Superbonusland

This Way

(Via Dump Trumpet)

For some considerable time I’ve maintained the viewpoint that what board games really need right now to shake things up a bit would be a product which seamlessly combines everyone’s favourite 8-bit primate with the sheer visceral thrill of gently tugging uniformly-shaped pieces of wood from a precarious tower.

Step forward American board game manufacturer USAopoly, who’ve only gone and done the impossible: released a version of Jenga themed around Donkey Kong! What’s more, they’ve even introduced a brand new game mode in which you “climb the girders with your Mario mover” in a vain effort to save Pauline from the eponymous barrel-hurling subhuman.

Sounds very exciting: and indeed, the manufacturers guarantee “edge-of-your-seat excitement”, something which you just don’t get with a standard Jenga set.

(Via Kotaku)

These brilliant dinosaur lamps are a new addition to the Brando website, they come as 16 piece polypropylene DIY kit and can be yours for $26+$3 worldwide shipping…

Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops

(Via Neatorama)

On 10th September (the same day the Large Hadron Collider powers up) the European Space Agency is launching the GOCE (or the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Explorer… if you have time). It’s a superaccurate gravity mapping satellite which will hopefully teach us humans some interesting stuff… at the very least it’ll locate all of those gravity eating lizard ghosts.

The GOCE is the first in a series of Earth Exploring satellites – it’s companions will be CRYOSAT, SMOS, AEOLUS and the excellently-named SWARM. Five satellites in orbit with names like that – the European Space Agency have not confirmed that the quintuplet will merge to form a giant alien-battling robot in times of distress, but only because it’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be said.

(Via Daily Galaxy)

There’s a few companies in Japan who sell contact lens (prescription and cosmetic), with an extra wide iris.

(Via Inventor Spot)

The Orwell Prize organization is posting the entries from the diary of George Orwell precisely 70 years after they were written. I guarantee some entries will be creepily poignant… Although today he’s somewhat laconic.

August 10th
Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon.

(Via Slashdot)

There’s a nice article…here… about mind boggling scientific theories. Whether it’s old news to you or not, you’ve gotta give author Michael Swaim extra credit for the Duck Tales reference…

”Large chunks of the human genome are thought to be ancient retroviruses that managed to transcribe themselves into our DNA and have spent the remainder of their days happily clambering up and down our nucleotides like the McDuck children on a mansion banister.”