HOME |
RSS | 
When you approach the North Pole, compasses don’t work properly because the difference between the geographic pole and the magnetic pole are more pronounced than elsewhere. So the Catlin Arctic Survey, currently en route to the pole to measure the Arctic Ice Cap, are having to use alternate methods of navigation. To measure wind direction, they are using a pair of lacy panties! The expedition is led by veteran explorer Pen Hadow.
Mr Hadow, who was the first person to trek solo to the North Pole, said the knickers were kindly donated by a supporter of the expedition.
Speaking from the Arctic via satellite phone, he said: “It an entirely genuine situation. If you can get gossamer thin material and attach it your ski pole it is particularly useful for this project because we can cannot use the compass as we are so close to magnetic north and it is too cold to use the GPS.
This expedition is particularly difficult because they are taking a route that has never been traveled. They expect to reach the pole in May or June. Link -via Arbroath
Shoe designers have been busy incorporating the latest technology into shoes. This list has shoes embedded with iPod transmitters, CDs, MP3 players, GPS trackers, and headlights. Others have springs or computer-enhanced fit. The shoe pictured was produced especially for the social media site Digg, with glow-in-the-dark logos! Link -via Digg
Just reading this article can be painful. It has descriptions of the horrible treatments that were often the only thing available for what ailed you in the Middle Ages.
It was not a pleasant time to be a patient, but if you valued your life, there was no choice. To relieve the pain, you submitted to more pain, and with any luck, you might get better. Surgeons in the early part of the Middle Ages were often monks because they had access to the best medical literature – often written by Arab scholars. But in 1215, the Pope said monks had to stop practicing surgery, so they instructed peasants to perform various forms of surgery. Farmers, who had little experience other than castrating animals, came into demand to perform anything from removing painful tooth abscesses to performing eye cataract surgery.
Some of the medieval medical graphics may be NSFW. Link -via Gorilla Mask
I had some sandbags in the backyard that I used in November during a rainy day. I was moving them to a different spot when I heard the noise of the sand. I thought that maybe I could try a new sound design technique so I bought some piezo film transducers and started to experiment with them.
The entire track is created only out of tuned sand tones. No additional sounds or waveforms. I emphasized the inner notes of the sand grains and mapped them on a sampler as a series of instruments. The grooves are all played live with various techniques, including taping two piezo films to my fingers.
Dieting. Personally, I suck at it, as do many people throughout the world. But it doesn’t mean we don’t try. Of course, some of us try to eat less and exercise more and some people jump on the bandwagon of any fad diets, always hoping to find a miracle that leads to quick weight loss with little effort. As a result, there’s been quite a few crazy diet ideas in the last few centuries, here are the top ten weirdest diet methods we’ve ever heard of.
Photo Via Angelsk [Flickr]
The chewing diet was popularized in the Edwardian Era by Horace Fletcher. He believed that chewing allowed food to be properly absorbed into the body. Insufficient chewing would lead to constipation and clog up the digestive tract, said Fletcher. He lost 40 pounds in just four months using the diet he created. Dr. Kellogg was a friend and fan of Fletcher and he required patients at his sanatorium to participate in the chewing diet as well as a variety of other weight loss methods.
To properly implement the chewing diet, a person must chew each bite over 32 times, which takes approximately 30 seconds. After chewing is done, the person then tilts his or her head back and allows the food to trickle down their throat. Anything that is still too big to swallow must be spit out. The desire to eat things likely diminishes after a period on this diet, so it does work as you begin to eat less food.
Possible Side Effects May Include: A sore jaw. Much longer meal times. Annoyed and disgusted friends.
If you eat for two and aren’t pregnant, maybe it’s time to get a second mouth in your belly. A tapeworm can sure help eat all of that excess food. Around the turn of the century, these little parasites were sold in a simple pill form claiming to help you shed inches from your waist. It’s uncertain whether these pills actually had live tapeworms or if they were just another “snake oil” product, but what is certain is that people have intentionally used tapeworms as a weight loss method. Jockeys are amongst the many people purported to have used tapeworms as a diet.
Possible Side Effects May Include: Well for one, having a worm inside your stomach, which might cause nausea, headaches, infections and diarrhea. Some people’s organs are blocked by the eggs and this can result in death. There is no evidence that tapeworms actually help people lose much of weight, so the whole experience may be for nothing.
