences, called "The Honeywagon". The songs are getting lots of airplay in Georgia, and the twin brothers have become local legends.

Link (via The Presurfer)

Brian Briggs and Francisco Rangel made this quiz to test whether you know your superheros from your household cleaners. Link (via Miss Cellania)

In 1943, the Navy embarked on Project X-Ray to develop bats as bomb carriers:

The theory was that the bats would be released just before dawn with incendiary devices with timers attached to each bat. As daylight approached, the bats would head for dark recesses of wooden Japanese houses. When the bats were safely asleep, the incendiary devices would ignite, thus producing a conflagration of unprecedented proportions.

A test run of this theory was carried out in the southwestern United States. However, the advent of the atomic bomb rendered this experiment moot.

http://biomicro.sdstate.edu/pederses/insignia.html

The conventional wisdom of the twitchy nervous liar who touch his nose and play with his hair is bunk.

Samantha Mann and colleagues monitored 130 volunteers as they were asked to lie - she found that liars actually tended to stay still as they were aware that their body language might be giving them away!

She added: "People expect liars to be nervous and shifty and to fidget more, but our research shows that is not the case.

"People who are lying have to think harder, and when we think harder we tend to be a lot stiller, with fewer movements, because we are concentrating harder."

She added: "As soon as we know that we are lying we suddenly become very aware of our behaviour.

"Most people tend to refrain from making movements at all."

Link