• The sexed robots are autonomous wheeled platforms fitted with nylon genital organs. They’re in heat and looking for mates so watch your back. Via.

• A cluster of galaxies acting as a gravitational lens may reveal the complex distribution of matter within the lens itself. Say that three times fast.

• The shiny happy world of Utopian Pharmacology. Via.

• Michael Wolf’s follow up to the fantastic Architecture of Density is 100 x 100.

• On beauty as separate from function: Windfarms. (Thanks Bill)

• Great piece on Tim Hawkinson: Taking the Measure of the World. Via.

• First pictures from the jaxa “map of the universe mission.” Via.

• This man has invented more than 80% of the world’s known hallucinogenic drugs.

• On the cover: gallery of Kerouac’s On The Road editions. This was mine. Via.

• The Nation Magazine Cover Archive. Enjoy Emigre and Mad among others. Via.

• The sheep market. 10,000 sheep drawings. via.

• Sam Harris is not your grandfather’s atheist: Why Religion must end.

• The space elevator: going down? Study shows that proposed carbon nanotube cables won’t hold up.

• Cultural Renaissance or Cultural Divide? Technology and economic change are conspiring to create a new cultural elite and a new cultural underclass.

• Plans to clean-up space junk orbiting Earth could result in the loss of irreplaceable historical artifacts?

• Lichtman/Zogby poll: U.S. Public Widely Distrusts Its Leaders.

• If:Book launched gam3r 7h30ry today. Interesting project. Read about it here.

• Jonathan Safran Foer on Joseph Cornell: Flights of fancy.

• Modern Mechanix offers a 1964 Popular Science article: Build your own laser.

• Under the buckskins: Indian Women as Sex Objects.

• George P. Dvorsky of Sentient Developments mulls over Death and the brain.

• The History of the Knights Templar by Charles G. Addison, 1842.

A history of the pen. A brief history of writing instruments. The history of the ballpoint pen. How ballpoint pens work. The early history of the fountain pen. The pen trade. The Paul E. Wirt fountain pen. The story of the invention of steel pens. The four treasures of the study: brush pens. Quills. Cutting a quill pen. Fox with quill. Cat with quill. The writing [implement] of Jane Austen - the quill pen.

Mark Twain’s pens. Presidential pens. More presidential pens. The instruments of presidents, peace and international politics. The “billion-dollar” space pen. More on the space pen. Vintage pens. Pen profiles. Pen collection. Pen lovers. A collection of pre–1850 writing implements. Waterman’s writing implements. Vintage pen ads, blotters, and ephemera. Lion & pen. Nibs. Nibs. More nibs.

• Stamps depicting “cryptids” and metorites: Pib’s Virtual Stamp Collections. via.

• Story: Five European research institutes are collaborating on the new ties project to create a 21st-century brave new world – one populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and culture. via.

• Enjoy the madness which is Peces sincronizados or synchronized fish. via.

• Erik Larsen mourns the loss of comic book sound effects. via.

• ...It makes sense to reconsider how the modern scientific understanding of the mind emerged. The Age of Neuroelectronics.

• Was in St. Marks Books yesterday and a little “zine” of sorts caught my eye done by one Lief Parsons. Canadian born illustrator living and working in Brooklyn, best I can tell. Some good work. A few, in their whimsical simplicity, remind me of the glory days, others are smack on the trending-down “naive” penciled style (as above). All in all a fine browse. Also of note is his well done signifiers project.

• Old Yeller. The illustrious history of the yellow legal pad. via.

• Everybody knows at least one. Creative department Douchebag by Pete Johnson. (Thanks Kurt.)

• Adding inter-species incest to injury for evolution rejectors. Our human ancestors were still interbreeding with their chimp cousins long after first splitting from the chimpanzee lineage, a genetic study suggests. How many times does the Prez need to say it? NO human animal hybrids!

• Somewhere at the top of the Hundred Acre Wood a little boy and his bear play. On the surface it is an innocent world, but on closer examination by our group of experts we find a forest where neurodevelopmental and psychosocial problems go unrecognized and untreated. Pathologies in Winnie the Pooh. via.

• Enjoy Siberian artist Marina Bychkova’s porcelain and polymer dolls. Nice. via.

• Step by patient step, one man is drawing ever closer to the real Da Vinci mystery: tracking down the master’s greatest painting, lost for four and a half centuries.

• Got P.K.D? Download a torrent of The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick.

• Admiral Byrd’s trip inside the hollow Earth: Fiction or fiction? via.

• Shamans and ordinary people of American Indian tribes undertook dangerous missions to meet their spirit guides. The Fortean Times on Vision Quests.

• How a faceless, underground collective of scientists has helped determine the fate of the American empire. The Jasons. via.

• Like a bird, like a plane, like a guy in a funny outfit jumping off a cliff… Base jumping with a twist.

• Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.

• Deafness in Disguise Concealed Hearing Devices of the 19th and 20th Centuries. via.

• We really don’t have proof that black holes exist so here’s a new theory: dark energy stars.

• Incest, fratricide, iniquity, murder, mayhem, and breathtaking beauty: Alexandria on dipslay in Berlin via treasure hunter Franck Goddio.

• Darwin, Zola, status groups, hippies, hip-hop, Jose Delgado, the yankees, the beginnings of speech, and “all you’ll ever need to know about the human beast.” Tom Wolfe and Homo Loquax. via.

• A theory of prostitution (pdf). Using economic models to answer the question: Why is it that prostitution is so relatively well-paid?

• Wikipedia entry on the so called Illusion of control. via.

• Keeping it surreal: “In the 1920s Georges Bataille’s art magazine Documents embraced all that was “soiled, senile, rank, and sordid” in western civilization. Its radical message is as fresh as ever.”