Small Wonders: Oct. 15, 2010

In this week’s edition: little hipsters, maggot art, and detecting fraud via Facebook.

* It’s a scanning electron microscope image of an ant! Holding a microchip! Holy cow!

* Hipsters, you’re not so sophisticated: Research shows that even young kids can make some sense of irony.

* Even the Nobel Prize will not protect you from the Onion’s satire. And thank God, because this is a classic.  (Hat tip to David Kroll.)

* A squirrel takes on the Slinky one man has used to squirrel-proof his bird feeder. (Note: You may want to watch this with the sound off–the commentary is super annoying.)

* Trying to figure out who the movie’s villain is? Probably the guy who lives in a modernist home.

* Maggot art is the new finger painting.

* Since it’s almost Halloween, here’s a terrifying story of science blog haunted by ads.

* Christopher Hitchens explores the dark streets of Tumortown.

*The folks at OkCupid have released their analysis of gay vs. straight online daters.

*The government uses Facebook to investigate fraud.

* If I ever fall mysteriously ill, I want Abraham Verghese to be my doctor.

* Butterfly, heal thyself.

* The best environmental photos of the year are in, and some of them are stunners.

The Small Wonders: Oct. 15, 2010 by Wonderland, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.