Iggy and his owner have discovered that the iPad was apparently developed for the convenience of cats. Unlike conventional laptops, it doesn't have to be opened. The touch screen does not require opposable thumbs to use. Many programs do not require typing. There's no mouse to tempt or distract. And the screen can lay flat on a surface. Purrrrfect! Watch Iggy use the iPad in this video. Link (embedded YouTube clip)

Rope has always been, well, rope. The ancient Egyptians made their ropes essentially the same way we make ours today. This is because the optimum configuration of tension and turns makes a strong rope that won't stretch or twist. A recent study by Jakob Bohr and Kasper Olsen at the Technical University of Denmark gives us some of the math involved in making a good rope.

Let's take the example of a three strand rope. To achieve the zero twist configuration, the strands have to be laid down at an angle of 42.5 degrees relative to the horizontal in the image above. This always produces a rope that is 68 per cent the length of the strands.

The work also explains why ropes are best made with the strands under tension. The force causes the pitch angle to be less than ideal so that when the force is relaxed the rope 'relaxes' into the zero twist configuration, which cannot be further stretched under tension.

Our ancestors may or may not have known the exact math, but they knew how to make a good rope. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

Here's a combination of memes I don't think we've seen before: Star Wars and bacon.

The Bacon AT-AT was actually what I wanted to build before, but didn't have enough time, so it seemed like the natural choice. The Bacon AT-AT stands 3 ft tall and is made with over 40 lbs of bacon. The body was made from foam, then the bacon was attached. This beast took 21 non-stop hours to build. If you've ever once thought to cook 40 lbs of bacon in your kitchen in one sitting, I can now personally advise against it.

Link -via The Zeray Gazette

StacyBee's baby is due next month, and she made a custom book out of felt and other decorations just for her. Each page has a letter of Lydia's name, illustrated with things that begin with that letter. Is this adorable, or what? Link

My kids love bath bombs, but they are usually shaped like a plain ball. That situation has been rectified, and you can pre-order bath bombs that look like bombs! This might help to get reluctant little boys into the bathtub. http://www.spinninghat.com/product/bath-bombs -via Geek Alerts

You've just dropped food on the floor. Should you eat It? This handy flow chart will help you decide, but if you subscribe to the 10 second, 20 second, or 30 second rule, you'll have to read fast! Link -via Rue the Day

58-year-old Mick Wilary of Stanley, Co. Durham, England is in the hospital recovering from being run over by a piece of heavy equipment. It's only the latest in a long line of mishaps that has earned him his reputation as Britain's most accident-prone man.

It follows breaks to both ankles, after he fell over a potato, and cracking his head open by tripping over a cat.

He has also fallen out of a raised bucket of a JCB, and was left with a broken collar bone when the horse he was riding got spooked by a plastic bag.

In total the grandfather-of-two has racked up more than 30 injuries, including 15 broken bones.

This is only a partial list of injuries, as Wilary started having accidents as a child. As he recuperated, he remarked that it's a good thing he doesn't drive. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7579318/Britains-most-accident-prone-man-injured-again.html -via Arbroath

You don't have to have a printer to make your own envelops, but if you do, you can print a Map Envelope! Enter your location, print out and fold, and your envelope will have a Google Maps image of the place the enclosed letter (or whatever) originated on its inside. You can even add a message for a little something extra for your recipient. Link -via the Presurfer

Unlike the flier posted yesterday, this one advertises a real service. A dentist in Minnesota Muskegon had fliers posted with detachable teeth! Each one has the office address a potential patient can keep. Link -via Laughing Squid

Here is a site you should bookmark, because you never know when you'll need information on some household product. What kind of information? I click through to a particular hair care product and found the company's phone number and a toll-free alternative, the ingredients with links to more about each, emergency care instructions, ratings by independent councils, and a lot more. The database has information on recalls, warnings, and more resources as well. Link -via Interesting Pile

How do you study an extinct virus? They don't leave fossils behind! But some of them have left their DNA in other living things, including humans.

