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Norwegian skiier Fred Syversen unintentionally dropped 107 meters (351 feet) off a cliff while attempting a different cliff jump -and survived with hardly a scratch! The jump was nearly a year ago, but video evidence has recently led to measurements that confirm how high the jump really was.
Fred Syversen realized that he missed the correct line. Instead of braking he decided to drop as well as possible. He knew that braking could lead to uncontrolled flying, which could actually kill him. Just before jumping he made a little turn in order to avoid crashing into the rocks on his left side. His position looks well controlled, although (for a moment) he was sure he was going to die.
Syversen’s landing buried him in two meters of snow. He was dug out by the helicopter crew and taken to a hospital, where he was found to have suffered only minor liver damage. Link (with video) -via Arbroath
If his dedication to the Boy Scout is any indication, Shawn Goldsmith will surely go far. He has accomplished a rare feat: he earned all 121 Boy Scout merit badges available!
You only need 21 to get the title "Eagle" Scout. "If I run into a stranger, there’s definitely something to talk about. I have 121 topics to talk about," he says when asked why he did it.
The growing popularity of Facebook has an unintended consequences for young people who used to have the social networking website all to themselves: their parents are joining and befriending them!
The Facebook group entitled "For the love of god — don’t let parents join Facebook" has 5,819 high school and college-aged members who want to stop the growing number of parents who are joining Facebook, the massively popular social networking site, from "spying" on them. [...]
"It’s really weird that nonstudents and parents use Facebook," said Emma Gaines, a Tufts University sophomore. "It makes me feel really uncomfortable that my older aunt has Facebook, because she says that she likes to check up on her teenage nieces and nephews and takes our pictures for her own use. That’s creepy."
Many people find that city life is exhausting and now scientists know the reason. Here’s how urban living is actually detrimental to the human brain:
Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it’s long been recognized that city life is exhausting — that’s why Picasso left Paris — this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.
"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we’re beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations."
One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil.
Donald Peters has got to be both the luckiest and unluckiest man on the day of his death. Well, unlucky because he suffered a heart attack and died, but lucky because he just bought the winning lottery ticket that provided for his family:
The Peters children think their father would have appreciated the irony.
Peters bought two Connecticut Lottery tickets at a local 7-Eleven store on Nov. 1 as part of a 20-year tradition he shared with his wife Charlotte. Later that day, the 79-year-old retired hat factory worker suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his yard in Danbury. [...]
"He’d be very mad, he just passed away and she won a lot of money," said Brian Peters, one of the couple’s three children. "He’d say, ‘Figures!"’
Instructable user arcticpenguin unraveled the mystery behind various screw types (what? You think that there are only Phillips and slotted screws?). Take for example, the history of the Phillips screw:
This cross drive screw story starts when Henry Phillips purchased a crude form of a cruciform-recessed screw head concept from an Oregon inventor named J.P. Thompson.
Henry F. Phillips (1890 to 1958), a U.S. businessman from Portland, Oregon, has the honor of having the Phillips head screw and screwdriver named after him.
The cruciform shape can be considered to be a cruciform design with their 90 degree shapes as most have similar physics properties.
Phillips developed Thompsons invention screw into a workable form. Phillips had come up with a recessed cross screw designed for efficiency on an auto assembly line. The idea was that the screwdriver would turn the screw with increasing force until the tip of the driver popped out, called camout. When tightening a Phillips screw with a Phillips screw driver you will notice that when the torque gets to be too strong, the screw driver winds itself out of the screw so the screw head would not be ruined or brake off.
Phillips also founded the Phillips Screw Company in Oregon in 1933, but never actually made screws. He had called on every established screw manufacturer in the US and was told simply that the screw could not be made. Screw makers of the 1930s dismissed the Phillips concept since it calls for a relatively complex recessed socket shape in the head of the screw; as distinct from the simple milled slot of a slotted type screw.
Phillips then called on the American Screw Company, a newcomer to the industry whose new president, Eugene Clark, personally became interested in the new product, despite the opposition of his engineers, who like others in the industry had insisted it could not be made. According to one printed report, the president of American Screw Company said: "I finally told my head men that I would put on pension all who insisted it could not be done. After that an efficient method was evolved to manufacture the fasteners and now we have licensed all other major companies to use it." (Source)
If you have small children hooked on the TV show Yo Gabba Gabba! you’ll recognize this crocheted beanie hat right away. I don’t know why Yo Gabba Gabba! is so popular with kids – the show is non-sensical, but with a very catchy tune.
It’s the Plex robot beanie hat, by Etsy seller UrbanPrincess: Link – via Yokiddo
This one is strange: a woman in Birmingham, England, is hospitalized because she faints whenever she eats a sandwich!
The woman, 25, was seen in hospital complaining of short 10-second episodes of feeling "light-headed, occasionally nauseous, and suddenly and alarmingly unwell".
On more than one occasion she had collapsed. The problem had started when she was aged 15, sometimes recurring several times a week. [...] The episodes tended to occur when the woman consumed certain types of food, particularly sandwiches and fizzy drinks.
