Alexander Kobulnicky paints pictures of molecules. Pictured above is heme, which is one ingredient in hemoglobin.  The artist writes:

We know that molecules form the basis of matter, of the human body and of the natural world,  but as neurology increasingly teaches us, they underlie feeling, thought and behavior as well. The boundary between sanity and madness is the subject of countless books, movies and artworks, but in a practical sense, the boundary between sanity and madness is often. . . just Thorazine (C₁₇H₁₉ClN₂S).

Content warning: painting of a Viagra molecule.

Link via Make

There's a classic logic puzzle in which a person must take a fork in the road, one of which is safe, but the other is a deadly trap. Two men guard the fork, one of which always lies, but the other always tells the truth. The person gets to ask one question in order to determine which path is the safe one.

Mathematician Raymond Smullyan has added another dimension to this puzzle. See if you can figure it out:

There are three guardians, A, B and C. Their names are Knight, Knave and Chaos. Knight always speaks truly, Knave always lies. Chaos tossed a coin this morning to decide whether today he would behave like Knight or like Knave.

Your task is simple: ask three yes-no questions, each of a single guardian, and determine which is Knight, which is Knave, and which is Chaos. There is, alas, a complication: the guardians understand English but will answer in the local language, in which “Da” means yes and “Ja” means no. Or possibly “Ja” means yes and “Da” means no – you cannot remember.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Raymond Smullyan

UPDATE 3/18/10: Here's the solution.

This image matches typefaces with dogs that match their physical characteristics. It was created by the design firm of Günter Eder, Roman Breier, and Marcel Neundörfer in Vienna. What typefaces and dogs would you pair up?

Link via Nerdcore | Company Website

Artist Lise Lefebvre created "Bear Hunter" -- a Persian rug that looks like a bear skin rug. It's made from wool, wood, glass, and plastic.

We've previously featured Lefebvre's felted covers for household appliances.

Link via OhGizmo! | Artist Website | Photo: 360SEE

(YouTube Link)

Swisscopter's Dragonfly is a small helicopter that has rocket engines on the ends of its rotors blades to propel them:

The copter makes use of tiny hydrogen-peroxide-powered rocket motors on the tips of the blades, which replaces the traditional engine-powered rotor. Large fuel tanks surrounding the pilot allow the Dragonfly to travel at up to 40 mph for 50 minutes.

via Popular Science | Company Website

An unaccompanied and injured dog limped into a hospital in Farmington, New Mexico:

When the automatic doors at San Juan Regional Medical Centre's emergency room slid open Saturday night, the pooch walked in, blood on his nose and paw, and a puncture hole in one leg, according to The Daily Times newspaper.

Animal control officer Robin Loev responded to a call from the hospital and suspects the puncture wound was from the bite of another dog.

Loev says the German shepherd mix appeared to be intelligent and calm - and knew enough to go to the right place.

Link | Photo: CDC

(Video Link)

The Three Girls is a stop-motion animated movie by Laura Seymou, a six-year old girl, and Angela Sheehan, her adult sister. It's like Axe Cop, except that the child did all of the drawing. Sheehan writes:

This is a stop-motion collage I made, based on drawings by my little sister (six years old at the time). Back in 2005, I was studying animation and taking classes in childhood development/learning and wanted to combine the two. I decided to make a movie with her over Thanksgiving break. I gave her some paper and crayons and asked her to write me a story. I took some video of her drawing and showing her grandparents the story and describing it to them. It was fun to see how she told the story differently to each person and all the little details she included when asked about different parts of the drawings. Back at school, I scanned her drawings in and printed out copies that I then animated to her narration. My dorm room was a giant mess of paper and a camera for about a week. It was a blast. I showed her the finished product over my winter break and she loved it. I would've loved to involve her more in the actual animation process, but my school was too far away.

via Make

This dog, a Belgian Shepherd, is a member of Austria's special forces. He and other elite dogs join their human comrades during parachute drops:

Far from panicking at the experience of hurling themselves out of a plane at 10,000ft, the Austrians' Belgian Shepherd dogs appear to be perfectly calm both before and during the jump.

One handler explained: "They don't perceive height difference the same way humans do, so that doesn't worry them. They're more likely to be bothered by the roar of the engines, but once we're on the way down, that doesn't matter and they just enjoy the view."

Larger image at the link.

Link | Photo: Daily Telegraph

Taking photos of people lying facedown on the ground in public is an emerging Internet meme. Facedowns is a photoblog of such pictures. The goal of the bloggers behind it, Lynn and Michael Chealander and Amy Mihyang, is to get facedown photos of themselves in many different countries around the world. Above is one of Lynn Chealander's photos of a facedown from the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone.

Link via DudeCraft

(YouTube Link)

Steve Hoefer made an arduino-controlled glove that can play rock-paper-scissors. Sensors on the glove determine what move the user makes while the glove offers its own. It learns patterns in the way that the user plays and tries to anticipate the user's strategy.

Hoefer provides building instructions and schematics at the link.

Link via CrunchGear

It's the ultimate Power Wheels toy car. This custom-built Ferrari was built for the opening of the first Ferrari dealership in Moscow. It's powered by an 80 cc engine and sized to fit two children. The car is on sale in New York City for $25,000.

http://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/ferrari/f40/1010970.html via DVICE | Photo: Hemmings

(Video Link)

Maggie and Mildred is a short film by Holly Klein about the make-believe adventures of two little girls. She cross stitched all of the characters and scenes, and then animated them. In an interview about the project, Klein wrote:

It took me about nine months to stitch all of the elements. I stitched the house first, then made the characters with all of their parts and outfits seperately. I then scanned everything into the computer, cut them out, and animated them in the computer. The whole process took me just under two years.

via Make | Artist's Website | Interview with Klein about the Film

Ben Goulding of Pig Jockey has a list of the world's longest place names, including Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateahaumaitawhitiurehaeaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. That's a hill in New Zealand. Because it's such a long name, most people just call it Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu for short.

Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Maggga.blogspot.com

Statistician Nathan Yau of Flowing Data put together this infographic presenting famous movie quotes as data charts. You can view eight more at the link.

Link via Popped Culture

Twenty-five years ago today, Symbolics Computers of Cambridge, Massachusetts, registered Symbolics.com as a URL. It was the first such claim in computing history:

That same year another five companies jumped on a very slow bandwagon.

It took until 1997, well into the internet boom, before the one millionth dotcom was registered.[...]

It is unlikely that the early dotcoms were thought of as businesses as the early internet was not seen as a place for commerce but rather as a platform for governmental and educational bodies to trade ideas.

Scholars generally agree that a turning point was the introduction of the Mosaic web browser by Netscape that brought mainstream consumers on to the web.

Link via Gizmodo | Image: FBI