Scientists in Britain -- wait, I mean the United Kingdom -- propose to breed sea cucumbers in large numbers. These animals will eat the waste off the ocean floor and can then be sold as a food product:

It breathes through its anus, can liquefy its body and acts as the waste collectors of the seabed. Scientists now believe that a species of sea cucumber living off the British coast could become a lucrative culinary export.

A project will begin this year to see whether it is possible to harvest commercial quantities of sea cucumbers – which are animals not plants – from beneath fish farms where the seabed is laden with the organic detritus.

Experts believe it may be possible to clean up the sea floor below the fish farms by cultivating vast "herds" of sea cucumbers while at the same time producing a valuable culinary delicacy that is highly prized in China and the Far East, where processed sea cucumbers can sell for extortionate prices.

According to the one diner quoted in the article, sea cucumbers taste like phlegm. What's not to like?

Link via reddit | Photo: Independent

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BUILD!, by LEGO animators David Pagano and Matt Witham, tells the tale of an ordinary Norse woodsmen. When his axe was struck by divine lightning, it began having a transformational effect on everything the wielder encountered. The animation is set to an awesome soundtrack by Jason Mass.

via Geek Dad | David Pagano's Website | Matt Witham's Website

Nothing hits the spot quite like a grilled cheese sandwich with a bowl of tomato soup. But it's been hard to get sloshed on this combination...until now. Clive's, a bar in Victoria, British Columbia, offers a cocktail called a "Cold Night In" that blends these flavors with alcohol. Here's how bartender Shawn Sole makes one:

Soole starts with his own batch of “grilled cheese rum” — dark, viscous Mt. Gay “washed” overnight with a real-live grilled cheese sandwich, a seeping process to extract essential flavors and infuse them into the rum, before adding fresh-muddled tomato and basil, salt, Lillet Blanc and Glenfiddich Scotch whiskey. The effect is extraordinary: the grilled cheese rum leaps off the palate with flavors of cheddar, bread and butter, mingled with a dark sweetness, while the Lillet Blanc prevents the texture from veering into Bloody Mary territory. Topping the cocktail off with a drop of Glenfiddich adds a hint of off-the-grill smoke and evokes sipping, grilling and dunking.

Link via Althouse | Photo: Shawn Soole

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The mimic octopus, discovered ten years ago off the coast of Indonesia, has been observed duplicating the appearance of at least fifteen other species. It can swim like a banded sole, a type of poisonous flatfish. If it fears attack, it can bury six of its arms so that its two visible arms make it look like a particularly deadly snake. The octopus can also swim with its arms spread in such a way that it looks like a venomous lionfish. It's like the Mystique of the natural world.

Link via Super Punch

Therese of Earth and Living figured out how to construct shoes like those worn by Medieval Scandinavians. It's not as simple as you might think, but it's a quite feasible craft project for the non-professional leatherworker. She provides step-by-step instructions with pictures from start to finish. Once you're done, grab a sword and go raiding!

Link via The Presurfer

Etsy seller Rachel Peters makes Franken Toys -- freakish dolls and stuffed animals attached to each other, probably against their will: Elmo's head on a toucan's body, Ronald McDonald and a Teletubby, and more. It's like a mad scientist started producing children's television.

Link via Comics Alliance

The Belgian television channel Prime commissioned miniature sets for major American shows, including Mad Men, Lost, Deadwood, and Six Feet Under. It's simple, but quite visually effective. Warning: the video at the link compiling them is NSFW.

Link (Google Translate) via NotCot

So you suddenly find yourself long, long ago in a galaxy far away. You're going to need to earn some money, so it's time to find a job. This flowchart by Andy Green and Bobby Bernethy will make some suggestions for careers that fit your personality.

Link

Photographer David Kaplan took this mesmerizing image. It shows a cloudbank over the Rhine with Liechtenstein in the background. The Moon and Venus can be seen in the upper right corner. Click on the link to view a much larger image.

