neonascent

Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab.

This is wonderful.

From BBC:

Brushing aside arguments that the suspects were enemy combatants being held at a time of war, the court said the detainees had “the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus”.

This is the right of detainees under the US constitution to be heard by an independent judge.

Wooh!

I’m not normally beguiled by marketing illustrations, ’cause they’re normally part of mercenary attempts to steal goodness and cash from your soul. This picture from an insurance pamphlet caught my eye though, as it is cute, and is probably the first time I’ve felt a human was involved in the process.

A Japanese website provides the world with free papercraft steak dinners (for downloading and enjoying yourself),

meanwhile

I present to you a slightly less believable (but eminently more huggable) roast vegetable and sausage dinner of my own concoction:

Monkey’s brain controls robot army arm.
As our friend the BBC reports: “The monkeys were able to use the robot arm to feed themselves treats.” Awesome!

And might spot something interesting. It’s all very exciting, and there is a chance that the Mars Phoenix Lander will pick up a bit of ice and find some sign of life in it.

It really is mind-blowing to think that the images we are seeing are from another planet, and the technical achievement is awesome.

(Phoenix view of the Martian planes)

The Pigeon Wants a Puppy is a lovely childrens book by Mo Willems.

I’ve been stuck recently working a desk-job with long hours and no intrinsic sparkling fantasticness. At lunch time I walk down to the river and watch ducks and swans, and the skippers of canal boats daubing marine paint here and there. It’s a nice village next to Henley - posh, but pretty.

I occasionally skip to some interesting website, by way of reward for completing something tedious, but I’ve not got any consistent source of nice little slivers of fun or thought. Boingboing is leaving a bad taste in my mouth, what with the insipid smugness, self-advertisement, and paucity of good items.

So I have been motivated to start planting a lush garden of interesting specimens to keep you stimulated. Hopefully I can give you what I’ve been looking for; an (RSS/Atom) feed of of nice things.

Starting today with Ordinary Comics, a beautiful honest illustrated scrapbook of experiences/thoughts. It’s not bombastic, and doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not.

Garden Birthday Party - just add party goers

Originally uploaded by joshharle

Flickr set from something nice I made recently. Woooooee

Can’t take my eyes off of you…

Originally uploaded by joshharle

Who says UK is a surveillance society? This isn’t a bank or police station or prison. It’s the side of a pub in the middle of the countryside.