Strong emphasis on the word "early." A research team at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada was able to temporarily stun worms with an ultraviolet light:

The animals that scientists experimented with — pinhead-sized worms known as nematodes — stayed paralyzed even when the light was turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the paralysis wore off

The researchers fed a light-sensitive material — a "photoswitch" known as dithienylethene — to the transparent worms. When exposed to ultraviolet rays, the molecule turned blue and the worms became paralyzed. Using visible light instead made the chemical turn colorless and the paralysis ended [...]

Branda wanted to make clear that this photoswitch would likely not have the same effect on humans. "You'd have to have a huge amount of it," he explained. "If you did, you might see the activity of cells shut down, which would eventually kill them. Paralysis is just an intermediate step to death in many cases."

Video at the link.

Link via Discover | Image: Paramount Pictures

In a new comic, cartoonist Patrick Moberg compares various web 2.0 social networking tools to intoxicating drugs, including tumblr, twitter, vimeo, and myspace. But don't think that he holds these utilities in low regard. Moberg once used them and more to locate a girl that he saw on a NYC subway.

Link via Urlesque | Image: Patrick Moberg

Photo: Design Fetish

In 1997, home developer Kaufman & Broad built a house in Henderson, Nevada that looks exactly like the house that the Simpson family lives in, both inside and outside, including furniture and pictures on the walls. From an article in The Las Vegas Sun, written at the time of construction:

"The Simpsons", the satirical, animated clan who put the phrases "Doh!" and "Eat my shorts" into the national vernacular, are celebrating their 10th year on television. And in true Simpson fashion, the producers of the show are doing the unexpected - recreating the family's two-story domicile right down to the throw rugs. Builder Kaufman & Broad has taken the 724 Evergreen Terrace address out of two dimensions and cast it in three, placing it smack dab in the middle of Henderson, Nev., in a housing development appropriately called "Springfield."

News Story and Gallery via GearFuse

(Video Link)

"Monster Manual" is a song by the band Mixel Pixel. It tells the tale of a role-player's struggle with a particularly brutal Dungeon Master, who is throwing just about every creature in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual at him. The video is animated by Dan Meth, whose work has been featured extensively on Neatorama.

via Popped Culture | Mixel Pixel | Dan Meth

Filmmaker Tim Burton's visual art will be on display starting on Sunday, Nov. 22, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His media include watercolors, line drawings, pastels, and sculptures. The exhibit features not only film concept work, but his independent, stand-alone projects.

News Story and Gallery via io9 | Image: Tim Burton

Photo: Digited Image Company

Apple executive Jeff Dauber has a backyard deck that will not, despite initial impressions, suck you into a wormhole and then throw you back in time. He had architect Thom Flauders design the piece to create an optical illusion of curves where there are only flat surfaces:

“I wanted someone to barf when they look at it,” says Dauber, a senior executive at Apple. “The deck looks like it is sloping away from you.” Dauber is not your standard-issue Silicon Valley techie; he’s covered in tattoos and owns an impressive, challenging collection of contemporary art (including a mosque made out of gun parts, by the sculptor Al Farrow). Five years ago, he hired Faulders to transform his Potrero Hill residence into a bachelor-pad-cum-art-gallery (see “Puzzle Master,” June 2006). The architect gave the space visual interest while still preserving it as a backdrop for Dauber’s art. Notably, the ceiling and walls, which appear to undulate, are made of a smooth pattern of interlocking CNC-milled MDF panels.

http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20091118/flat-out-amazing via Fast Company

Photo: Dave Kinsey

California-based artist Mike Stilkey paints images on the bindings of books. From an interview with the webzine Fecal Face:

Why did you choose to paint on books? It seems like it would have been a challenge to go from working on paper to painting on something so dimensional. What was that transition like?

It was sort of an accident. I was painting on book pages for forever, and actually published a book in 2005 titled "100 Portraits" in which I drew one hundred portraits on old book pages. At the time, I was drawing on books, records or anything else I could find at a thrift store. Eventually, I started drawing on the books themselves. I was going to do a project where I just drew on the covers of the books, and as I finished them I would stack them against the wall. It dawned on me that it might be a good idea to paint down the spines of the books instead of just on the covers. The first one I did I didn't really think much of, but I brought it down to BLK/MRKT, and I remember Jana going crazy over it. We showed it at the second Artists' Annual group show where it got quite a bit of attention, including attention from Kim Davenport, the director of Rice Gallery in Houston

You can read the full interview and see large images of his work at the link.

http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1428 via io9 | Artist's Website

As one might expect from any involved and nurturing father, d'Armond Speers of Minnesota spoke only Klingon to his son for the first three years of his life. Hart Van Denburg writes in Citypages:

"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language," Speers told the Minnesota Daily. "He was definitely starting to learn it."

