Perhaps what makes these illustrations work is that they trust their young audience with difficult questions: Are our brains simply computers? Are our bodies mere machines? What is work, without agency? What is pleasure, without feeling? These are not things I was thinking about in 1989.

Or, you know, it could be the fact that they're utterly stunning, and look like something you'd find in an art gallery, not a rotting children's book. More at [AJourneyAroundMySkull via BoingBoing]

This second spiral was spotted in the Russian skies over a day after the one in Norway and it actually does look a bit more like a rocket spinning around and less like a mysterious phenomena:

Ah well, the rocket-like appearance of this spiral and the explanations for the Norway one aside: I still want to believe and even suggest Florida as the next invasion attempt. It's sunny here and we won't fight back much. [Discover]

Problem is, Interpol has a list of the phone's International Mobile Equipment Identifier (IMEI), which carriers can use to block the devices. We had already warned against grabbing an iPhone in a Belgian back alley…you can add Russia to that list. (I much prefer back alleys in the Netherlands, anyway). [Cult of Mac via PC World]

Talking to the Daily Mail, a spokesman from Moscow's weather forecasting service said: "Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west – this is how the effect was produced.

"This is purely an optical effect, although it does look impressive," he added.

Ok, so it's just clouds—but when you watch the video you still expect an alien ship to drop through that hole with lasers blazing. [Telegraph]

(That's Nikolai Sutyagin from Arkhangelsk in Russia's north-east).

But I digress. The Norwegian Barents Secretariat office and cultural tower will be built with natural and recycled materials from the surrounding area. The designers, Oslo-based Reiulf Ramstad Architects, are focusing on sustainable building and carbon neutrality.

They also hope to reuse biodegradable household and industrial waste to produce bio gas. Mmm. Like fresh pine cones! [Barents Observer via Inhabitat]

The retro-futuristic, glass-encased structure is actually a parking garage in Moscow, for regular, non-flying cars. Unlike VW's staggeringly large take on the same concept, this little piece of urban engineering takes up a mere 100 square meters, in which it can cram between 22 and 54 cars, depending on how many floors it's configured with—this one holds 34. The incredibly ornate rotating elevator mechanism is best explained in pictures.

There is definitely a Yakov Smirnoff joke in here somewhere, but I'm slightly too tired—and slightly too proud—to find it. [Zyalt via English Russia]

According to the Russian National Committee for Protection Against Ionizing Radiation, in children who use mobile phones, should expect a weakening of memory, decline of attention, irritability, sleep violation, reducing the critical alert. [Translated through Google]

Sounds like normal teenagers to me.

[Tut.By (translated) via Foreign Policy via BoingBoing]

It'sa snowblower. Or better said, a snow melter. The ones above use Klimov VK-1 engines from Mig-15 planes. The one from Tuesday could have been the engine from a Mig-17. They also use these to melt ice on other planes engines—while waiting on the cold Russian airport runways—and train tracks, as you can see in the gallery (in that case, they used half the plane).

Crazy Ivans. You gotta love those guys. Except when they send their Akula-class nuclear subs to patrol around New York. [Dark Roasted Blend]

The study is the brainchild of a European Space Agency and Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems partnership. The subjects weren't astronauts but volunteers from various parts of the globe with backgrounds in the military and aviation.

But the worst part of the experience? It wasn't language barriers or bad food. It was the "monotony," according to one crew member.

While researchers plan a longer, 520-day simulated trip to Mars (in reality, the roundtrip would still take twice as long), 6 volunteers get to explain to friends and family the thrill of almost not going into space.

I say we just make the whole thing a reality show, drop some sharks in the tank and get the international space program some Fox sponsorship.

We know this because on Friday Russia declassified pages and pages of its Cold War UFO sightings. A full 50% of the sightings were in the ocean, and a further 15% were in lakes like Baikal (the world's deepest).

