• Animation Backgrounds is a relatively new weblog that explores the history and beauty of background art in animated film. Some of them are surprisingly lovely, and all the moreso for having never noticed them properly in their respective films. Strange too that it reminds me so much of screenshots that used to appear on the back of adventure games, where the settings were often the only eye candy that genre had to offer. (via Drawn)
  • Chestnuts from the Anne Frank tree (the one she writes about in her Diary of a Young Girl) are being auctioned off on eBay this week. Apparently the actual tree is diseased and in danger of being taken down before it falls down, so the winner could theoretically be planting a strange little form of literary history. To his credit, the auctioneer (who lives near the tree) is donating 15% of the proceeds to ECPAT.
  • Toronto Mayor David Miller is considering taxing bottled water, next. This is actually an interesting idea with an eye to reducing plastic consumption and paying for infrastructure; on the other hand, he’s talking about taxing water. This is a rhetorical slam-dunk for anyone who feels bold enough to say, “…and what next, the very air we breathe?“
  • Oh Christ, in Germany they found a fossilized claw of a sea scorpion that would’ve measured eight feet long. They estimate it to be roughly 390 million years old, which makes it approximatey not nearly dead enough.

Blurrrrrrggghhh.

  • Both Japanese and American scientists have published papers detailing a way to generate stem cells that might finally sidestep ethics concerns. It’s still some way from being perfect, “involves at least one gene that can cause cancer”, but still I wonder whether a stem cell process that is severed from the abortion debate will help to disarm some of its more staunch opponents.
  • Bonus science link! Jay Pinkerton’s Four Science Fellows explain the stem cell debate:

See the entire epic here.