Over the expanse of evolutionary time, the genomes of virtually every animal species have become riddled with these proviral sequences, the so-called endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Most ERV sequences have been degraded by the accumulation of mutations but are still recognizable as retroviral in origin. The human genome alone contains hundreds of thousands of HERVs (Human ERVs), outnumbering our genes. Extrapolate these numbers across the entirety of the animal kingdom, and collectively ERV loci may well comprise a “fossil” collection numbering in the hundreds of millions of specimens.

Find out more about paleovirology, the study of extinct viruses, at Small Things Considered. Link -via Boing Boing

(YouTube link)

Watch as Oliver the otter creates a masterpiece to be auctioned off for the Pretoria Zoo in South Africa. -via Unique Daily

(vimeo link)

The Star Wars Uncut project has been moving right along since we first reported on it. It's a collaboration among hundreds of filmmakers to recreate the movie Star Wars shot-by-shot, with each 15-second segment done by a different director in his or her own style. The entire movie will be shown at the CPH:PIX Festival April 19 in Copenhagen. In honor of the event, here are a few minutes of the movie. -via Buzzfeed

We are happy to present a guest post by Chris Ingham Brooke of Environmental Graffiti.

(Image by ngbiblog)

Recycling is a potent concept. Many regard it as simply the repurposing of objects in order to prevent waste, but in the right hands, it can be a process that charts all sorts of powerful aesthetic and cultural shifts. The "Throne of Weapons" and "Tree of Life" are two pieces of "recycling" that do just this. Made from decommissioned AK47s and other instruments of death from the Mozambique civil war, they take the physical remains of war and transform them into the collective hopes of a nation traumatized by violence and cruelty.

(Image via wikimedia, by drow male)

Both objects are the product of the imaginatively entitled "Transforming Arms into Tools" project. But despite its rather functional name, the scheme, set up in 1995 by the Christian Council of Mozambique, is consistently creating some of the most the most poignant "recycled" art in recent memory. These guns began life in the poisonous smelting factories of Russia, Eastern Europe, Korea or Portugal, before being put to bloody use in the dense jungles of Mozambique's coastal lowlands. Now, under the initiative of Bishop Dinis Sengulane, they are crafted into icons that carry a nation's hopes for peace.

(Image by hjallig)

Under the guidance of the Christian Council, teams from the project (known as Transformação de Armas em Enxadas, or TAE) cut up the guns and re-mould them into sculptures: an elaborate, if disturbing chair, and a tree dedicated to 'life'. The chair alone is composed of guns that originated in seven different countries, pointing up the resolutely unresolved issue of international arms trade. The resulting artworks are not only hauntingly beautiful for the casual observer, but also draw together many intersecting currents for the people of Mozambique.

(Image by James M Thorne)

In one sense, we might think of them as cathartic: they perform a cleansing or purging movement, ridding us of painful emotional excess, not unlike the original intentions of Greek Tragedy. They give outer form to Mozambique' s collective surplus of sorrow, left to stew long after the firing stopped, a form of relief that prevents such pain from eating its people up, or worse still, erupting into further violence. Conversely, they also enable us as viewers to experience their pain in a controlled form, fostering a sense of profound empathy for the victims of such a tragic conflict, perhaps an implicit form of advice that we should never let this happen again.

(Image by hdptcar)

At another level, they are also signs of peace that point the way to happier times. Just as these sculptures recycle guns that brought misery into art that brings pleasure, so they recycle the memories of those who perished, into a new feeling of humanity, brotherhood and charity. They serve as reminders of what came to pass, and of why we should strive to avoid human conflict in the future. In this sense they embody a change, and one for the good, that we hope is sweeping through the villages of Mozambique and other war-torn countries the world over.

(Image by rvacpinta)

The pieces were acquired by the British Museum in 2005 and spent the next few years touring the major cities of Britain, garnering huge applause. Now on display in the museum, they are definitely worth a trip to London we think; these moving sculptures may be recycled monuments to death, but crucially, also to life and a peaceful future.

Thanks to author Chris Ingham Brooke of Environmental Graffiti.

Many people find spiders terrifying, but they have a convenient shape for a robot as many legs radiating from a central core gives a mobile robot stability. Wired has a gallery of 13 robotic spiders built for all kinds of purposes from art to war to toys. Pictured is the Military Micro-Spider Bot, created for spying on the enemy. Link