(Image: CBS)

"Darmok" is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It has a truly original and innovative story and is, consequently, among the most popular episodes in the series.

In "Darmok," the crew of the Enterprise makes first contact with a species known as the Tamarians. They discover that the Tamarians speak a language that is untranslatable. When the Tamarians speak, the computer translators render their words as references to unknown people and places, such as:

• Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
• Temba, his arms wide. 
• Shaka, when the walls fell.
• The river Temarc in winter.
• Mirab, his sails unfurled.

These phrases are references to Tamarian literature, lore, and history. To express thoughts, Tamarians refer to a vast cultural repository of narratives.

Oh my god, #nintendarmok is the best hashtag I've ever seen.

— S. Dungeon (@scd) September 8, 2014

Which brings us to this funny hashtag going around Twitter:#nintendarmok. It shows Tamarian references to Nintendo games. Here are a few examples.

Luigi, when the Thwomps fell. #nintendarmok

— Daniel Solis (@DanielSolis) September 8, 2014

The dog, when the birds didn't fall. #nintendarmok

— JessAnn Underscore (@JessAnn_) September 8, 2014

Link and Ganon at Hyrule Castle. #Nintendarmok

— Raine Hutchens (@ImBringTheRaine) September 8, 2014

Link, with Triforce raised. #nintendarmok

— Rob Abrazado (@flatvurm) September 7, 2014

-via Richard Eisenbeis

3D printing offers unprecedented opportunities to build custom tools at low cost. The organization e-NABLE focuses on one use for this growing technology: building prosthetic hands for children.

One of the organization's volunteers, Aaron Brown, wanted to demonstrate this technology at a local children's hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan in a way that kids would find especially appealing. So he designed this variant hand. Then Brown printed some claws with blue and yellow filament and spray painted the claws silver. The result is a Wolverine hand that would thrill any kid (and most adults) who gets one.

Brown emphasizes that the claws aren't metal--just plastic. For reasons unfathomable to me, he seems to think that this is a good selling point.

-via TechCrunch

Cooking ramen is easy--certainly easier than crocheting. But the way that YouTube user betibettin knits, you'd swear that craft could be learned in an hour. He created this tasty-looking lunch with yarn. You can watch his process video (in Japanese) here.

How did he create the impression of soup broth? I was perplexed until I watched through the video. That's actually a layer of plastic film cut to fit the bowl and lying over his crocheted noodles.

-via Rocket News 24

P.S. Last weekend, I experimented with cooking eggs in boiling ramen. The results were delicious! I highly recommend the practice.

Jason Kerestes is a graduate student at Arizona State University. With support from DARPA, he has developed the AirLegs exoskeleton. It's a small machine worn on the back that decreases the metabolic cost of walking and running by about 10% versus not wearing the machine. 

(Video Link)

The machine helps people run by pulling on straps located just below the knee and on the shoes. Here is Kerestes demonstrating the second version of AirLegs, which pulls on just the lower legs.

-via Hack A Day

Cyril Vouilloz is an artist from Geneva, Switzerland who goes by the name RYSLEE. When he was a child, RYSLEE liked to draw from memory the logos of different brands. Later he got into graffiti and illustration. His work was always focused on letters as a form of art. So his artistic specialty is typography.

You can see this particularly well on his Instagram page. It’s filled with letters that he’s rendered with both paint and ink. RYSLEE is so good that his 3-dimensional hand drawn images of letters appear to leap off the paper.

-via Visual News

A couple winters ago, redditor SearonTrejorek snapped this incredible photo at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Beautiful!

SearonTrejorek smashed it on the ground after taking the photo. He should have instead heeded the advice of another redditor and sold it on eBay. That's worth at least a $100.

-via Twisted Sifter

It's not the most scientifically accurate depiction of human evolution. But the Doma Collective's Involución Primate is a fun demonstration of millions of years of hominid history that turns on with a flip of a lever.

We've previously seen the Doma Collective's human bundle of energy bouncing around and giant robotic electrical tower. This kinetic sculpture is on display at the Galeria Logo in São Paulo, Brazil.

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-via Lustik

Jack the Ripper is one of history's most infamous serial killers. He killed and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888. He was never caught, though criminal investigators and historians have long considered several suspects, including Prince Albert Victor, a member of Britain's royal family.

Now investigators who are publishing a book on their findings assert that they know precisely who committed those murders: Aaron Kosminski, a Polish immigrant. They used DNA evidence to make this conclusion by matching semen left on a victim's bloody shawl with a living descendent of Kosminski's sister.

