Natural history illustrator “Olduvai George” (Carl Buell) has a blog. Highly recommended!

Scientists have finally figured out the enduring mystery of how bees fly. And they have video to prove it!

The World Toilet Organization. Unfortunately, you’ve already missed the World Toilet Summit, held September 26 to 29 in Belfast. (Via The Corner.)

In Illinois, no less.

From the CBC: “Christians are recognized by Hollywood as a valuable niche market after Mel Gibson’s version of the crucifixion earned $600 million worldwide.” $600 million is a “niche market?” That’s a nice niche!

Very hard. A pistol won’t do it. Neither will a rifle. You need a shotgun, firing a slug. How do I know? Because somebody conducted an experiment. Let’s hear it for the scientific method! (Via Gizmodo.)

“It’s like something from a horror film,” says a geophysicist, but I think it’s rather beautiful.

…is always good advice.

That’s because it uses light-sensitive bacteria. It also takes four hours to take a picture and works only in red light–but then, it’s more a proof of concept than anything else. It might just help point the way to the first nano-factories.

Don’t look now, but here comes Christmas—and its concurrent cannonade of calories. If visions of sugarplums dancing in your head give you a headache, perhaps the best thing you can do to relieve your stress is…reach for another sugary treat. At least, if you’re a rat. In a recent study led by Yvonne Ulrich-Lai, a …

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Invented by studnets at the National University of Singapore, it uses “negative ions, compressed air and deodorants” to clean clothes without water. Now if only it ran on USB, it would be perfect. (Via Gizmodo.)

The University of California, Santa Barbara, has created a digital collection of more than 5,000 cylinder recordings from the early 20th and late 19th century–and you can listen to them/download them here! (Via By the Way.)