We'll call him "Kal-El"

A mosquito managed to live 18 months clinging to the outside of the International Space Station, without any food, being bombarded by radiation and enduring fluctuating temperatures ranging from minus 230 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We brought him back to Earth. He is alive, and his feet are moving," Anatoly Grigoryev of the Russian Academy of Sciences told RIA Novosti.

old-school geekery

beamjockey writes: "One thing about Google's Life magazine photo archive, which is both annoying and intriguing, is that the captions and tags don't always reflect a picture's subject very accurately. I keep returning to this collection to find novelties among its millions of images.

"I was looking for photos by Allan Grant, who did lots of Hollywood work for Life, and I came across over 200 images labeled cryptically "Beane Tv Act."

"I recognized them as portraying the popular (but now-obscure) puppet show Time for Beany, created by Bob Clampett. Clampett was a former Warner Brothers animator and director who seized upon the new medium of television and dragooned two voice actors, Daws Butler and Stan Freberg, into serving as his puppeteers. The program ran from 1949 to 1955.

"You will know Daws Butler as the voice of Yogi Bear and about a million other Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. You will know Stan Freberg as the creator of a long string of hit comedy records, and a longer string of immensely funny TV and radio commercials.

"But you can search the archive for Freberg, Butler, and Clampett without turning up any of these pictures. Perhaps Google will eventually incorporate a way of crowdsourcing tags or captions for these."

(As an aside, the Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent puppet also served as a visual inspiration for Larry Niven’s Puppeteers, with their long, serpentine necks.)

(no subject)

Chicken-fried bacon; my arteries are cowering from simply looking at it.

(no subject)

8' giant squid pillow: a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Soren update

I made it out to Brooklyn last night; washed dishes at roadnotes' while chatting with her and redbird (I seem to remember the phrase "It smells like tomato, only darker and to the left"... alas, context is gone the way of all flesh) until baldanders arrived (friends had taken him out for Mexican food). Very good to see him walking; the hemi-cane takes some getting used to, but he was able to make his way with it, even surmounting some rather formidable stairs. He still uses the wheelchair for longer distances; I was pushing it at one point briefly, and reflecting that it's been quite a few years since I've had occasion to do so. We went out to a bar in their neighborhood, and discussed the career of Mickey Rourke for a bit (and I confirmed my status as a prophet of the Oscars by avowing that there was no way the Academy would overlook Rourke's sterling work^* (and dramatic comeback) in The Wrestler- darn you with your brilliant acting, Sean Penn! And your dramatic Rourke shoutout from the podium, too!), before I had to make my way back to the city; I wound up walking into the Duplex just as they were applauding Sean Penn's win... okay, okay; he did indeed deserve it. (Question to one and all: I'm fairly certain that Anthony Hopkins has also been awarded a CBE- is he simply less formal about using the "Sir" honorific than Ben Kingsley?) At any rate, it was good to see them both, and to see the progress he's continuing to make, right down to Soren tapping his fingers on the bar in rhythm with the jukebox- an old and fond memory from the Rose's days.



( Speaking of Mickey Rourke, here's an off-topic anecdote. )