You can’t eat while you sleep. So naturally, if you sedate yourself for days and neglect to eat as a result, this starvation diet may actually work for you. Elvis was a proponent of this weight loss method around the end of his life and the dieting method was also made popular in Valley of the Dolls.
Possible Side Effects May Include: A severe pill hangover can leave you with a headache, nausea and fatigue. Additionally, improper sedation might actually kill you and so might starvation.
If your food looks disgusting, you’re less likely to eat it. While this is certainly true, it’s not enough to make the vision-dieter glasses any less silly. From the testimonials I’ve read, the glasses make you feel relaxed while going on your day to day routine, but they don’t help you lose much weight. Johnny Depp is a big fan of blue glasses, although it’s hard to say if he just likes their look or if he actually feels the effects from the lens color.
Possible Side Effects May Include: Looking like a geek in big blue glasses. Possible vision problems after prolonged exposure to the glasses.
If you’re showering everyday, you might as well lose weight while doing it, right? That’s the theory behind Aoqili diet soaps. These soaps contain seaweed that will penetrate skin and breakdown fat. There seems to be no evidence that this product works though, not even faked testimonials.
Possible Side Effects May Include: Some people have had allergic reactions to the soap’s ingredients.
Ear stapling is exactly what its name implies, you pierce the cartilage of your inner ear and it supposedly suppresses your appetite. You can only leave it in for six weeks to three months because once your body gets used to the staple it will lose its effectiveness. While many people claim this weight loss method is highly effective, even its proponents can’t agree why. The most common explanation involves the piercing’s similarity to acupuncture.
Ear stapling is illegal in Florida and other states have regulated the practice to help decrease the number of infections it has caused.
Possible Side Effects May Include: Well, for one, you will have a staple in your ear, which may be a little painful. Secondly, you could get an infection, which could make you severely sick. Also, it is possible to receive nerve damage when the procedure is preformed improperly.
The cotton ball diet is exactly what it sounds like, you eat cotton balls. Some people eat them dry and others soak them in gelatin first. Obviously the idea is that cotton balls are low in calories but very filling, so you won’t want to eat anything that is fattening. The cotton balls are also high in fiber, which is thought to be good for you –until you realize it’s not the kind of fiber you need in your diet.
Possible Side Effects May Include: Exceptionally boring, dry and disgusting meals. A lack of needed vitamins and other nutrients. Major digestive problems.
The theory of the blood type diet is that every blood type has a set of foods best suited to it and if you eat according to your blood type, you will lose weight. Supposedly, a person with type A blood should be vegetarian and meditate, while those with type O blood should eliminate grains from their diet and do aerobics.
Possible Side Effects May Include: This diet may seem harmless, but depending on which blood type you have, your recommended diet may center around food that is bad for you. For example, many people are lactose intolerant, but anyone with type B blood is recommended to intake a lot of dairy –this could cause a lot of problems. Additionally, people with type A blood are told to eat a lot of wheat, but if someone has gluten intolerance, this could be dangerous.
Photo Via Wonderlane [Flickr]
The Hallelujah diet requires eating foods specifically mentioned in Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 29. These foods are all-natural, vegan, raw foods. Of course, in Genesis Chapter 9, Verse 3, God lifts these restrictions, but the hallelujah diet overlooks this.
In the diet, only 15% of a person’s daily intake of food is allowed to be cooked. Aside from the basic diet, the plan recommends exercise, rest, sunshine and elimination of stress. It seems pretty natural that anyone exercising, relaxing and eating vegan will be losing weight, regardless of whether God dictated it or not.
Possible Side Effects May Include: Like all vegan diets, a person must be very careful to get their daily intake of protein, vitamins and minerals. Other than that, this diet is mostly healthy, although it may annoy your friends.
This diet is also called the Paleolithic diet because the focus is based on food available to cavemen during the Paleolithic Era, around 10,000 years ago. This time period was prior to the development of agriculture, so the plants available to these dieters are mostly ones available to gatherers and hunters. Food can be cooked though because it was common practice in that era. Most participants will be limited to lean meat, fish, veggies, fruit, roots and nuts. Grains, dairy, salt, refined sugar, oils and legumes are all strictly prohibited.
Possible Side Effects May Include: Dieters may have a hard time getting their daily calcium intake, but other than that, it is not dangerous. Most restaurants do offer food that would fit into this dietary plan –steaks, salads, etc.
A simple, weatherproof camera designed for the garden or wildlife enthusiast. It can be programmed to take photos at variable intervals for the creation of time-lapse movie files.
