News you can't use!

Parisian underground cinema. Seriously underground:

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement. [...]

Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

3-D chocolate printer made of Lego:

We've developed a print head that will print 5mm 'pixels' of the consumable. It basically acts as a pump. Its a medium sized lego gear (driven by a worm gear attached to the motor) with four axels that repeatedly squeaze and release a pipe attached to a funnel that holds the consumables. a half-rotation of this wheel yeilds a blob.

Monkey saves Indian democracy from other monkeys:

Mangal, a langur, has been hired by the Delhi Election Commission to rid its premises near Kashmiri Gate of nearly 60 monkeys which have been creating a nuisance there since the Assembly polls last year.

The monkeys had been terrorising visitors and officers at the commission office for over three months now. Their particular favourite was the Form 6, which is filled when one is applying for a voter’s identity card. The monkeys would snatch the forms from applicants before tearing them. Other files and papers have also been destroyed by the monkeys.

Real-time Worldcon blogging — I wish I’d known about this at the con! Hey, I think I know the back of that head.

Comics

This week’s comics, a day late because of Labor Day:

Ultimate X-Men #9: “The Tempest”
by Brian K Vaughan and Brandon Peterson
I feel like I maybe missed volume #8. I have no memory of the Big Event Just Passed that most of this volume was filled with reaction to. Anyway, Brian Vaughan works some nice touches into this arc. I especially liked the parallel between the Xavier Academy and the Harvey Milk School. And Vaughan’s Courtney Love-like take on the Dazzler. The original Sinister plotline happened when I wasn’t reading X-Men (or, I suspect, any Marvel comics), so I that aspect of this arc didn’t do a whole lot for me.

Fire Proves Iron: Grounded Stars
by Page Malbrough, Michael C Malbrough, and GW Fisher
This small book is a nice-looking but unreadable fantasy story. The art’s good, but it contains exchanges like this:

“I’m different. But I don’t think I’m superior to a Precarian. I have no desire to pull my energy like other Mechans.”
“Remember Madeline... you aren’t a pure Mechan. Your bloodline is Precarian.”
“Yeah. I was born a Skimp.”

Dungeon Vol. 1: “Duck Heart”
by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim
The gem of this week’s acquisitions! A funny, clever, and somehow touching, yet very violent, D&D-inspired funny-animal fantasy story.