Here's What's Awesome: Robot Penguins, Sitcom Maps

The awesome is back!

Alert Danny Devito, and prep his secret lair
For years robot penguins were seen as just another perplexing gadget that Batman had to face. Now, thanks to a team of engineers in Germany, they're alive - and swim rather well:

According to the article, "engineers are increasingly gaining inspiration from nature." In this case, the smooth-swimming penguins are proof of concept for a type of ultra-flexible industrial robot arm - and not a set of little rocket launchers that will terrorize Gotham City. [New Scientist]

So Dharma and Greg were down the road from Bob Saget and Dave Coulier?
Dan Meth's series of pop culture graphs and charts are a treat, especially his map of US sitcoms. (I'd forgotten where 227 took place.) This is good fun for TV enthusiasts, but if you haven't seen a "remix" like this before, consider this your first foray into the rich world of data visualization, where you can look at a set of data in a new context. This is one of the next big things in multimedia journalism, among other fields; learning that the characters in Wings and Cheers could've been neighbors is a step forward for your technological literacy. [FlowingData]

Somehow weirder than the Rockafire Explosion...
A guy in Toronto takes a bunch of old computer stuff - scanners, floppy disks, etc. - and teaches them to play "Bohemian Rhapsody." No sampling, no special effects - just the sounds of 80's and 90's computer miscellany turning their attention to Queen's most memorable tune:

[NoiseAddicts]

Now it's your turn: share an awesome link in the comments. First person to use TubeDubber to play the robot penguins swimming along to the junk computer "Bohemian Rhapsody" gets a shout-out in next week's column.