It can focus as close as 20″ away to illustrate petal growth or, with its wide 54″ field of view, it can capture perennials as they grow to conceal your spent spring bulb foliage. The camera takes a picture at one of six pre-determined intervals (five seconds to 24 hours) and combines them into a single 1280 x 1024 resolution AVI movie file for easy playback on a computer. It has a light sensor that turns off the camera at dusk and back on at dawn, allowing for continued video capture each day. Movies are timestamped and stored on the camera’s removable 2GB USB flash drive, which can take up to 18,000 pictures.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
Maya says a few solemn words about Lucky the goldfish before flushing him down the toilet, even though her mom keeps cracking up.
– via arbroath
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are some pretty universal state symbol categories: the state bird, the state flag, the state flower, even the state gemstones. But since those declarations are left up to the individual state, the categories can be as obscure as any state will allow them to be (check out the official state neckwear category). Here are some of the stranger ones – and if your state has something particularly interesting that I missed, share it in the comments.
Similarly, 19 states have declared milk as the official state beverage. How original. However, in addition to milk, Nebraska has Kool-Aid because the beverage was invented in its town of Hastings in 1927. Oh yeah!! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Florida’s orange juice should come as no surprise, but what about Rhode Island’s coffee milk? Yeah – not coffee, not milk – coffee milk. It’s like chocolate milk, but instead of chocolate syrup, coffee-flavored syrup is used. Umm… yes, please. Why hasn’t this caught on across the country? We’re not sure if it originated in R.I. or not, but Rhode Islanders definitely have a special affinity for the drink. One of the major producers of coffee syrup is located in Rhode Island, and I’ve read you’ll find it on tap in the Brown dining halls (true, Bears??). Another quick fact: the drink was invented because back when diners were all the rage, owners were always introducing new drinks and dishes to try to differentiate themselves from the many competitors. Photo from Kraft Foods.
Oklahoma really went all out – they declared 11 “state menu items,” plus a state fruit and a state vegetable. In case you ever want to have yourself an official Oklahoma state buffet, here are the menu items: barbequed pork, chicken fried steak, sausage, biscuits and gravy, fried okra, squash, grits, corn, black-eyed peas, cornbread and pecan pie. Sounds like a veritable feast to me, but I’d probably need the official state medical apparatus after that: the stomach pump. (Note: There isn’t really an official state medical apparatus. I don’t think.) Massachusetts and Pennsylvania both declared the chocolate chip cookie as the official state cookie, but the official state snack food of Utah makes me a little urpy: Jell-O. I can’t stomach Jell-O; it’s the texture. This was unbeknownst to me, but apparently it’s a popular stereotype that Mormons adore Jell-O – the Mormon Corridor is sometimes even referred to as the “Jell-O Belt.” Photo from Flickr’s Stu_Spivack.
D.C.’s official state dinosaur and official state fossil is the Capitalsaurus. This dino was found in downtown D.C. in the late 1800s while ground was being excavated for sewer lines. However, despite the fact that it holds two official state categories, there’s a problem: the Capitalsaurus isn’t scientifically recognized, according to the Smithsonian. http://paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaurs/collection/nmnh_collections/speci men_c12.html Because only a bit of vertebra was found, there’s not really enough to declare a whole new genus, which is what “Capitalsaurus” would be. But this hasn’t stopped the Capitalsaurus craze in D.C. – the street where it was discovered has even been renamed “Capitalsaurus Court” and January 28 marks Capitalsaurus Day.
Twenty-one states call the square dance their official state dance; some states get greedy and declare it the official folk dance and then claim other dances as well. South Carolina claims three dances – the square dance as its folk dance, the Richardson waltz as its waltz, and the Shag as… the Shag. As you might suspect, Hawaii has the Hula. New York has staked the Lindy Hop, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania both take the polka, and Texas has the Texas Two-Step.
Only a handful of states have declared official state theaters, and fittingly, one of them is California. I thought it was perhaps El Capitan, the theater on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. It has been around since 1926 and Citizen Kane had its premiere there. But nope – the state theater is the Pasadena Playhouse. It’s nine years older than El Capitan. A theatre arts school was founded there in the late ’20s and it has definitely churned out its share of stars – in fact, the Playhouse is sometimes called “The Star Factory” in Hollywood circles. Notable graduates include Eve Arden, Charles Bronson, Raymond Burr, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, William Holden, George Reeves, Sally Struthers, Gloria Stuart and Robert Young. Photo from the California State Library.
