Poor Aquaman -- he's the joke of the Justice League. "Oooh, aliens are invading the Earth. Let's go talk to some fish!" His TV show never even made it past the pilot.

Comic by Zach Cranor.

via Awesomesauce | Artist's Site

It's often said that Futurama was one of the most scientifically accurate science fiction television shows ever produced, what with the Adolf Hitler shark and Nibbler's dark matter poop. So now that the show has been revived, the producers naturally hired David X. Cohen, a graduate student in physics, to be a writer. Cohen recently gave an interview about his work on Futurama:

His veiled mathematical homages are usually in the background, and are done mostly “to amuse ourselves,” he says. One of his favorite clandestine operations was an allusion to Fermat’s Last Theorem in an episode of The Simpsons entitled “Homer3.” In the name of entertainment, he wrote a computer program to search for very near misses of the theorem, and found some so close that they could not be invalidated by a standard 8-digit calculator.[...]

Despite his passion for burying physics treasure in a trove of episodes, Cohen, along with Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons, and Executive Producer along with Cohen of Futurama), made the conscious decision early on that “we would make sure that the story and the humor would take the first position and science would take the second position. As much respect as we have for science, we have to make the show entertaining.” This requires Cohen to bend natural laws, but “we try to come up with an explanation that will amuse scientists, even if it is bogus,” he says.

For example, since the show’s universe requires travel faster than the speed of light, “we stuck something in one episode where we stated that the characters weren’t actually traveling faster than light, but that scientists had in fact managed to increase the speed of light,” Cohen explains. “We like to at least acknowledge it when we know we’re wrong.”

Link via Gizmodo | Image: Fox

The Dublin art studio Robo Steel makes elaborate and totally kick-ass sculptures out of scrap metal. Here's their Predator sculpture made from "sheet metal, washers, chain, bicycle spokes and other bits of recycles steel." Over at Neatorama, we've previously featured an Alien sculpture that they made.

http://www.robosteel.com/sculptures/predator/predator-1-2m-carrying-alien-head.html via Great White Snark

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Some clever fellow remixed the many sound effects in Street Fighter II to play the theme song (below) to Doraemon, a long-running anime series. (via Kotaku)


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This is a bit dated, since the British general election is already over. But I totally dig Bite Daily's Transformers-themed political advertisements. More at the link.

Link via reddit

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Zach Weiner, the cartoonist who creates Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, also produces comedy sketches for a program called SMBC Theater. In the most recent episode, the entire world becomes addicted to a massively multiplayer online game (MMO). What is the unique allure of this game? Can humanity be saved from it? Only one hero can deliver the human race from imminent extinction.

Another excellent episode: Time Traveling Geek

In an inexcusable and inexplicable insult, Wikipedia has removed the Klingon character from its logo.

Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam.

http://tumblr.quisby.net/post/595497448 via Urlesque

Etsy seller Monsters Domesticated made this chess set with figures from the Cthulhu mythos out of polymer clay:

We consider the black pieces to be the Cthulhoid forces, with dread Cthulhu itself as king, and menacing Dagon as swift and malevolent queen, and the mouldering green pieces to be led by Yog-Sothoth as king, in all its gibbering madness, and primordial Ubbo-Sathla as queen. Of course, you're the cultist, so you're entitled to assign whatever mythos iconography you like. The interpretations, fortunately for all life in this dimension, are loose.

The bishops of each side are mad alien priests, the knights grotesque mounts with vile curved spines, the rooks writhe horribly within their blasted towers. The black pawns are sinister, writhing spawn of dread Cthulhu, and the green pawns mocking little tentacular skulls.

Link via technabob

Swedish cartoonist Mattias Adolfosson has created several watercolor images depicting Star Wars if it had been made in the 17th Century. Pictured above is Boba Fett, whose jetpack has been replaced with a hot air balloon.

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/StarWars-the-baroque-version/146136 via Boing Boing

Etsy seller NESharmonica converts old Nintendo video game cartridges into functional harmonicas:

The NES came out in 1985. I was born in 1983, so I grew up in the NES's heyday. I remember blowing into those games like it was yesterday. To me, reminiscing about the cartridge blow is like a secret handshake. When you meet someone who knows what you are talking about when you mention blowing into a cartridge, you know you have met another classic gamer. That is why I make these harmonicas, it is a way to remember that old gamers ritual while having a good laugh at the same time.

Link via CrunchGear

LOST: Those Meddling Castaways
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I used to think that the entire series was a dream in the mind of Hugo while he was living at a mental hospital. But Atom Films user Tiger Team Awesome's suggestion that Lost end like an episode of Scooby-Doo isn't a a bad idea.

via Digg

A man who shall be known as a hero to Star Wars fans for generations to come built a three-level bunk bed resembling -- in great detail -- an AT-AT. The genius writes:

I've always been a big Star Wars fan and was looking for a subject that made sense for this design. A Walker already had four legs and it seemed an obvious choice to base my design on. I wanted it to look as real as possible. In order to accomplish movement, I made the bunk beds appear to be walking. I also made several additions to the beds, for example a complete Hoth lego display case on the second level as well as additional areas for the kids to play and climb.

More pictures at the link.

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Or, more rather, names. Plural. British 19-year old George Garratt is now officially known as "Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined."

Captain Fantastic joins a number of people with unusually long names, including Rhoshandiatellyneshiaunneveshenk Koyaanisquatsiuth Williams, a girl born in Texas in 1984.

The teenager, from Glastonbury, Somerset, added that while he thought the new name was "crazy", his grandmother was no longer speaking to him.

Link via Nerd Bastards | Photo: Daily Telegraph

Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau offered this fascinating bit of social commentary:

The first 21st century superhero is a hedonistic, narcissistic, even nihilistic, adrenaline junkie, billionaire entrepreneur do-gooder. If Peter Parker's life lesson is that "with great power comes great responsibility," Tony Stark's is that with great power comes a shit-ton of fun.

You can't get any more Gen Y than that.

Do you agree?

At the link, you can find an interesting exploration of the cultural significance of Tony Stark (who has no secret identity) with the way different generations value -- or don't value -- privacy.

Link via io9 | Image: Marvel/Paramount

This image, by an artist unknown to me, plays off Obi-Wan Kenobi's line about the Death Star, while referencing a famous painting (below) by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. He inscribed "This is not a pipe" in French. Magritte's point was it wasn't a pipe, but a picture of a pipe. -- via Super Punch