From a very important gallery of dangerous babies over at i09.

More (and much stranger work) here.

"Scientists have reached into the shuttered world of a "lost" brain-damaged patient and communicated with him via his thoughts. The 29-year-old Belgian was able to answer "yes" and "no" to questions by conjuring up imaginary scenes while having his brain scanned.

Before the extraordinary experiment, the man, who suffered a severe head injury in a road accident in 2003, had shown no sign of being aware of the outside world.

Five years ago, he was presumed to have slipped from a coma to a vegetative state, leaving his body functioning but his personality and consciousness wiped out.

The British and Belgian researchers now know that the diagnosis was wrong. The man was able to respond to questions about his life as scientists monitored activity in his brain.

They admitted to being "astonished" by the result, which has enormous implications for the care and treatment of vegetative patients."

"Driving out of town, defroster roaring, you barely noted the bank thermometer on the town square: minus 27 degrees at 6:36. The radio weather report warned of a deep mass of arctic air settling over the region. The man who took your money at the Conoco station shook his head at the register and said he wouldn't be going anywhere tonight if he were you. You smiled. A little chill never hurt anybody with enough fleece and a good four-wheel-drive.

But now you're stuck. Jamming the gearshift into low, you try to muscle out of the drift. The tires whine on ice-slicked snow as headlights dance on the curtain of frosted firs across the road. Shoving the lever back into park, you shoulder open the door and step from your heated capsule. Cold slaps your naked face, squeezes tears from your eyes."

"Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, armies of corporate lobbyists grease the palms of our elected officials, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia, and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, this product is duping us into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent, or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to re-inflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next fifteen to twenty years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, increasing the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan, which have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws and restore habeas corpus.

Does anybody really wonder why men like George Carlin stopped seriously following politics (or voting) in his later years and just sat down, crossed his legs, and laughed at everyone?

Caleb Larsen's "A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter" is a piece of art in the shape of a black cube that repeatedly attempts to sell itself via eBay (over and over and over again).