Of all places, Alabama has declared a state Renaissance Fair. But it’s not as strange as it sounds – the city that plays host to it is Florence, Alabama, which is known as the Renaissance City. They also have an official outdoor drama – The Miracle Worker – and an official outdoor musical drama – The Incident at Looney’s Tavern.
Maybe it’s no surprise that Arizona has called the bolo tie their official state neckwear since 1971, but as of 2007, Texas and New Mexico do too. I had no idea any state had declared official state neckwear at all, so this is all very surprising to me. Although the bolo tie is said to be a pioneer creation, Arizona silversmith Victor Cedarstaff claimed that he invented the tie (he did patent the slide on the tie) in the late 40s. Photo from StevieRay.com (it’s Stevie Ray Vaughan’s bolo).
Maryland has two official state sports – individual and team. They’re jousting and lacrosse, respectively. Alaska’s official state sport is dog mushing, which makes sense but is definitely unique to the state. South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming all call rodeo their state individual sport. Hawaii has surfing as their individual sport, of course, and outrigger canoeing as their team sport.
Some state dogs are named simply because they bear the name of the state. But I like the story of North Carolina’s Plott Hound. The story goes something like this: Johannes Plott of Germany (or possibly Bohemia) settled in present-day Cabarrus County, N.C., with a group of big-game hunting dogs he brought with him from Europe. They quickly became known for their courage and tenacity and would hunt big game – even bear – for days at a time. Johannes bred them, and so have his descendants ever since. Other states with official dogs: Texas (the Blue Lacy) and Wisconsin (the American water spaniel). Photo from PuppyDogWeb.
Just a few other incredibly specific state insignia – Georgia has a State Peanut Monument (it’s in Ashburn on the west side of I-75, if you’re road tripping), Kentucky has an official state tug-o-war contest (it’s in Fordville), Massachusetts’ official Glee Club song is The Great State of Massachusetts, North Carolina’s state carnivorous plant is the Venus Flytrap, Ohio has an official state groundhog named Buckeye Chuck and Oregon has official state parents (mother: pioneer Tabitha Moffatt Brown, father: Dr. John McLoughlin who helped early settlement of the state).
Warp coils and photon torpedoes aside, have you ever thought of the weird fact that there’s no money in Star Trek? Or how people get stuff done in real life when they can just … erhm, enjoy what the holodeck can offer?
Our very own John who blog at The Zeray Gazette has, and he’s given it some serious thoughts:
… my usual interpretation of the economics of Star Trek: they were unrealistic, as they eliminated the first law of economics — scarcity. Thanks to the replicator, there is virtually no need to manufacture anything. Although there were a few objects, such as latinum or yamok sauce, that could not be replicated, there was essentially nothing that your replicator could not provide for you — including more replicators.
Come to think of it – how would a money-less economics of the future a la Star Trek work? Who’ll do the scut work?
Filmed from the front of a trolley, this 7-minute film evokes what life was like before automobiles and trucks dominated the streets.
– via darkroastedblend
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
Patrick Abbazia attends his class bound in blue duct tape. He’s not doing it just to be weird – instead, he’s protesting a strange policy of the East Shore Middle School in Milford Connecticut: a "no-touching’ policy that bans physical contact between students!
"Going down the halls it is so cramped that it is hard not to touch anyone," Amanda Bollano said. "But if it is accidental, they won’t do anything. If it is intentional, you might get detention."
Patrick Abbazia said that he and his friends like to give each other "knuckles" and to high-five, and that to ban those actions — when fighting is the problem — doesn’t seem right.
"My mom says it’s not good for a person to go all day without touching,” the eighth-grader said.
(Photo: B.K. Angeletti / Connecticut Post)
Normally, you’d fight fire with water, but not at Jesse and Amee Ellsworth’s home. They have so much natural gas, leaking from nearby gas wells, in their water that they can light it on fire!
Link (with very impressive video) – via TYWKIWDBI
David Letterman never did anything this cool on his "Will It Float?" skit: here’s one from the BBC involving a cannonball and a bath (!) of mercury.
Link (embedded YouTube clip)
You probably guessed what happened, but it’s cool to see anyways …
Wow. My gingerbread decorations = two blobs for eyes and a curved line for a smile. Talented Craftster Woolylogic made detailed likenesses of Russian literature greats. And they’re good. That’s Dostoyevsky in the picture; click the link for cookie versions of Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol.
