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If you’ve ever thought making a peanut butter sandwich was just too much of a hassle, then I have the product for you: P.B. Slices. Here’s a list of stores selling the slices in the USA. I also learned by exploring the P.B. Slices site that arachibutyrophobia is the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. This site promises to cure the phobia in just 24 hours. Via Serious Eats.
*Previously: The best invention since peanut butter.
So with all the recent news about the Large Hadron Collider, many of you may have this nagging question: what, exactly, would happen if you stick your head in the particle accelerator?
Well, actually, we know the answer to that because someone did stick his head into a particle accelerator. Here’s the story of Anatoli Bugorski:
Bugorski, a 36-year-old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, was checking a piece of accelerator equipment that had malfunctioned – as had, apparently, the several safety mechanisms. Leaning over the piece of equipment, Bugorski stuck his head in the space through which the beam passes on its way from one part of the accelerator tube to the next and saw a flash brighter than a thousand suns. He felt no pain.
From what we know about radiation, about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill a person (though we don’t know of anyone else who has been exposed to radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at about the speed of sound). The left side of his face swollen beyond recognition, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow so that doctors could observe his death over the following two to three weeks.
Over the next few days, skin on the back of his head and on his face just next to his left nostril peeled away to reveal the path the beam had burned through the skin, the skull, and the brain tissue. The inside of his head continued to burn away: all the nerves on the left were gone in two years, paralyzing that side of his face. Still, not only did Bugorski not die, but he remained a normally functioning human being, capable even of continuing in science. For the first dozen years, the only real evidence that something had gone neurologically awry were occasional petit mal seizures; over the last few years Bugorski has also had six grand mals. The dividing line of his life goes down the middle of his face: the right side has aged, while the left froze 19 years ago. When he concentrates, he wrinkles only half his forehead.
Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Things About the Large Hadron Collider You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask
Two design students dressed in Borat mankinis crashed the 20th celebration of Vietnam’s technology and telecommunications company FTP:
Appearing semi-nude and dancing to a popular revolutionary song, these two have real golden balls to pull this off in the conservative Confucian nation of Viet Nam. Highlights included pulling fake pubic hair from their bodies and wrestling with each other.
According to the Telegraph, the Hanoi Cultural Inspectorate (apparently, there is such a thing in Vietnam) fined the college 4 million dong (about 240 dollar) and suspended the two students for 12 months.
Link (with photos of the two students in Borat-styled mankinis. It’s rather disturbing. What has been seen cannot be unseen. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED – which, of course, made you want to look that much more, right?) – via Arbroath
Photo: jon|k [Flickr]
Bus drivers in Berkeley, California sure has a good sense of humor!
Very small array blog has really neat charts visualizing the genres of music that dominate the top record charts over the years. This one above shows how pop ruled the ’60s (only to be replaced by rock in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s – then you’ll see the rise of urban music in the ’90s and ’00s): Link – via Cool Infographics
At first glance, this clever ad by Ridsect Roach Trap looks like it features a beautiful wallpaper pattern. Once you look closely though, you’ll see that the dots are actually … roaches! Yuck! Link
Previously on Neatorama: Ant Wallpaper
7′ 9″ Bao Xishun is a father! Bao gained worldwide fame when he saved the lives of two dolphins. His wedding to Xia Shujuan was a lavish affair, sponsored by 15 companies. Their son was born Thursday at Zunhua Hospital in Hebei.
Bao’s son measured 22 inches long at birth, the senior doctor at Zunhua Hospital in Hebei province told Reuters.
Although slightly taller than average for newborn children, Bao’s boy came up well short of the 29.5 inches claimed as a record birth length last year, also in China.
“Bao is quite happy. The baby is healthy and a normal size,” the hospital’s senior doctor Zhang told Reuters.
Bao, a 7-foot-9-inch herdsman from Inner Mongolia, last year married Xia Shujuan, a pygmy by contrast at 5-foot-6 inches.
“I hope he or she can be about 2 meters tall,” Bao, 57, said last year about his wishes for a child. “Then he or she can play basketball.”
These Nile Tilapia fish are twins, joined at the abdomen. Usually, such twins in the animal kingdom will die before being discovered, but this duo is eight months old. They live in an aquarium in Bangkok, Thailand. See more pictures at the Daily Mail. Link -Thanks, Moi!
