This is Klaus Littmann’s Das grosse Stilleben (The Big Still Life) – Le Petit Grand-Magasin, a museum exhibit made to look like a forgotten department store. Klaus got his idea when:

At the start of 2003, a friend told Klaus Littmann about the closed department store in the village of Mugron in south-western France. An initial visit confirmed the incredible: a department store whose doors had last admitted patrons nearly 30 years ago has been left in its original condition and regularly maintained and cleaned by its owners.

Link – via grow-a-brain

The penguins sure dress up nicely for service! Link – via Scribal Terror

See what happened when a lizard leaped on a TV reporter, who then just lost it …

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

Brian Rueckly wanted his marriage proposal to unique:

So after a year of planning and 40 hours of work, he asked Stacy Martin to marry him Monday using a cornfield.

"At first I was in shock and forgot to say, ‘yes,’" Martin said

Rueckl, 23, had tilled a 40,000-square-foot message, "Stacy will you marry me," and two hearts into a cornfield near the Manitowoc and Kewaunee county line.

Rueckl, an employee of the Farm Service Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, used his educational background, the fact that his fiancée grew up on a farm and his love for computer-mapping programs to create the message in the 5-acre farm owned by his boss.

Link – via Arbroath

With a super slow-motion camera (1000 frames per second!) called Mega Mo, you can see the individual cylinders firing at 8000 rpm!

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Fazed

Geeks will appreciate the caption of this photo, from flickr user Carles-FlashOnTheBlog:

This new linux distribution seems to have a core unstable.

Non-geeks will just appreciate the photo of a penguin doing um, its business!

Link [flickr]

This hole in the sky is now known to astronomers as a dark molecular cloud [wiki]. From Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Here, a high concentration of dust and molecular gas absorb practically all the visible light emitted from background stars. The eerily dark surroundings help make the interiors of molecular clouds some of the coldest and most isolated places in the universe. One of the most notable of these dark absorption nebulae is a cloud toward the constellation Ophiuchus known as Barnard 68, pictured above. That no stars are visible in the center indicates that Barnard 68 is relatively nearby, with measurements placing it about 500 light-years away and half a light-year across. It is not known exactly how molecular clouds like Barnard 68 form, but it is known that these clouds are themselves likely places for new stars to form. It is possible to look right through the cloud in infrared light.

Link

Craftster.org’s user Cereallad modded this 80’s boombox into a laptop bag for his iBook:

Basically I hollowed out the boombox, added hinges and clasps, created a foam interior, created a strap attachment, and… well, attached a strap. Now it holds my ibook and one or two other books.

With rudimentary electronics skills, I wired the boombox to play music from the laptop or from any ipod/walkman/etc that you place inside. I added a small amplifier that I found on some toy speakers to increase the sound volume and quality. Don’t worry, I respect others when I play music. It’s my school backpack first and foremost.

Link

We can petition Hefty to make these teddy bear-shaped trash bags soon!

Link | Shay’s website – via Geisha Asobi

A dreamt sent Ma Qirong on a 16-year quest to find hidden treasures in a mountain in China:

Ma Qingrong, 62, from Dayao County, Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, dreamed 16 years ago about finding a huge fortune hidden on Mount Maanshan, 20 kilometers away from the village he lives in.

"In the dream, I was led by a girl clad in black dress to a mysterious stone palace, where I found lots of important scriptures, a chest of precious treasures, and a stele for Zhuge Kongming (an accomplished strategist in China’s Three Kingdoms Period). Legend has it that Zhuge Kongming once launched a crusade nearby. I believe what I dreamed is true," Ma told the newspaper.

Ma set up a shed on the 2,000-meter-high mountain on October 15, 1990 and has spent every day since digging and chiseling in the mountain.

Link – via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society