Pictured above is a design submission for the Zayed National Museum in the United Arab Emirates. The project is named after Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918-2004), who was president of the UAE. In memory of the Sheik's love of falconry, the main structures are shaped like wings. But they also serve a practical purpose:

The galleries are placed at the bases of five solar thermal towers. The towers heat up and act as thermal chimneys to draw cooling air currents naturally through the museum. Fresh air is captured at low level and drawn through buried ground-cooling pipes and then released into the museum’s lobby. The heat at the top of the towers works to draw the air up vertically through the galleries due to the thermal stack effect. Air vents open at the top of the wing-shaped towers taking advantage of the negative pressure on the lee of the wing profile to draw the hot air out.

Link via DVICE | Photo: Foster + Partners

US Department of Defense engineers and Sony built the most powerful computer in the Department's inventory by linking 1,760 PlayStation 3 gaming consoles:

The supercomputer, nicknamed the Condor Cluster, will allow very fast analysis of large high-resolution imagery -- billions of pixels a minute, taking what used to take several hours down to mere seconds, Barnell said.

Its sophisticated algorithms also will allow scientists to better identify objects flying in space, where movement and distance create blurring, with higher-quality images than possible before.

Its capacity makes the PlayStation 3 cluster about the 33rd largest computer in the world, Barnell said. "It's in that magnitude. "

The supercomputer is currently housed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: US Department of Defense

This photograph of unknown provenance shows a Nativity scene made out of meat and sauerkraut. All it needs is an angelic host made out of deviled ham.

via Say Uncle

UPDATE: Say Uncle emails to say that it's probably hash browns, not sauerkraut. What do you think?

UPDATE 12/3/10: Say Uncle has found the original source.

In January, construction workers digging a new subway tunnel in Berlin found a cache of sculptures that had been banned by Adolf Hitler for being "degenerate". It's uncertain who is responsible for saving them, but it's possible to make some educated guesses:

Archeologists have so far determined that the recovered works must have come from 50 Königstrasse, across the street from City Hall. The building belonged to a Jewish woman, Edith Steinitz; several Jewish lawyers are listed as her tenants in 1939, but their names disappear from the record by 1942, when the house became property of the Reich. Among its subsequent occupants, German investigators now believe, the likeliest candidate to have hidden the art was Erhard Oewerdieck, a tax lawyer and escrow agent.

Oewerdieck is not widely known, but he is remembered at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. In 1939, he and his wife gave money to a Jewish family to escape to Shanghai. He also hid an employee, Martin Lange, in his apartment. In 1941 he helped the historian Eugen Täubler and his wife flee to America, preserving part of Täubler’s library. And he stood by Wolfgang Abendroth too, a leftist and Nazi opponent, by writing him a job recommendation when that risked his own life.

The eleven sculptures are now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin. Pictured above is "A Likeness of the Actress Anni Mewes" by Edwin Scharff.

Link via Flavorwire | Photo: Angel Flores Jr.

Artist Justin Gignac has a flair for juxtaposing the ordinary and the refined. Four years ago, he started selling small bundles of garbage from New York City as art. Two years, he tried to buy items for paintings of those items (e.g. a painting of a slice of pizza for the price of a slice of pizza).

One of his recent creations is a security tag, like those in clothing stores that prevent shoplifters from making off with merchandise. Except that this one is plated in 18-karat gold and features white diamonds. Each one costs $700.

Link via Born Rich | Photo: Looptid Industries

Daihai Fei graduated from college six months ago and needed a place to live in Beijing. But the rental properties available were so expensive that he decided to build his own house. It's shaped like an egg and made from burlap bags, bamboo, insulation, and paint. Fei built a solar panel into the roof. The total cost was 6400 yuan or $960 USD. You can view several more pictures at the link, which appears to be in Italian.

Link (Google Translate) via io9 | Photo: Cinaoggi

Instructables user BrittLiv made a doorstop that looks like the ever-dying, ever-resurrecting South Park character Kenny McCormick. The legs, boots, and pool of blood are made out of sugru, a moldable type of silicone. The rest is composed of a thin rubber mat, wood, and modeling clay.

