Saudi Arabia's proposed Kingdom Tower will rise to 5,280 feet. That's a full mile. If completed, this building in Jeddah will cost $30 billion to build and will contain apartments, hotel rooms, and offices in its 12 million cubic feet of space. The above graphic compares the structure to the Petronis Tower (center) in Malaysia and the Empire State Building (left) in the US. Currently, the tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa, which is 2,700 feet tall.

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/04/09/040911-news-jeddah-skyscraper/ via Gizmodo | Image: The Daily

deviantART user ComputerSherpa created a periodic table as a means of organizing the major tropes that can be found in popular stories. Pictured above is one small selection. When ComputerSherpa offered this to his classmates for critique, one cleverly suggested that it be used as a dartboard.

Link

Flickr user George Kelly spotted this fellow at the recent SXSW conference in Austin promoting Creative Commons. In the spirit of that organization, he was glad to have his photo taken so as long as it was properly licensed.

Link via Walyou

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This is astoundingly adorable! The cat and the dolphins seem to genuinely enjoy each others' company.

via Super Punch

Crafter Moxie does a lot of great work, but this felted critter grabbed my attention and made me laugh. It's part of an ongoing series called "Hungry", featuring odd monsters finishing off human meals.

Link via Craftzine

Alek Komarnitsky learned that hummingbirds had nested at a local golf course and took several high-resolution photographs. Here are the two babies, almost ready to leave the nest. The housefly on the branch gives you a sense of the scale.

Link via American Digest

Purple Rain as a science fiction thriller? Sure! London-based Graphic designer Christophe Gowans took twenty-six musical albums and depicted them as novels, aging them to indicate use. You can view the rest at the link.

Link via Boing Boing | Screenshot: Mother Jones

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The video of twin baby boys having a long conversation in gibberish captivated the people of the Internet about two weeks ago. Here, actors Michael Chiklis and Patton Oswalt duplicate the scene, sound for sound and motion for motion. Warning: some foul language once the act starts breaking down.

via Gizmodo

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YouTube user peteqwerty51 made a steel guitar from a stainless steel sink. It plays rather well! This is his first sink guitar, and he's already planning improvements for the next one.

via Walyou

Aha! I knew it! Those aren't bearskin caps after all, as this ad for Eurostar by the Leg Agency proves.

Link via reddit | Agency Website

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Actually, the Segway would be a fairly sound vehicle for modern jousting, as this commercial for the State of Washington's lottery illustrates. But buying lottery tickets is probably not a likely route to this most excellent goal.

via DVICE

Michael Sacco of Fanboy has several pictures of cosplay competitions from fan conventions in the 1970s, including Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Marvel Comics. Pictured above is Wendy Pini as Red Sonja. Pini is a now comic book artist and with her husband was the creator of Elfquest.

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German artist Iris Schieferstein made these shoes, dubbed "Vegas Girl" out of stag hooves and revolvers. She's worked extensively in taxidermy.

Link | Artist's Website | Photo by the artist (I think)

Scientists have developed an image scanning program that can distinguish between individual zebras by their stripes:

When a zebra has been entered into the database and given a StripeCode, the researchers match another picture of the same animal by comparing the StripeStrings of the new and original images. Each image will generate a different set of StripeStrings, but the underlying ratios of black and white should remain similar.

By finding the StripeCode with the most similar StripeStrings in the database, the system is able to accurately identify the correct animal. Other existing zebra identification systems are less accurate, more complex, and require a greater level of manual input from the user.

Link via io9 | Photo by Flickr user ross_hawkes used under Creative Commons license

Previously: Tim Flach's Barcode Zebra

The great thing about cupcakes is, well, everything. But it turns out that they can be improved upon. If you're looking for a faster way of shoving cupcakes into your mouth, you might want to try the PushCake by the Meringue Bake Shop in Orange County, California. Do you need more cupcake? Just push the bottom up.

http://www.cakespy.com/blog/2011/4/7/push-it-pushcakes-by-meringue-bake-shop-orange-county-ca.html via Super Punch | Photo: Meringue Bake Shop