Hexup for Feb 22

It it’s Saturday morning once again, and I am off to soak my pasty body in water for the benefit of children with special needs. That’s right, it’s the KW Polar Plunge. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have some kickass links for you. The aurora, small arms, weird art, videogames, and ponies. Shit yeah ponies. I said that. that’s a thing that happened.

Global small arms data

Here’s a neat site that tracks the import and export of small arms and bullets from ’92 to ’10 for every country in the world. Not only is it beautiful, it’s data. Did you know that Greenland imports, on average, a million dollars of bullets every year? What are they up to up there? I haven’t checked their constitution, but they might have the right to arm bears, in which case we could all be in trouble.

Latest in bionic tech

This article at Paper Droids talks about all kinds of recent innovations in bionics, from teeth implants that return sensory feedback to a bionic suit that can help you walk again. We’re still no closer to helping me escape my t-shirt wearing meat suit, but if we can help people feel their fingers with artificial limbs and improve quality of life, that’s not nothing.

Art by Craig Davison

The life of fantasy

Artist Craig Davison has been drawing and painting kids as the characters they’d like to be, specifically from Star Wars and the Wizard of Oz. It’s an incredible exercise in both imagination and potentiality, but you won’t convince me that there isn’t a little girl out there who wants to be Boba Fett. It definitely fills part of our brilliant art nerdity section for the week, though.

Twitch Plays Pokemon

I know, I already wrote about this on Wednesday, but it’s definitely worth a look. Forty thousand people are playing the same game of pokemon red. There’s similar efforts going on at other parts of Twitch now, but this is the original. Hail to Helix and Bird Jesus!

Science ponies

Despite the fact that the entire post is in Spanish, what you need to understand is that it contains artistic renderings of Curie, Darwin, and Bill Nye as ponies. And ponies, for the record, are pretty cool. See famous figures from the history of science and science education get transformed like magic.

The aurora

To finish up a science-riffic Saturday, we have a great article by Phil Plait on the nature of the aurora borealis, accompanied by an incredible video that I’m not going to embed here because you should really also read the article.

Now I have to go and freeze. For the children. See you Wednesday!