Link via Marginal Revolution

Comics critic and editor Steven Padnick has an interesting read on the Batman narrative. Bruce Wayne, he argues, is hardly a hero of the oppressed, but a tyrant whose primary goal is to maintain a rigid class structure in Gotham City:

Batman isn’t just “the man,” Bruce Wayne is also The Man. He’s a rich, white, handsome man who comes from an old money family and is the main employer in Gotham. He owns half the property in the city. In a very real sense, Gotham belongs to him, and he inherited all of it.

True, it’s a very American version of aristocracy, based on wealth rather than divine right, but in practice it’s basically the same. The myth of aristocracy is that class is genetic, that some people are just born good enough to rule, and that this inherent goodness can be passed down from generation to generation.[...]

This gives Batman’s origin an Arthurian “king-in-exile” element. “Banished” from Gotham by the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne returns to reclaim his throne and redeem his land. But instead of reclaiming it from usurping uncle or foreign invader, Batman must take Gotham back from a rising underclass.

Just look at who he fights. Superman (for example) fights intergalactic dictators, evil monopolists, angry generals, and dark gods, i.e. symbols of abusive authority. Batman fights psychotics, anarchists, mob bosses, the mentally ill, and environmentalists, i.e. those who would overthrow the status quo. Superman fights those who would impose their version of order on the world. Batman fights those who would unbalance the order Batman himself imposes on Gotham.

Do you agree with this reading?

Link via Boing Boing | Padnick's Blog | Image: DC Comics/Jim Lee

Swarovski, a manufacturer of glass crystal, has a museum and garden in Wattens, Austria. This enormous fountain stands in front of it. Think of the setting possibilities it offers to producers of science fiction shows!

Official Website and Video via Super Punch | Photo: Michael Slonecker

Japanese artist Jarashi Suki developed dominoes that trip each other even without physical contact. Each one has a number, 1-5, displayed with dots. You can change the number of a domino by shaking it. When domino 1 falls, it will then trip 2, which will then trip 3, and so on. The video shows creative ways that this system can be used to make domino chains that would be impossible with conventional dominoes.

Link and Video via OhGizmo!

Do you need a stock photo to illustrate some point in a presentation? Specifically, that you shouldn't grope your co-workers? Stock photo companies try to meet all sorts of needs, including this one. Abe Sauer of The Hairpin rounded up some of the oddest pictures of sexual harassment from stock photo archives, and this picture is among the tamest. All SFW, but really weird.

http://thehairpin.com/2011/02/the-best-of-sexual-harassment-stock-photography/ via reddit

Kevin Kelly, an editor for Wired and Cool Tools, points out something that is both simple and profound. No piece of technology, once it becomes widely used, ever goes extinct. It doesn't matter if that technology has become obsolete. There are and always will be people who will continue to produce it. Robert Krulwich of NPR reports:

Nothing? I asked. Brass helmets? Detachable shirt collars? Chariot wheels?

Nothing, he said.

Can't be, I told him. Tools do hang around, but some must go extinct.

If only because of the hubris — the absolute nature of the claim — I told him it would take me a half hour to find a tool, an invention that is no longer being made anywhere by anybody.

Go ahead, he said. Try.

If you listen to our Morning Edition debate, I tried carbon paper (still being made), steam powered car engine parts (still being made), Paleolithic hammers (still being made), 6 pages of agricultural tools from an 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue (every one of them still being made), and to my utter astonishment, I couldn't find a provable example of an technology that has disappeared completely.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/02/01/133188723/tools-never-die-waddaya-mean-never and http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/02/01/133211209/am-i-extinct via GearFuse | Photo: Archaeology.org

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David Windestål's RC helicopter, equipped with little missiles, hunts balloons across the frozen Swedish landscape. That's cool enough as it is. What makes this video superneat is the way that the scene is presented like a classic arcade game with appropriate sound effects and text notifications.

A "Dude Licking a Pole Production"? That's the best name for an entertainment production company EVAR.

http://rcexplorer.se/files/ba11c31bb018b71fbf14995bce5af236-246.html via DVICE