Bike helmet that smells bad when it's cracked

This is cool. A bike helmet made with lots of little capsules of some stuff that smells bad. If a kid drops his helmet, and it cracks, he'll know because of the smell (and not want to put it back on).

And I guess if you find your kid lying on the sidewalk next to his bike, and the helmet smells bad, you know he's had quite a hit on the head.

Octo Porn

I found this at Pharyngula. It's a boy octopus meets girl octopus story with possibly the worst narration I've ever heard of a nature film. But you have to listen to it to understand what you're seeing.

The most amazing 5-year-old gymnast

The most amazing 5-year-old boy gymnast. I'd wet my pants if I saw my kids try most of this.

Cool stuff I'm not paid to endorse: Playground compost plantings.

A company called Filtrexx makes those long rolls of burlap you see used for erosion control along freeways and constructions sites. They also make a similar product filled with compost that you can use for regular garden plantings, or you can lay them on a pile of dirt and make a grass-covered hill for kids to play on. They're making a play for the child care center market. Their on-line catalog is a slideshow.

It has to be replaced every few years, and it looks expensive to me, but I'm told by people who run centers that, as landscaping and planting goes, they're fairly cheap as well as being cool.

Stuff I'm really glad I found out

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish. Or at least his family name is.

Somebody blew up a photo of him holding up his identity card during the recent post-electoral riots and found out from it his previous name, which his family changed when they moved to Teheran in the 1950s. The name was "Sabourjian — a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver....The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior."

This is like finding out Texas outsider George W. Bush is really a legacy Yalie from an old and influential New England family. Oh, wait.

Madeleine Albright found out while she was Secretary of State that her parents were Jewish. She was raised a catholic and converted at marriage to Episcopalianism. Three of her grandparents died in the Holocaust, but she didn't know about it until late in life. Her parents were afraid of it happening again.

I guess you do what you feel you need to do to keep people from shipping you off to the camps.

UPDATE: The Guardian convincingly says it's not so. Too bad.