Is this a great way to save public funds or a step down the slippery slope? KFC wants to fix potholes in city roads, then paint the company’s name on top. They’ve already begun work in Louisville, and have offered the service to other cities.
But Brian Steele, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation, which is charged with repairing the city’s potholes, said “We don’t allow any type of printing or advertising placed on a city street or sidewalk.”
He said the city was looking to promote and seek support for its own pothole repair program, and said they’ve been “in discussion” with an advertising firm for more than months about the idea.
As for the KFC offer, Steele said the city first learned of it Wednesday. “Were looking into it [the KFC offer]…..Until we learn more we don’t know how it stacks up.”
The KFC offer is part of its “Fresh Tastes Best” advertising campaign. Link -via reddit
Link – via mikediluigi
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by SoccM84.
My sweet tooth must be in full effect tonight because I somehow keep stumbling upon posts about donuts and cupcakes and Cadbury Creme Eggs. Last year, Cadbury held a contest for fans to submit videos of the delicious chocolatey goodness going splat. They called it their “Here today, goo tomorrow” campaign, and some of them are pretty awesome. Check out this Rube Goldberg contraption – it’s really complicated. My favorite part is the Smashing Creme Eggs band.
But fans of Andy Samberg and SNL digital shorts will appreciate this one – it’s a tribute to the “Dear Sister” short.
Via Cakespy
Craftster user Lethargic made these back in October for the season premiere of Dexter, but other clever Craftsters immediately came up with lots of other uses for them (divorce party). The actual cake is red velvet (my favorite, yum) with butter cream icing tinted to look like a skin tone, and the little knives are made out of piped white chocolate. Genius.
And Crafter member Choleblack made these simple yet brilliant cupcakes for Halloween. You could also use them for a Twilight party (not my thing, but have at it if it’s yours) or a True Blood premiere party. Or just for fun if you’re kind of creepy like me.
This one is fascinating, though if you’re a little squeamish about human anatomy, this isn’t for you. Here’s a video clip of Dr. Christopher Chang performing a transnasal fiberoptic stroboscopy to evaluate the vocal cords. (Plain English translation: here’s how your vocal cords make the sound that’s comin’ out of your mouth!)
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
After determining the biological basis of why teenagers don’t like doing chores, science turns it attention to another of life’s great mystery: why toddler don’t do what they’re told.
Are you listening to me? Didn’t I just tell you to get your coat? Helloooo! It’s cold out there…
So goes many a conversation between parent and toddler. It seems everything you tell them either falls on deaf ears or goes in one ear and out the other. But that’s not how it works.
Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds.
"I went into this study expecting a completely different set of findings," said psychology professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they’re just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different."
Photo: Charlotte Button
After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, school teacher Jane Elliott wanted to teach her third-grade class about racism. Rather than a lengthy discussion about it, she decided to show the 8-year-olds what racism is all about in a famous "experiment":
With King shot just the day before in Memphis, Elliott encouraged her third-graders to discuss how something so horrible could happen.
"I finally said, ‘Do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country?’ "
The children shook their heads and said they wanted to learn, so Elliott set the rules. Blue-eyed children must use a cup to drink from the fountain. Blue-eyed children must leave late to lunch and to recess. Blue-eyed children were not to speak to brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children were troublemakers and slow learners.
Within 15 minutes, Elliott says, she observed her brown-eyed students morph into youthful supremacists and blue-eyed children become uncertain and intimidated.
Brown-eyed children "became domineering and arrogant and judgmental and cool," she says. "And smart! Smart! All of a sudden, disabled readers were reading. I thought, ‘This is not possible, this is my imagination.’ And I watched bright, blue-eyed kids become stupid and frightened and frustrated and angry and resentful and distrustful. It was absolutely the strangest thing I’d ever experienced."
Corina Knoll of the Los Angeles Times has the story: Link
University of Hertfordshire psychologist and researcher Richard Wiseman (he wrote The Luck Factor
So he asked people to submit their "ghost" photographs in an effort to find scientific explanation of the mysterious, "ghostly" images found in them. Here’s the preliminary result, a list of 10 most remarkable ghost photos as voted by web users:
(This one above is the Tantallon Castle Ghost, as taken by photographer Christopher Aitchison)
Previously on Neatorama: 15 Famous Ghost Photos | Ghostly Angel
It doesn’t sound very appetizing. But the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Sawyamseval Sangh wants to make a cola from cow urine, claiming that the soda would taste good, be healthy and could cure diseases, even cancer.