Link via Great White Snark

Sean Ragan made a set of syringes out of LEGO pieces:

The most difficult part of this design was actually getting the colors right. The rarest part is not, in fact, the chrome silver antenna, but the 8-long dark gray Technic axle. Generally, even-length Technic axles are black and odd-length axles are dark gray. The dark gray 8-long axle was included, so far as I can tell, in only one kit. And dark gray is the only color in which all the plunger parts are available. And this is the only plunger design I’ve come up with that satisfies me.

You can view a parts list at the link.

Link via Make | Photo: Sean Ragan

Previously by Sean Ragan: Choose Your Own Adventure as a Graph

Designer Sebastian Neitsch made a remote-controlled robot that spits out fire. It's called the Kunstrasen, and can be used to carve designs into grass. -- Link via Dude Craft | Artist's Website (auto sound) | Photos: Design Boom

Of all of the elements on the periodic table, why did gold become the standard of economic value for so much of human history? NPR asked Sanat Kumar, a professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University. He explained that, ideally, the material used in currency should not be reactive, corrosive, radioactive, too common, or too rare. It also needed to have a low melting point so that it could be shaped into coins. Gold is the element that best matches these criteria:

So we ask Sanat: If we could run the clock back and start history again, could things go a different way, or would gold emerge again as the element of choice?

"For the earth, with every parameter we have, gold is the sweet spot," he says. "It would come out no other way."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/18/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gold-beat-out-lithium-osmium-einsteinium?sc=fb&cc=fp via Gizmodo | Photo by Flickr user Shiny Things used under Creative Commons license

You call it sad and pathetic; I call it creative problem-solving. And they're reusable, so it's an eco-friendly choice.

Link via Geekologie | Amazon Link

In Tajikistan, the unibrow is commonly thought of as a mark of beauty. Women who don't have it naturally may resort to herbal remedies in order to grow one:

Usma, a leafy green herb, is sold in all Tajik markets. You can get a small bunch for about $0.06. The process is simple but effective, several market women assured me. Take a bunch of usma and let it dry in the sun for a couple hours. Then grind up the leaves until a dark green goo seeps out. Dip a branch of usma — or a matchstick, if you want to be more precise — into the goo and smear it on your eyebrows, making sure, of course, to color the space in between. Leave on for 15 minutes, and repeat the smearing process one or two more times. The result is a deep black unibrow, rich and expressive.

Asking Tajik women why they like the unibrow is a bit like asking Western women why they like to paint their nails or pluck their eyebrows into oblivion.

"I just think it's beautiful," was, without exception, the answer I got after asking more than a dozen Tajik women about their unibrows.

Tajikistan is not the only central Asian country where the unibrow reigns supreme — a symbol of feminine beauty and purity. And it’s not as if every Tajik woman has it. The unibrow is the exception, and still found more commonly in places outside the capital.

You can view a slideshow of Tajik women with unibrows at the link.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: Miriam Elder/Global Post

This 1:8.4 scale model train is powered by a gas turbine engine. It travels down five inch gauge tracks quite quickly, as you can see by watching the video in the links. The train was built by Hidepon Works and displayed at Make Fair 2010 in Tokyo.

Link and Video via OhGizmo! | Official Website (Google Translate) | Photo: Gizmag

(Video Link)

Ain't It Cool News held a contest which invited readers to modify clips from movies with TRON-like special effects. Above is one for Aliens by Vimeo user Benni Diez. Others at the link include Joe Versus The Volcano, Dr. Strangelove, and The Big Lebowski.

Link via Great White Snark

Pierre Le Guennec, a retired electrician, revealed that he has 271 works of the late artist Pablo Picasso that were previously unknown to art historians. Le Guennec claims that Picasso's widow, Jacqueline Picasso, gave them to him during the 13 years that he worked for her after her husband died:

Le Guennec contacted the Picasso estate by mail in January to request certification of authenticity for the works -- a collection of cubist collages, drawings, lithographs, notebooks and a watercolor.

Along with the letter, Le Guennec included 26 photographs of previously unpublished Picasso pieces.

But he found himself slapped with a lawsuit filed by the artist's son, Claude Picasso, and five other heirs who say the works are stolen.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: Daily Mail