HoodedHawk

BAB, the Ikea Baby. From a pdf file the artist created for an expecting friend.

Preston, Dylan and I went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History yesterday. Preston just loved the Insect Zoo. No way was Dylan going to hold a bug, but it was hard to keep Preston away. He also held a big beetle, but I couldn’t get a picture as I had to help keep Preston from squishing it.

Click any picture below for larger slideshow…

Preston holds a Giant Caterpillar at the Insect Zoo, Natural History Museum

Preston at the Insect Zoo, Natural History Museum

The new Ocean Hall is quite good. Even Dylan was impressed by the giant jellyfish (seen in foreground). Full-size right whale hangs from the ceiling, and videos of ocean scenes line the walls. Lots of informative exhibits about the ocean.

Ocean Hall, Natural History Museum

Mural and Skeleton, Natural History Museum

T-Rex, Natural History Museum

I often make little smiley faces when I put ketchup on the kids’ plates, but these caterpillar pancakes (from My Paper Crane site) are just inspiring. I’m going to make these for my kids soon!

This is an hysterical news brief from The Onion:

A team of nine specially trained handlers have successfully lured outgoing vice president Dick Cheney into a reinforced steel traveling crate in order to transport him back to his permanent enclosure in Casper, WY, official sources reported Monday. “He’s a smart one. Once he sees the crate, he gets pretty nippy, but we’ve learned a few tricks over the years,” chief VP wrangler Ted Irving breathlessly said while applying pressure to a deep gash on his forearm. “If we break a rabbit’s legs and throw it in there, he will eventually go in to finish it off. Doesn’t work with dead rabbits, though. Cheney only eats what he kills.”

– see Vice Presidential Handlers Lure Cheney Into Traveling Crate

Xylocopa has a set of Alphabet blocks engraved with pictures of all the equipment and training a budding mad scientist will need:

A – Appendages | B – Bioengineering | C – Caffeine | D – Dirigible | E – Experiment | F – Freeze ray | G – Goggles | H – Henchmen | I – Invention | J – Jargon | K – Potassium | L – Laser | M – Maniacal | N – Nanotechnology | O – Organs | P – Peasants (with Pitchforks) | Q – Quantum physics | R – Robot | S – Self-experimentation | T – Tentacles | U – Underground Lair | V – Virus | W – Wrench | X – X-Ray | Y – You, the Mad Scientist of Tomorrow | Z – Zombies

Also:

…the blocks have a super-secret built in encryption function – if you rotate any block 180 degrees, it’ll encode to ROT13. If it’s good enough for Adobe Acrobat, it’s good enough for Mad Science!

-via BoingBoing