After Hurricane Katrina, watermelons are growing everywhere in St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans.

Presumably, the seeds were deposited during the hurricane and unusually high temperatures have produced a natural mystery.

A watermelon's consistency is 90 percent water, which means if you eat the St. Bernard Parish melons, you're drinking Katrina juice.

http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=4280271 | CNN has the video.

Thom LaBean and Christopher Dwyer of Duke University exploited the self-assembling properties of DNA to create the world's first mass produced nano-structures (here a 4x4 grid spelling - what else - DNA!). Link

What's better than a baby panda? Sixteen baby pandas, of course!

Sixteen panda cubs, shown with their expert caretakers, debuted Friday at the Wolong Panda Research Center in southwestern China's Sichuan Province.

Professor Zhang Hemin, head of the Wolong research group, said that the species has produced more cubs than ever before, with sixteen born and nurtured at his center at the Wolong base, and another two born in the United States.

http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/2238/2005-12-17/148@288111.htm

Craig Venter, who became famous for completing a privately-owned map of the human genome in 2000, is spearheading the effort to make the first synthetic lifeform.

Dr. Venter, 59, has since shifted his focus from determining the chemical sequences that encode life to trying to design and build it: "We're going from reading to writing the genetic code," he said in an interview.

Venter's team aim to construct a simpler version of Mycoplasma, a bacterium commonly found in human's reproductive and respiratory tracts. The bacterium has a small genome in the first place: with only one chromosome and 517 genes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051219.wxlife19/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/ (via World Changing)

The internet's got everything, including a museum dedicated to asphalt. Yes, that asphalt that you drive on.

The museum even had a recipe to make your own asphalt. Sounds dangerous.

Link

If you've got the urge to complain about your job,consider this: safety equipments of the builders of Empire State building consisted of ... gloves and a stylish hat!

The New York Public Library has a cool collection of Lewis Wickes Hine's series of photographs called The Construction of the Empire State Building, 1930-1931. http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/hinex/empire/empire.html

This 1862 State of Mississippi $20 note features the picture of wartime Governor J.J. Pettus and slaves on a wagon of cotton.

Kurt Jacoboni has a great collection of Confederacy-issued money (don't miss the US fractional bills - betcha didn't know that the Feds used to have 50 cent bills!) Link

Wafah Dufour is Osama bin Laden's sexy niece. Wait, Osama has a sexy niece? And she loves America, too!

“At the end of the day, I believe that the American people understand things and they have compassion and they see what’s fair,” she says. “They’re very fair, and that’s why I love America, and that’s why my mom loves America."

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_4071

Apparently, Festivus is alive and well:

The celebration of Festivus is alive and well in northwestern Pennsylvania, nearly a decade after the bizarre "holiday" garnered pop culture notoriety on "Seinfeld."

Residents were preparing to celebrate "the festivus for the rest of us" Friday with a night of airing grievances, feats of strength and, of course, the aluminum Festivus pole.

Link | Festivus "Holy War" in Florida (don't these people have anything better to do? | Festivus Link | Wikipedia Entry

Scientists S.D. Biju and Franky Bossuyt discovered a new species of plump and purple frog and named it Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis.

The frog's closest relatives live 1,800 miles away on the islands of Seychelles, near Madagascar. So how did the species travel from Africa to India?

Not by hopping, say the researchers, but by continental drift. They speculate that when India broke apart from Africa and crashed into Asia millions of years ago, the frog rode India like a ferry.

Link

Bigger is better, at least when it comes to brain. Neuroscientist Sandra Witelson at McMaster University found that verbal intelligence was clearly linked to brain size in women and right-handed men (why only right handed men?)

Link