• I caught a Nova episode called Cracking the Maya Code that outlines the long history and surprisingly recent breakthroughs in understanding Mayan hieroglyphs. This episode has it all—evil conquistadors, eccentric communists, child prodigies and a stunningly beautiful written language.
• NASA will send your name on the next Mars rover if you just fill in their form. They even provide a spiffy printable certificate.
• This guy built a huge lighted grid as a custom electronic music controller. It has some great sounds and stutters wonderfully, but he admits “all this makes for one monstrous spaceship console which I can currently only fly at the recruit level.”

Pete Fecteau, an old colleague from MTG, knows his way around a Rubik’s Cube. He competed for this year’s ArtPrize by building the world’s largest Rubik’s Cube mosaic. Using 4,242 cubes, the result is a 20-foot mural of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in pixelated, high-contrast color.

The amazing project will also facilitate a bunch of cubes donated to Grand Rapids public schools for hands-on learning. Watch the mosaic come together in this clip.