I might not have thought that the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) was made up of super artistic types but there I go, being all judgy and stereotyping people.

Apparently they have an art competition that challenges scientists to get creative with agar, a gelatinous substance used to make biological cultures. Which makes them both weird and cool, and kind of gross, because bacteria.

“The petri dish paintings are created much the same way that stencil drawings or silk-screens are made. Bacteria and yeasts were laid into the agar, which serves as a soil-like surface for the microbes, which then begin to grow. Because many microbes synthesize molecules of pigment, we see them in a brilliant array of colors, from Spirillum rubrum purple to Pseudomonas fluoresces yellow.” So, like silk screens but with bacteria and yeast. EXACTLY THE SAME.

(via Nerdist and Incredible Things)

Here is a house decked out with lights that do some groovy stuff to the Ghostbusters theme song by Creative Lighting Displays, which is famous for their holiday display videos. It involves “4 singing pumpkin faces, tombstones, hand carved pumpkins, strobes, floods, 2 Matrix boards and thousands of lights.”

Every time I hear this song I try to remember who sued who, did Huey Lewis and the News sue Ray Parker Jr. or the other way around? Or did I imagine the whole thing? I could probably just Google it but by the time I get around to it I will have lost interest in the question.

(via Geekologie)

“The Bronze Lenin was left inside, so that the grateful or not so grateful descendants could exhume him, if needed,” Milov said.

Man, this is so great because I’ve got this old statue of Lenin lying around and I’ve been totally wondering what to do with it.

(via Bored Panda)

Here is a tiny hamster going trick or treating. It’s cute. I have nothing else to say.

Google tells me that Unfortunate Cove is in Newfoundland, but not much else. Wikipedia tells me that Disappointment Island in New Zealand “not to be confused with Disappointments Island in French Polynesia” – for real – is where, in 1866, the General Grant, a full-rigged ship of 1,103 tons, crashed into the towering cliffs. Sixty-eight passengers died and 15 survivors made their way to the island, where they waited 18 months for rescue. Then, in 1907, the Dundonald, a steel, four-masted barque, sank after running ashore on the west side of the island. “Twelve men drowned and sixteen survivors waited seven months for rescue.”

So, really, disappointment is a bit of an understatement.

(Via The Atlantic)

This neat little cup shows you the phases of the moon as you drink your traditional rice wine. I think this would make a neat gift. For me! Someone get on that. OK. Neat, right?

(Via Foodiggity)

The happy part is that adopts them and drives them around on a train.

“We live down on a dead-end street, where me and my brother have a horse barn,” Eugene Bostick of Fort Worth told The Dodo. “People sometimes come by and dump dogs out here, leaving them to starve. So, we started feeding them, letting them in, taking them to the vet to get them spayed and neutered. We made a place for them to live.”

Over the years, Bostick has apparently taken in “countless” abandoned dogs. But wait! There’s MOAR!

“One day I was out and I seen this guy with a tractor who attached these carts to pull rocks. I thought, ‘Dang, that would do for a dog train,'” said Bostick. “I’m a pretty good welder, so I took these plastic barrels with holes cut in them, and put wheels under them and tied them together.”

And that’s how the dog train came to be.

What a great guy. Someone should buy him a nice present.

Here is an inspiring and incredible video of a paraplegic walking for the first time since his spinal cord injury, using his own brain waves. I’m not sure what the mechanism is but it involves “brain-computer interface functional electrical stimulation.“

Oh, look, it’s the world’s longest glass-bottomed walkway. It span 984 feet and is a cool 590 feet above the ground. No biggie. The walkway replaced an old wooden bridge, apparently, and is located in Shiniuzhai Geopark in Hunan. The floor is made of double-layered glass that is less than an inch thick but is supposedly 25 times stronger than regular window glass.

The bridge links the two peaks of Stone Buddha Mountain. Eleven engineers working 12 hours a day converted it from wood to glass. It’s being called “hero bridge.”

I say heroes are every day people who do brave things like save dogs from burning buildings and railroad people out of perilous situations. While you might be brave to cross this bridge, there’s nothing heroic about it unless there’s, like, a kitten that needs rescuing on the other side. SO THERE. SCREW YOU AND YOUR BRIDGE.

(Via Bored Panda/Shanghaist)