The wizards at WETA made this awesome Warthog for Neill Blomkamp’s upcoming series of Halo Shorts.

Um. The dudes at WETA made a Warthog. I don’t mean that they made a big plastic thing that looks like a Warthog. I mean they built a fully-functioning, four-wheel steering, powerful, off-road vehicle with a machine gun on the back. At the correct scale. If you live near Wellington, New Zealand, you might even see some crazy machine-shop dude from WETA fishtailing around your base, ahem, I mean neighborhood.

Link -via PAgent’s Progress

DRD (Diagnostic Repair Drones) are little characters from the sci-fi series Farscape. They are produced from the space ships called Leviathans for repairing and keeping up maintence. These robots are up to 14 inches long and 10 inches wide with a numberous ammount of tools and sensors for their different tasks. They seemingly have their own personalities even though controlled through computer.

The plush version shown here won’t repair anything, but they are cute! Not available yet, but you can pre-order these for $19.99. http://www.trollandtoad.com/p152945.html -via Maximum Verbosity

Which strange stories are actual recent news items, and which are plots from the cartoon series Scooby Doo? I scored 80% on this mental_floss quiz, not because I’m a Scooby fan, but because I read all the weird news stories! Link

Law of Cat Acceleration
A cat will accelerate at a constant rate, until he gets good and ready to stop.

Law of Cat Embarrassment
A cat's irritation rises in direct proportion to her embarrassment times the amount of human laughter.

Law of Milk Consumption
A cat will drink his weight in milk, squared, just to show you he can.

Law of Furniture Replacement
A cat's desire to scratch furniture is directly proportional to the cost of the furniture.

Law of Cat Composition
A cat is composed of “Matter” plus “Anti-Matter” plus “It Doesn't Matter”.

There are lots more laws. They make perfect sense to cats and people who live with cats. Link -via the Presurfer

Image found at I Can Haz Cheezburger.

As you go through airport security, you find out that the scissors in your purse are too big. You can leave the security line and mail them, or take them to your car (which could be quite a hike), but you’d have to go to the back of the security line and start all over again. Most people voluntarily surrender any contraband items to avoid missing their plane. This Wall Street Journal article looks at what various states are doing with the items that are confiscated. Link -via Look at This

A recording by philosopher Alan Watts, {wiki} set to animation by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Push play or go to YouTube.

This quiz doesn’t require you to have a degree in forensics, and you won’t be graded, but each question links to a full explanation of a different aspect of forensic science. The quiz is a companion piece to the BBC documentary How to Commit the Perfect Murder, which is now available online. Link -via Ursi’s Blog

Tyler Hudson is the son of a professional musician, and has played drums since he was a toddler. This video shows his progress through the years. Push play or go to YouTube. Link to Hudson’s website. -via Videosift

Currently standing at 1,680 feet, the still-uncompleted Burj Dubai tower in Dubai is now the world’s tallest building. The previous record holder is Taiwan's Taipei 101 at 1,667 feet. Developers won’t say what the finished height will be, only that it will be over 2,275 feet. The $1 billion skyscraper is expected to be finished by the end of 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/07/22/dubai.building.ap/index.html -via Fark

On Saturday, July 6, 1957, a dance was held at St. Peter’s Parish Church in Woolton. One of the two bands playing that night was The Quarry Men, led by a 16-year-old named John Lennon. After the performance, he was introduced to another budding musician, 15-year-old Paul McCartney.

In 1994, Bob Molyneux, a retired policeman, rediscovered a single reel-to-reel tape he had made of that evening performance, caught while experimenting with a bulky "portable" Grunding tape recorder. Preserved on the tape were poor quality recordings of Quarry Men performances of Lonnie Donegan's "Puttin' On The Style" and Elvis Presley's "Baby, Let's Play House."

That tape is the earliest existing recording of John Lennon singing. Those recordings were used for a BBC radio special, and you can hear them at The Beatles Source. Link -via Grow-A-Brain

Claire Wolfe has tips for living small. And she has the experience.

For the last three years I’ve shared a one-room cabin with a pack of dogs and one outnumbered but boldly unflappable cat. The cabin has an exterior footprint of 409 square feet—nine feet above the minimum my county requires for a residence. Its interior space is about 360 square feet, including closets and cabinet space.

Link -via the Presurfer

Just drag and drop various articles of clothing on the naked squirrel. Minutes of fun! Link -via Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

Panda breeding has come a long way in the past few years. This gallery is a compilation of various baby pandas showing their development over their first year. Pandas are several months old before they achieve their black-and-white coloring. Link

Cartoonist Jamar Nicholas collects depictions of Wonder Woman as queen-sized. He started by sharing his private collection, but now artists submit pieces specially created for the blog BBWW: The Fat Wonder Woman Blog.

I'm no toothpick myself, and admire and enjoy the female form in all its sizes, especially ladies with some meat on them. Thus, my idea for collecting art of a bigger-sized WW happened. I have always felt like for someone who's supposed to be an amazon, she's pretty thin. I don't know a lot of amazons, but I'm assuming they wouldn't be wafer-thin. So yeah, there you go.

Link -via Metafilter

1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice! This is not the final routine, and definitely not a punishment! just a teaser.

Push play or go to YouTube. -via Ectoplasmosis