MC Hammerheadshark uploaded to his Flickr this image of the Sarajevo Rose (wiki). He tells the Wooster Collective:
“As I was passing through Sarajevo I couldn’t help but notice the effects of the Bosnian War. It’s everywhere, in the buildings, in the people, in the graveyards that stretch blocks and blocks. But the most impactful of these markings are on the street. While walking the city you are sure to come across a splattering pattern of pock-marks from where a mortar round hit.
To signify places of significant deaths, the explosion marks are filled in with red resin to create the Sarajevo Rose.”
Link – via Wooster Collective
This four-years old baby elephant likes to dance and play harmonica at the same time! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Say No to Crack
Here’s a 1930 Popular Science article "Thirteen New Aids Designed for the Busy Housewife" (including such gems as the electric lamp stove seen above, kitchen incinerator to burn all your garbage, electric toaster that toasts bread on both sides, and more!) : Link – via Miss Cellania
Among the many slides on Pompeii [wiki] available at University of California at Santa Cruz’s Branson DeCou Archive is this one showing an ash figure of a victim of Mount Vesuvius eruption. Link – via Eduyayo
10 Things Impossible to Do With Your Body
Presidential Superstitions 
Scary Science That Humans Embraced
An 85-year-old Chinese man fell out of his fifth floor window and would’ve plunged to his death had he not been saved by an errant nail:
The nail in the wall, between the fourth and fifth floors, snagged his clothing and held his weight until help arrived.
After 30 minutes hanging from the outside of the building in Zhengzhou city, Henan province, Zhao Jingzhi was rescued by firefighters.
Bono and his celebrity friends’ Red campaign has raised $18 million worldwide – that’s nothing to sneeze at except that they had spent an estimated $100 million promoting it!
The disproportionate ratio between the marketing outlay and the money raised is drawing concern among nonprofit watchdogs, cause-marketing experts and even executives in the ad business. It threatens to spur a backlash, not just against the Red campaign — which ambitiously set out to change the cause-marketing model by allowing partners to profit from charity — but also for the brands involved.
The backlash has already started:
The campaign’s inherent appeal to conspicuous consumption has spurred a parody by a group of San Francisco designers and artists, who take issue with Bono’s rallying cry. "Shopping is not a solution. Buy less. Give more," is the message at buylesscrap.org, which encourages people to give directly to the Global Fund.
Link – via A Welsh View
Google Maps has a hidden feature that allows anyone to zoom in extremely close on some satellite pictures. This screenshot shows the closest zoom available for a location in the Sahara desert. Using this hidden feature, you can zoom in a little closer in almost any Metropolitan area, and MUCH closer in select areas.
Here’s Google Blogoscoped’s instructions on utilizing this feature:
1. Select a location and switch to satellite view
2. Zoom in as far as you can, and click “link to this page†at the top right
3. Now replace the “z†parameter in the URL with a higher value, e.g. 20, 22, or 23, and wait. Some locations will now show more detailed imagery
Since people are good at identifying faces at low resolutions, someone should be able to identify the guy looking skyward in the upper right. My vote is that he’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, in hiding.
Click on the Link [Google Maps] to navigate the rest of this location. Via Google Blogoscoped
What will those kooky Japanese tv producers think of next?
Link [YouTube] via Danger Room.
Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon, an Indian lawyer and part-time farmerin the Bhopal suburb of India, may be the last king of France!
This Indian father-of-three is being feted as the long-lost descendent of the Bourbon kings who ruled France from the 16th century to the French revolution. A distant cousin of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he is alleged to be not only related to the current Bourbon king of Spain and the Bourbon descendants still in France, but to have more claim than any of them to the French crown.
Remy and Jeremy Vos made this MiniV8 by taking an old Mini [wiki] pickup chassis and putting a V8 engine!
Link – via Found on the Web
Anybots’ Dextor is the world’s first dynamically balanced walking robot, meaning it balances just like a human (unlike the famous Honda’s Asimo robot). Paul Graham explains:
There are of course biped robots that walk. The Honda Asimo is the best known. But the Asimo doesn’t balance dynamically. Its walk is preprogrammed; if you had it walk twice across the same space, it would put its feet down in exactly the same place the second time. And of course the floor has to be hard and flat.
Dynamically balancing—the way we walk—is much harder. It looks fairly smooth when we do it, but it’s really a controlled fall. At any given moment you have to think (or at least, your body does) about which direction you’re falling, and put your foot down in exactly the right place to push you in the direction you want to go. Practice makes it seem easy to us, but it’s a very hard problem to solve.
Links: YouTube clip | Anybots Website – via robots.net
Hans van Bentem of Rock and Royal makes awesome custom chandeliers, like the skull and bones one on the left!
Link – via Geisha asobi
Driving school BSM found that young drivers are more likely to drive faster on the roads after playing racing video games:
More than a third of young drivers are more likely to go faster on the roads after playing on-screen driving games, a survey suggests.
And 27% of motorists aged under 24 admitted more risk-taking on the road after a gaming session.
From the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum via Egyptology Blog
Makeup By Julie can supply your next party with Living Tables. The tables will chat with your guests (in character) and serve food and drinks. You can order tables with a variety of themes. Link -via Everlasting Blort
Today’s collaboration with What is It? blog brings us this mysterious object: guess what it is and win a Free Neatorama T-Shirt!
Game rule is easy: leave your guess in the comment section (post no URL please, let others play). One more pic (and dimension info) at the What is it Blog?
Update 3/9/07: Here’s the answer:
Cap bombs, a paper cap is inserted into the opening and then the device is dropped on the ground to detonate it. The one on the right is Admiral Dewey.
Congrats to Kent #23 who got it right!
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