Welcome to week two of Cool Stuff Friday.

• Sir Patrick Stewart, Leonard Nimoy, and Sir Ian McKellan, all in one photograph.
• A life-size Dalek, made out of LEGO.
• Scientists at Harvard and MIT are one step closer to creating the light saber. “Lukin also suggested that the system might one day even be used to create complex three-dimensional structures – such as crystals – wholly out of light.”
• The Curiosity Rover found that Martian soil is about two percent water, by weight, which could be a very good thing for future colonists. (Though there’s also perchlorate in the soil, which is harmful to humans and would need to be dealt with.)
• For Banned Books Week, MediaBistro linked to excerpts from the ten most frequently challenged library books in the U.S. (Captain Underpants leads the list.)
• 28 Cats Having a Way Worse Day Than You. It’s a Buzzfeed page and takes a little while to load, but it made both me and my wife laugh.
• I may need to pick up one of these Girl Cooties Warning T-shirts that author Jaime Lee Moyer just put up on Zazzle.
• Photos from Socotra Island – About a third of the plant life here exists nowhere else on the planet. It’s described as the most alien-looking place on Earth, though I’m not sure I agree. Maybe the most alien-looking land on Earth. Deep-ocean life can get pretty unusual…

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.