Cut The Rope, a cute and addictive physics game based on the feeding of hungry “omnom” candy monsters, is now available for free in-browser play. Fire up your HTML5-capable browser and read on to play.
Although the Cut The Rope site indicates you need Internet Explorer, we had no trouble using an alternate HTML5-capable browser. You can play the first 25 levels for free and, if you pin the game to your Windows 7 task bar while playing in Internet Explorer it will change the icon and unlock 7 additional brand-new Cut The Rope levels.
If you find yourself addicted to the game, hit up the App Store or Android Market – Cut The Rope is available for $0.99 on both the iOS and Android platforms.
Cut The Rope Online [via Quick Online Tips]
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
China might be ascendant, but it remains terrible at soccer. Players are too incompetent not only to win matches, but even to rig them... more
Fish mimics mimic octopus via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
This is a great find by Not Exactly Rocket Science’s Ed Yong. A tourist and a couple of researchers from the California Academy of Sciences have documented an instance of Pacific-dwelling jawfish hiding from predators by blending into the stripes of well-known camouflage guru, the mimic octopus.
This relationship is probably a rare occurrence. The black-marble jawfish is found throughout the Pacific from Japan to Australia, while the mimic octopus only hangs around Indonesia and Malaysia. For most of its range, the jawfish has no octopuses to hide against. Instead, Ross and Rocha think that this particular fish is engaging in “opportunistic mimicry”, taking advantage of a rare chance to share in an octopus’s protection.Video Link
Thanks, Atvaark!
Kingdom Rush via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game you engage in an exciting campaign to defend the kingdom against brigands, goblins, orcs, and more in battle. Can you lead your troops to victory or will you fall before the oncoming hordes?
Follow Asian Angel’s walkthrough here or take your chances by going straight to the game here.
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The New Yorker deals with experience by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it. This allows readers to feel intelligent without thinking"... more
Searching for Africa’s living dinosaur via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
For hundreds of years, Westerners have heard tales from pygmies living in the Congo river basin of a living dinosaur called the Mokèlé-mbèmbé, the “one who stops the flow of rivers”. The BBC World Service talks to several explorers on the search for this beast that apparently may resemble a sauropod, elephant, rhinoceros, or perhaps something more akin to a “spirit” than a real animal. From BBC News (image from, er, Baby):
Paul Ohlin, a community development worker who spent more than 10 years living with the Bayaka in Congo and the Central African Republic, just to the north, says the people who live in the area are in no doubt about the creature’s existence.
“When people are sitting around the campfire talking, they talk about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé – it’s something that’s a reality in everyday life,” he says.
At the same time he emphasises their “spiritual connection” and “mystical relationship” with it.
“The way they see the world is a little different to the way you and I see it,” says Paul.“The hunt for Mokèlé-mbèmbé: Congo’s Loch Ness Monster” (via The Anomalist)
But their eyewitness reports still need to be taken seriously, in his view.
‘To Lighten the Labor of Your Home’, 1919 via Retronaut by Amanda
Which of the images in the original blog post to use was a very difficult choice.
Lighten the labor with electricity and buy a Western Electric:
- portable sewing machine
- washer and wringer
- vacuum cleaner
- heat regulator
- Number 1 iron
- toaster [note that it is plugged into the light socket]
- portable lamp
- heating pad
The rest of the images are here
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Who killed Homer? The ancient world can help us understand our own, says Mary Beard, but the classics are in crisis. Why? It's always been that way... more
How the effects of climate change can create more climate change via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
One of the interesting things about the global carbon dioxide and climate systems is the concept of feedback loops.
You already know that as atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide go up (and with them, the global average temperature) you get lots of different kinds of changes all over the place. For instance, mountain pine forests start experiencing warmer winters and smaller snowpacks. But, as those changes happen, they can actually trigger secondary effects that contribute to, and increase the rate of, climate change.
In this video [see link below], you’ll learn about how warmer temperatures and lower snowpacks are contributing to the spread of massive pine beetle infestations across the western United States. This is more than just inconvenient. The pine beetles can quickly kill huge amounts of trees, raising the risk of property-destroying forest fires and razing whole ecosystems. And, as the trees die en masse, forests that were once carbon sinks (absorbing more carbon dioxide than they released) become emitters – adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Thanks to Barfman for Submitterating!
Video Link
Why Atheists Should Fight Anti-Muslim Bigotry via Big Think by Adam Lee
Last month, the TLC television channel premiered All-American Muslim, a reality show which follows several, from what I can see, fairly normal American families who happen to be Muslims. On any other planet this shouldn’t have been in any way controversial – but the Florida Family Association, a Christian-right hate group, has been pressuring advertisers to drop their support on the astounding basis that the stars of the show are too normal.
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