The drink is undergoing lab testing in Lucknow and the group hopes to have it on the market by the end of the year.
Dr. Donald Hensrud, chairman of the Division of Preventive Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, remains skeptical of its supposed health benefits.
“I think I’m perfectly comfortable in saying that I’m aware of no data that cow’s urine– or any other species’ urine– holds any promise in treating or preventing cancer.”
– Dr. Donald Hensrud, Mayo Clinic
Link – via growabrain
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
Miniatur Wonderland in Hamburg, Germany is the largest model railway in the world. With 7 miles of tracks in an area of over 16,000 sq ft, 200,000 people, 4,000 cars, 800 buildings, it features 6 geographic regions including America. It’s a work in progress (!) with a goal of more than 13 miles of tracks. The builders have already clocked in more than 500,000 hours of work.
This video is a presentation of this amazing attraction; make sure you watch the ‘small’ control room @ 3:35.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Christophe.
Not so good news for crustacean lovers. According to a research from Queen’s University Belfast researchers, crabs not only feel pain, but also remember it. Professor Bob Elwood and Mirjam Appel, whose study was published in the journal Animal Behavior, used electric shocks on hermit crabs to determine their response to unpleasant external stimuli.
Wires were attached to shells to deliver the small shocks to the abdomen of the some of the crabs within the shells.
The only crabs to get out of their shells were those which had received shocks, indicating that the experience is unpleasant for them. This shows that central neuronal processing occurs rather than the response merely being a reflex.
Crabs that had been shocked but had remained in their shell appeared to remember the experience of the shock because they quickly moved towards the new shell, investigated it briefly and were more likely to change to the new shell compared to those that had not been shocked.
Professor Elwood said: “There has been a long debate about whether crustaceans including crabs, prawns and lobsters feel pain.
“We know from previous research that they can detect harmful stimuli and withdraw from the source of the stimuli but that could be a simple reflex without the inner ‘feeling’ of unpleasantness that we associate with pain.
“This research demonstrates that it is not a simple reflex but that crabs trade-off their need for a quality shell with the need to avoid the harmful stimulus.
“Such trade-offs are seen in vertebrates in which the response to pain is controlled with respect to other requirements.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
The flea circus sounds funny, but it was once a serious (if strange) performance type. The fleas are actually trained to ‘behave’ and ‘perform’ in certain ways – even harnassed with tiny wires. Of course, for every such sensation there are its detractors – and perhaps with good reason. In this day and age, there are some who say that a flea circus constitutes animal cruelty. Either way, these images and this history are amazing.
A flea, with legs finer than a human hair, can pull up to 700 times its own weight! A flea can lift up to 60 times its own weight! A flea can jump over 150 times its own height! When we build circuses on Mars, or asteroids one day, then we’ll perhaps witness similar dexterity, but for now – consider a humble flea:
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Urbanist.
Cleanliness = Godliness – 1
Crazy = Talking to oneself – ( cell phone + ear piece )
Nagging = reminding + reminding + reminding
Link -via Metafilter
Hundreds of detectives in Germany spent two years trying to track down a mysterious female serial killer whose DNA was collected at 39 different crime scenes. When no progress was made in the cases, police offered a 300,000 euro reward for information leading to the killer.
It’s no surprise the money was never claimed, however, because the so-called ‘phantom killer’ was a complete myth!
Detectives had apparently been tracking the DNA of a factory worker who packaged cotton buds used by the police to collect samples, according to ‘Stern.de’.
This Italian sport originated in 16th century Florence. Called Bareknuckle Football, it’s a manlier version of, well, everything. Punching, head-butting, and choking are all legal. In 50 minutes each team tries to score as many points (cacce) as possible. In simpler terms this means that whichever team beats up the other more effectively will win. The closest thing we have to modern day gladiatorial combat. Seriously, they used to release prisoners to perform. Manly.
Most of the sports listed are violent or injury-inducing, but not all. Link -via the Presurfer
| FEATURED ITEMS FROM THE NEATOSHOP | |
 |
Mustache Bottle Opener |
 |
My Cryptozoological Family - Family Car Stickers |
 |
Zombie Hand Bottle Opener |
View more: New Items &
Best Sellers |
|