Turns out, her condition is called "swallow syncope," a rare medical condition where swallowing triggers the nerve reflexes that cause the heart to stop temporarily: Link – via Look At This
Reverend Ed Dobson did just that, and the retired megachurch pastor found out that living like Jesus is tough. Really tough:
The retired megachurch pastor and one-time architect of the religious right has spent the last year trying to eat, pray, talk and even vote as Jesus would. His revelation: Being Jesus is tough.
"I’ve concluded that I am a follower, but I’m not a very good one," Dobson said. "If you get serious about the Bible, it will really mess you up."
But a year of living like Jesus has affected Dobson in deeply spiritual and unexpected ways. He has witnessed for Jesus in bars, picked up strangers needing rides and voted for a Democrat who he believes best reflects Christ’s teachings. During recent Christmas celebrations, as Christians worshipped the Christ child born in a manger, Dobson appreciated more than ever the man who preached love, only to die on a cross.
Charles Honey of the Religion News Service has more on the fascinating story: Link
(Photo: Emily Zoladz/The Grand Rapid Press)
Note: A.J. Jacobs also did this and wrote a book about it: The Year of Living Biblically
Think that because diet sodas have low calories they help prevent weight gain? Think again! David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding of Men’s Health wrote an article on the ugly truth about diet soda:
When confronted with the growing tide of calories from sweetened beverages, the first response is, “Why not just drink diet soda?” Well, for a few reasons:
Just because diet soda is low in calories doesn’t mean it can’t lead to weight gain.
It may have only 5 or fewer calories per serving, but emerging research suggests that consuming sugary-tasting beverages–even if they’re artificially sweetened–may lead to a high preference for sweetness overall. That means sweeter (and more caloric) cereal, bread, dessert–everything.
Link | More on "The Dangers of Diet Soda" at Get Fit Slowly blog
Sir Isaac Newton was born this day, January 4, In 1643. Like many great people, Newton’s life began quite inauspiciously: he was born prematurely (remember, this is 1643) and was so small that he wasn’t expected to live.
It’s a good thing that he did, however, as Newton grew up to be the greatest scientist who ever lived.
Check out Neatorama’s 10 Strange Facts about Newton for more fun facts about Sir Isaac: Link
Amy Sedaris is my Martha Stewart. Here she is on Martha’s show a couple of years ago, horrifying Martha by telling her that she never sifts and mocking the fact that there are only two KitchenAids.
Previously on Neatorama: Snoop and Martha Make Mashed Potatoes
It starts easy, but it gets challenging! And when you finish that one, there’s FactoryBalls 2, which I think is even more inventive. Grass seed, anyone? Have fun!
FactoryBalls 1 and FactoryBalls 2 via Jayisgames
Here’s a short and sweet YouTube clip of a woman who can hoop a hula (hula hoops? Who knows!) while swinging on rings.
It’s pretty amazing, actually – I can’t even use a hula hoop while standing on solid ground.
– via videosift
Tariq Griffin’s twin boys are special. Not only because they’re twins, but because they’re twins born on different days, months, and years!
Twin brother Tarrance was born a bit earlier — 26 minutes to be exact.
Tarrance Kyle Griffin Jr. was born at 11:51 p.m. Wednesday, followed by Tariq Lamont Griffin at 12:17 a.m. Thursday.
That means the boys have the unique distinction of having been born on different days, months and years.
Link – Thanks Tiffany!
Have you ever been scared yet deeply intrigued by something at the same time? Well, I’m like that with this Bacon Gumballs at the Web’s strangest store, Archie McPhee. I’m not sure if it’ll taste good, but how can you not try bacon gumball? Link – via Everlasting Blort
Wikipedia bills itself as the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit. And while indeed that is true, do you ever wonder who does the bulk of the work? Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia has the surprising answer:
Wales decided to run a simple study to find out: he counted who made the most edits to the site. "I expected to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it’s actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing … a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix … or something like that."
Aaron Swartz of Raw Thought has the full story: Link – via Silicon Alley Insider
I don’t know how Avi Abrams of Dark Roasted Blend blog does it, but he’s managed to compile one of the web’s neatest gallery of wonderful, fun, and sometimes plain ol’ weird photos.
I particularly like this one: The Hilarious & Crazy Signage, Part 12 (TWELVE!? When does he sleep?): Link
Environuts, … er, green enthusiasts were up in arms when they discovered an illegal logging site in Poland’s nature reserve. The police busted the culprit:
Environmentalists found 20 neatly stacked tree trunks and others marked for felling with notches at the beauty-spot at Subkowy in northern Poland.
But police followed a trail left where one tree had been dragged away – and found a beaver dam right in the middle of the river. A police spokesman said: "The campaigners are feeling pretty stupid. There’s nothing more natural than a beaver."
Link – via The Evangelical Outpost
Bear skin rug is so passé – Here’s something infinitely better: the Monster Skin Rug by Joshua Ben Longo of Longoland Design. It’ll go very well with the Monster Skin Chair.
You can find this and other radical rugs and "must-see" mat designs on the always fascinating WebUrbanist blog: Link
