I’m not very good at drawing, so I started a draw-something-every-day-until-I-get-better blog. It’s pretty new, but it’s got a few doodles and wallpapers.

In the depths of the Indian Ocean lies some sweet science. The Crysomallon squamiferum snail takes iron sulfide from the water and uses it to build a metal shell. Better yet, it repels intruders with nanotechnology* – apparently the shell fractures in such a way as to grind down the predator’s weapon. Read the full article.

* Well, kinda. It sounds pretty cool, though.

Public relations firm Murray Hill Inc. is making a (satirical) run for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.

The campaign’s designated human, Eric Hensal, will help the corporation conform to antiquated “human only” procedures and sign the necessary voter registration and candidacy paperwork. Hensal is excited by this new opportunity. “We want to get in on the ground floor of the democracy market before the whole store is bought by China.”

The New York Times has a lovely interactive infographic detailing the proposed 2011 budget.

Social theorist Jürgen Habermas is on Twitter. I think he’s still getting used to the format.

Edit: Nope, fake. Lame. Real Jürgen Habermas should get an account.

In a bay off the coast of Montenegro there’s a church on an island. The island was built by hand.

The idea that devotional rock-throwing has become an art of creating new terrain, generation after generation, rock after rock, pebble after pebble, is stunning to me. Perhaps in a thousand years, a whole archipelago of churches will exist there, standing atop a waterlogged maze of old pleasure boats and fishing ships, the mainland hills and valleys nearby denuded of loose stones altogether. Inadvertently, then, this is as much a museum of local geology—a catalog of rocks—as it is a churchyard.

Historian, author, and activist Howard Zinn died yesterday on vacation in Santa Monica. Aside from publishing the seminal A People’s History of the United States, Zinn was among the first to call for immediate, unconditional withdraw from Vietnam, helped hide the Pentagon papers, and consistently spoke out for the causes of pacifism and social progress. Good thinker, good speaker, good guy.

This is something I’ve dreamed about for years. I never thought it would actually exist.

When drawing up animal cruelty legislation, most countries apply extra protections to vertebrates, since they usually have more complex nervous systems than invertebrates. Cephalopods are an exception:

In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and other cruelty to animals legislation, extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates.

- Wikipedia

Which makes sense, since they’re intelligent enough to open screw-top jars, learn tricks, and of course armor themselves with coconut shells.