In one sad case, three Russian navy diving cadets lost their lives chasing "a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silvery suits." In another, straight out of The Abyss, a sub commander details an encounter where an underwater UFO reached speeds of 230 knots. "It was like the objects defied the laws of physics," he said.

Regardless, accuracy of these reports aside, we can take solace in the fact that Ed Harris has experience with both space and sea. [Scoop Deck via Wired]

We don't know much about this Superbaby, and in fact I'm not totally sure he's even Russian (or human. Get it?). The video doesn't provide much beyond some Tetris-style music and impressive feats of baby acumen, but that's enough for us. It's very clearly a baby operating a giant backhoe, and those are all the facts we need. [TechEBlog]

The launch bests the lavish $350 million Dubai that set sail from, yes, Dubai. At 551-ft. in length, the Dubai had been the longest yacht in the world. The Eclipse also cost a cool $350 mil to complete, but it comes with a host of modern extras and a decidedly un-tacky interior so we're giving it the edge not only on length, but in the taste department as well.

Take for example the missile defense system that allows the crew to jam incoming pirate missiles. Or, perhaps you'll consider the secret underwater submarine entrance, perfect for James Bond style escapes—just watch out for those underwater knife fights!

Then there's the two heli-pads, pool with surrounding Havana bars, cinema, library, restaurant, private garden and a 5,000-sq.-ft. master bedroom, the latter of which had me feeling pretty stupid about all the bragging I did last night regarding what I pay for my new "spacious one bedroom apartment." [Morgan Post via Born Rich]

In honor of the only game to be branded with "FROM RUSSIA WITH FUN!", let's all take a minute to let the Tetris theme song burrow its way into our brains one more time.

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People have this idea that, after the end of the Cold War, the Red Army was in shambles. In part that is true, but it never lost its power. Now, it's all the contrary. They are in better shape than ever, and still developing weaponry that—while it may not compare to the best that the United States has to offer—is still ingenious, like their missiles designed to avoid missile defense.

The Big Picture has some beautiful photos of their yearly parade in the Red Square, which it's as impressive as it was in the years of Stalin, Brezhnev, and Khrushchev.

Click to see the rest of the photos. [Big Picture]

Nikolay Polissky is an artist who trades primarily in giant, incomprehensibly weird wooden sculptures. Apparently (as in, obviously) his intention in building this "Large Hadron Collider" wasn't to create something with much aesthetic similarity to the LHC, but something that captures its essence. One shared motif: Tubes!Otherwise, see if you can pick out this "essence":

Me neither. [English Russia, Technogreatideas]

According to English Russia, this meme is taking the country by storm. It all started after that blonde posted her photo in Russian social network. From there, butt chaos ensued, planetary collisions happened, and Earth's gravity field changed. It's similar to the self-portrait meme we've covered before, but involving slightly more ass.

Citizens, all I can say is: We beat the crap out of Soviets on the Space Race, capitalist won against communism, we tore down the Berlin wall... are we going to let them win this one?

I say NO. We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Hard butts. The Free World shall prevail.

Send your picture contests@gizmodo.com with "Butt photo" in the subject. [English Russia via Vilena—Thanks Genevieve]

You read that correctly, fellow Net denizens. Coming soon, Mr. Polar Bear and his brethren will be sharing real estate with a ring of floating, self-sustained nuclear power stations. It's all part of Russia's—and the world's—ongoing thirst for energy.

Environmentalists are understandably outraged over the impact said stations could have on an already endangered area of the globe, and if polar bears could talk, I imagine they'd be outraged too.

Said a rep from Bellona, a Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, "[The plan] is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle."

Oh, and there's this fear that Russia will simply dump the radioactive waste into the Arctic Sea anwyay, which they've done before on several occasions. To date at least 12 nuclear reactors from decommissioned Russian submarines have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid waste.

Pretty soon the ocean will be like a 24/7 aurora borealis up there. A wonderful, cancer-causing aurora borealis. [Guardian]