In one of the few nutty flash animation things I’ve run into whose quality compares to Joel Veitch‘s creations’, Mr and Mrs Wheatly bring us Pretty Creatures. Sadly, this is really not work-safe.

An insane anti-pornography group (co-founded by Ed Meese, no less) claims it wants to use against pornography the same strategy that succeeded in extracting settlement money from the tobacco industry. Because all the best science is certain of its conclusions before it starts. And Big Tobacco sure isn’t around anymore. Their chief scientist‘s Ph.D. is in communications, after all; not anything too troublesome, like, say, biochem.

A press release from CD Erotic announcing audio porn "in which women tell erotic stories." At least one of their readers has a distinctly Antipodean accent. The feature that pushed this press release into the (barely) post-worthy column: the name of CD Erotic’s press contact.

I’ve had a fascination with the Mad Monk for many years now, probably entirely due to (the interestingly appropriately named for the current context) Boney M‘s hit song (minor hit most place; huge radio hit in Moscow, ID, where I lived at the time). Best when it’s back-to-back with "Night Flight to Venus" (but I’m a big fan of the back-to-back song tradition).

The chief of the prostate research center of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences wants Russia to be a civilized country with a view on the future and with correct views on erotica.
Naturally, then, he opens a museum whose marquee exhibit is Rasputin’s penis. "Having this exhibit, we can stop envying America, where Napoleon Bonaparte’s penis is now kept. … it cannot stand comparison to our organ of 30 centimeters." Yes, that’s right: the whole cold war was about penis envy.
Update: others have previously claimed to possess the organ in question (or at least bits thereof), so one might need substantial provenance before taking the exhibit at face value.

Tiny walking robot made from DNA. We are so living in the future.

Hollywood stuntman Dan Rudert has been hired to catch, mid-air, a sample container dropped from space. The article makes it sound as though we haven’t been doing that sort of thing for around 50 years (though it is, apparently, the first time it’s been done with a helicopter).

Y’know, aside from the part about shooting lasers into my eye, this thing sounds really cool.

So, you remember how we all got told that our olfactory sense works based on the shapes of molecules? Turns out that’s just one theory. Another, with surprisingly strong evidence, is that our olfactory sensors contain tunneling electron spectroscopes. How cool is that?

Why must you do that?