The author of Naming Jack the Ripper, Russell Edwards, is an amateur investigator. But his partner, Dr. Jari Louhelainen, is a a molecular biologist and professor at Liverpool John Moores University. Louhelainen writes in the Daily Mail:

Dr David Miller found epithelial cells – which line cavities and organs – much to our surprise, as we were not expecting to find anything usable after 126 years.

Then I used a new process called whole genome amplification to copy the DNA 500 million-fold and allow it to be profiled.

Once I had the profile, I could compare it to that of the female descendant of Kosminski’s sister, who had given us a sample of  her DNA swabbed from inside  her mouth.

The first strand of DNA showed a 99.2 per cent match, as the analysis instrument could not determine the sequence of the missing 0.8 per cent fragment  of DNA. On testing the second strand, we achieved a perfect  100 per cent match.

Because of the genome amplification technique, I was also able to ascertain the ethnic and geographical background of the DNA I extracted. It was of a type known as the haplogroup T1a1, common in people of Russian Jewish ethnicity. I was even able to establish that he had dark hair.

Now that it’s over, I’m excited and proud of what we’ve achieved, and satisfied that we have established, as far as we possibly can, that Aaron Kosminski is  the culprit.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

UPDATE 10/20/14: Dr. Jari Louhelainen may have made a serious error in his study.

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"I meant to do that."

If the boy said this as soon as he landed, I'd be inclined to believe him.

Oh, you think that it was just a happy accident? Let's get him to do it again to prove that he's got the skill.

-via 22 Words

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Verily, the Bard of Avon need not limit himself to the stage. He is a songwriter of the highest quality. You can hear his work performed across the world by famous artists, including Lorde, Miley Cyrus, The Backstreet Boys, and Will Smith. You can read all of his greatest hits at Pop Sonnets, a blog updated weekly by Erik Didriksen.

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"Let It Go" from the movie Frozen.

The size 12 slacks are too small but you can't squeeze into the size 8 jeans? That's only because you don't understand how dress sizes work. There's a peculiar science to the fit, as Sarah Andersen explains.

After looking at these pictures, my daughters asked me to make Frozen pancakes. I should be able to do that by just downloading Nathan Shields's stencils, then applying powdered sugar and cocoa. The stencils come in pairs so that you shade light and dark portions separately.

Shields is a famous pancake artist whose work we've featured extensively. I can't wait to see what he can create when he combines stencil work with his sculptural pancakes!

NFL football fans can "like" teams on Facebook. That company produced this map showing which teams were liked more than any others in a county. You can see a larger version here.

It's interesting that the Raiders are still popular in Los Angeles, though they are now in Oakland. There's also a big swath of Cowboy country in Nevada. One county in central Missouri also has a lot of fans of the Dallas Cowboys. That looks like Pulaski County, if I'm reading the map correctly.

I would like to note that the depiction of Alabama is misleading. The state doesn't belong to the New Orleans Saints, but the Crimson Tide and the Tigers--college football teams.

-via Joe Carter

(Photo: BBC)

It's like the plot of a movie, but it's also a true story.

Though he was Jewish, Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art dealer approved by the government of Nazi Germany. During World War II, he collected and privately hoarded approximately 1,280 works of art, most of them looted from Nazi-occupied nations. This was a huge number. For comparison, consider that the National Gallery in London has only 2,000 pieces.

Hildebrand Gurlitt survived the war and kept his collection a secret. As he was dying in 1956, he gave his 24-year old son Cornelius Gurlitt the duty of maintaining this collection. The younger Gurlitt did so. He never married and was a recluse after his parents and sister died. He was devoted to one task: keeping the huge art collection a secret inside his apartment in Munich.

(Photo of Cornelius Gurlitt via The Times)

Cornelius Gurlitt kept everyone out of his dingy apartment, cramped with great works of art, until 2012. Then police searched his home after he was caught trying to bring a large amount of cash into Switzerland. Gurlitt agreed to help government investigators find the owners of the artworks in his collection.

This past May, Gurlitt died in a hospital at the age of 81. Hospital officials recently turned over a suitcase that he had brought with him. Inside that suitcase was a painting, which is pictured above, by the great French impressionist Claude Monet. It shows the Waterloo Bridge over the Thames in London. This treasure has been missing for 75 years.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

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George the dog loves sports with a great passion. He's not particular about which ones. So as long as humans are running around with a ball, he's game. We've previously seen him bouncing off the walls with joy while watching the World Cup. He's also a fan of tennis. Now he's all worked up over the opening of the football season.

George's owner toys with his emotions by switching the television to watch The King of Queens. A suggestion for George: when he steps away from his chair, steal the remote control.

-via Huffington Post