These bionic penguins are amazing, particularly the lighter-than-air ones shown briefly in the video. They remind me of these ALAVs.

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Saturday sushi links:

• Pedant
• The impact of contemporary theoretical physics on the prescriptive grammar of Victorian England
• Asparagus by G.K. Chesterton
• Grammatical shibboleths

Links from Sunday:

• The simile — implied
• Spammers solving AI problems
• Pam Braun Pens
• Stoeger coach gun
• Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May mysteries
• Doctor Who: City of Death
• Banrock Station Shiraz 2007
• Polished concrete floors
• Catholic indugences
• Don't sleep, there are snakes

A bit late this week, but here they are:

• Charter schools: Islamic charter schools in Minnesota, Islamic practices at such a charter school, a scuffle at an Islamic charter school, and Islamic charter schools in California (via Ed)
• Druid secret language, finger alphabet, cants such as Polari, and, as a bonus, STAR LANGUAGE
• We need to film an internet video titled "America's Next Top Druid"
• Running barefoot
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
• Odysseus in Dante's Inferno
• "Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
• Remarkably, according to IMDB's name search, Cary Grant and Bette Davis never worked together on a film, despite being about the same age and both working at Warner Bros.
• Ten collector's edition with cassette tape (via Mike)

Via Neil Gaiman's blog comes a video of his and animator Gahan Wilson's video It Was a Dark and Silly Night at The New Yorker. The video is about five minutes long, and well worth watching. Gaiman described it as "the second of my five-finger exercises before I started The Graveyard Book."

Kottke linked to this amusing origin of the phrase stealing one's thunder. The source for that origin, Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, is available from Project Gutenberg (volume 1 and volume 2) and quite interesting itself.

• Sea lilies
• Trash vortex in the Pacific
• Magdalena's one act play title: My Big Martini Meltdown In Saugatuck
• Chimes at Midnight Orson Wells' Henry IV
• Thor with Kenneth Branagh
• Influences on Wes Anderson, watch the video
• Shakespearean limericks
• Texas science curriculum
• Chinese death trucks
• Move Under Ground, a Lovecraft/beat mash-up novel
• Criterion Seventh Seal Blu-Ray release with a "new, restored high-definition digital transfer"
• Criterion DVD Blu-Ray trade-in program
• Were geese sold by butchers in Victorian London with or without feathers?
• Vonnegut's inspired this tattoo and these assholes