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Here's an interesting piece from io9 : Cuckoos don't bother building their own nests - they just lay eggs that perfectly mimic those of other birds and take over their nests. But other birds are wising up, evolving some seriously impressive tricks to spot the cuckoo eggs.  Cuckoos are what's known as brood parasites, meaning they hide their eggs in the nests of other species. To avoid detection, the cuckoos have evolved so that their eggs replicate those of their preferred targets. If the host bird doesn't notice the strange egg in its nest, the newly hatched cuckoo will actually take all the nest for itself, taking the other eggs on its back and dropping them out of the nest.   To avoid this nasty fate for their offspring, the other birds have evolved a few nifty ways to spot the fakes, which we're only now beginning to fully understand. One of the most intriguing finds is that birds have an extra color-sensitive cell in their retinas, which makes them far more s...

The clock tower seems to be modeled after the Prague Clock. [via Automaton Blog ]

We've had The Invention of Hugo Cabret on our reading list for a while now. Good news is that Martin Scorcese is working on a movie adaptation! It's a story about a mechanical automaton, and a loose narrative on the life of Georges Méliès. [via io9 ]

From Space.com : The massive earthquake that struck northeast Japan Friday (March 11) has shortened the length Earth's day by a fraction and shifted how the planet's mass is distributed. A new analysis of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan has found that the intense temblor has accelerated Earth's spin, shortening the length of the 24-hour day by 1.8 microseconds, according to geophysicist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Gross refined his estimates of the Japan quake's impact – which previously suggested a 1.6-microsecond shortening of the day – based on new data on how much the fault that triggered the earthquake slipped to redistribute the planet's mass. A microsecond is a millionth of a second. "By changing the distribution of the Earth's mass, the Japanese earthquake should have caused the Earth to rotate a bit faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds," Gross told SPACE.com in a...

[via Adafruit ]

The Badisches Landmuseum at Karlsruhe has an excellent website where you can listen to some exceptionally rare and fascinating mechanical musical instruments and musical clocks. Here you can listen to a Musical cabinet by the Veith-Langenbucher company, Augsburg, circa 1620... or an Elephant Clock, c. 1760, Clock case: Antoine Foullet, Mechanism: Tibeauville-Lamy... or an Apollo Clock, c. 1780... or a Chest with Flute Mechanism, c. 1804, Davrainville workshop, Paris. The website has this to say about the Musical Chest: After Napoleon was crowned Emperor he is said to have commissioned this model and given it to the Duchess of Bordeaux. The metal pin roller, also known asa cob, has eight melodies by Joseph Haydn which he specifically composed for this mechanical instrument. I wish there were better pictures available to post, but the sound files are definitely worth checking out!

This is a beautiful piece that deserves to be blogged about: From The British Museum : Description Automaton in the form of a 'nef' or ship table ornament. Gilded brass hull with embossed decoration of the sea with waves and monsters. Three masts with yard arms carrying furled cloth sails. At the top of each mast a metal pennant. Wire rigging ropes and waxed thread ratlines. On the main deck eight figures each with a sword. A small clock is mounted at the base of the main mast, showing hours and minutes on a silver dial with coloured enamel floral motifs In the crows' nests of the main mast sailors strike the hours and quarters on inverted bells. Beneath the main mast heralds and Electors automatically process before an Emperor seated beneath a canopy with a double-headed eagle of the Holy Roma Empire. On the rear deck, two painted figures with swords. The bowsprit contains a wheel-lock canon which fired automatically. A further ten cannons are arranged around the hull. Wit...