And get this, Speers says he isn't really a huge Star Trek fan.

We'll take his word for it.

Does the fact that Speers has a doctorate in computational linguistics explain anything -- or excuse anything -- here? Maybe. His child-rearing habits were part of a larger story on the company he advises, Ultralingua, which develops language and translation software. Including Klingon.

Link via Geekologie | Image: Paramount

Photo: John Masterson

The Frictionator is a Ford F650 pickup truck equipped with a 7,000 hp GE J85 jet engine. Joe Arnold's monster truck is capable of reaching speeds up to 200 mph and is street legal (so as long as you don't use the jet engine).

Official Website via GearFuse | Video

(YouTube Link)

Animator Jeremie Duval remixed Super Mario Bros. with the tone and sound of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Content warning: not for mushroom lovers.

Via Geekologie

Photo: Brian Dettmer

We've previously featured Atlanta-based artist Brian Dettmer's sculpted books here on Neatorama. He has also created a number of sculptures out of old cassette tapes. From the blog Design Boom (sic):

one day as dettmer was walking down the street he spotted a dead bird and an idea hit him. ‘here was this thing that used to live, its used to fly around and play a vital role, and now it is dead and all that remains is the solid material.’ dettmer was quick to extrapolate this idea linking the bird’s life to that of the cassette. he ransformed the skeleton of old cassettes into literal animal skeletons. this lead to a series of 12 human skulls made from tapes, each with a different theme like heavy metal or hard rock. the most complex piece in this body of work is a full skeleton made from over 180 cassettes. all the pieces are made using only cassettes tapes with no glue, tape or other outside materials. while dettmer couldn’t revel his process to designboom, he did tell us that he heats the plastic up so he can literally form and weld them with his wet hands and other tools.

You can view a gallery of his work at the link.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/7343/brian-dettmer-cassette-tape-skeletons.html via Urlesque | Artist's Website

Photo: François Knorreck

The Snaefell is the creation of François Knorreck, a French hospital technician who spent €15,000, 10 years, and 10,000 hours of work on the project. It's a 1976 Laverda motorcycle with a custom-built sidecar made from Renault, Citroen, BMW, VW and Audi parts. More pictures at the links.

Link via The Presurfer | Official Website

Image: TMZ

TMZ has side-by-side photos of celebrities and the Sesame Street Muppets that they resemble. Queen Elizabeth II, Nick Nolte, Dustin Diamond, and Zach Braff are among the mocked.

Link via Urlesque

X-Flex wallpaper is designed to hold together even under extreme stresses, such as a bomb detonation. It's hoped that this invention by Berry Plastics will make buildings more secure from attack in dangerous places like Iraq and Afghanistan:

[...]this lifesaving adhesive is designed for use anyplace that’s prone to blasts and other lethal forces, like in war or natural-disaster zones, chemical plants or airports. To keep a shelter’s walls from collapsing in an explosion and to contain all the flying debris, you simply peel off the wallpaper’s sticky backing, apply the rollable sheets to the inside of brick or cinder-block walls, and reinforce it with fasteners at the edges. Covering an entire room can take less than an hour.

X-Flex bonds so tightly, it helps walls keep their shape after blast waves. Two layers are strong enough to stop a blunt object, like a flying 2x4, from knocking down drywall. During our tests, just a single layer kept a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall. The wallpaper’s strength and ductility is derived from a layer of Kevlar-like material sandwiched by sheets of elastic polymer wrap.

The video above is a demonstration by Popular Science of the technology's effectiveness.

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2009/product/x-flex-blast-protection-system via DVICE

(YouTube Link)

Children's author and photographer Walter Wick decided to balance 117 toys of various sizes and shapes on a LEGO block to create the shot that he was looking for. And then, with some difficulty, he knocked it down.

I created this photograph for the Kids Gallery of the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford. It shows 117 objects balancing on a single Lego block. No adhesives, glue or hidden supports were used. The stability of this improbable pile of objects is helped by positioning the center of gravity of each horizontal section directly above the Lego block and by lowering the center of gravity of the entire structure as much as possible through the use of hanging objects.

The process involved about a week of trial and error, with many, many crashes along the way. After settling on a design for the lower half of the structure, I worked on the horizontal segments separately, adding them to the stack with temporary supports in place. This allowed me to swap out different objects and shift them around until all the parts were in balance. I then removed the supports and took this photograph. The stack remained up until I decided to knock it down (captured on video!)

Resulting Photograph via Gizmodo | Artist's Website