"Spider 'Resurrections' Take Scientists by Surprise"

NatGeo:

Scientists at the University of Rennes in France collected three species of wolf spider—two from salt marshes, one from a forest. The team immersed 120 females of each species in seawater, jostling the spiders with brushes every two hours to see if they responded.

As expected, all the forest wolf spiders (Pardosa lugubris) apparently died after 24 hours. The two salt marsh-dwelling species took longer—28 hours for Pardosa purbeckensis and 36 hours for Arctosa fulvolineata.

After the "drownings," the researchers, hoping to weigh the spiders later, left them out to dry. That's when things began to get weird.

"H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' was an allegory about the injustice of European imperial rule of Africa, China and India."

Book about vintage mascots

Ad Boy: Vintage Advertising with Character features images of roughly 500 largely-obscure, abandoned, and forgotten mascots from 20th Century ads, including:

Inspector Gadget toy

More photos here.

Woman sends stripper to her 10 year high school reunion

Andrea Wachner decided to send a stripper to her 10-year high school reunion and had a film crew follow her around.

Hand in space

How the villains in Planetary received their powers:



A photo taken by of a "young pulsar":

"Twilight author Stephenie Meyer continues to dominate USA Today's Best-Selling Books list"

"Sales of her novels accounted for about 16% of all book sales tracked by the list in the first quarter of 2009"