Things I learned this week 3 Jun

• You can stuff sausage casings with cupcake batter. Bake the stuffed casings at 325 F and only fill them halfway.
• A successful brain-gate interface allows tetra plegics the ability to control a robot arm with their mind.
• 2012 is the 250th anniversary of the sandwich.
• These restaurant names exist for real (yes, they're all in Asia): Happy Crack; Come & Wait; Restoran Fatso; Meat Patty Explode Stomach; Smart Noshery makes You Slobber; Herpes Pizza; Watery Coffee; Little Drooling Bear; Smell.
• 66% of the energy used to produce electricity is lost to waste or inefficiencies.
• James Doohan (Scotty) finally made it into space (aboard Space-X Falcon rocket that brought the Dragon capsule to the ISS). 
• Bakelite, one of the first synthetic plastics, was invented in 1907 to replace the beetle excretion called shellac (It took 16,000 beetles six months to make a pound of shellac). It was used to make radios, telephones, ashtrays, and a thousand other things.
• MIT engineers have essentially invented the hypospray (a-la Star Trek), a means of injecting drugs into the body without a needle.