To the EMU gang:

I remember noting a quarter century or so ago that an emu was a 6 foot Australian flightless bird. I thought that got most of it right.

It turned out to be one of the most widely photographed spacecraft in history. That was no doubt due to the fact that it was so photogenic. Equally responsible for its success was its characteristic of hiding from view its ugly occupant.

Its true beauty, however, was that it worked. It was tough, reliable and almost cuddly.

To all of you who made it all that it was, I send a quarter century’s worth of thanks and congratulations.

Sincerely,

(Signed) Neil A. Armstrong

You’ll enjoy the others just as much, if not more. Link

Psst! Want a promotion? The secret to getting promoted at work is quite simple. Change your name into something simple:

Parents wanting to give their children a leg up in the workforce can start early by giving them a simple name like Michael, Tom, Jane or Mary, new research suggests.

A study by professors at the University of Melbourne and New York University revealed that people with simple, easy-to-pronounce names were more likely to be favored for a promotion at work.

"The effect is not due merely to the length of a name or how foreign-sounding or unusual it is, but rather how easy it is to pronounce," said Simon Laham, the study's lead author from the University of Melbourne

Link

From the NeatoShop: Hello My Name is McLovin

You can get a quickie wedding, so why not a quickie divorce? That's the logic behind the Divorce Hotel, where you can check in as a couple, and check out in two days as singles:

In the Netherlands a weekend break can become a weekend break-up for couples hoping for a swift and cheap divorce.

It is a concept called the 'Divorce Hotel' and helps husbands and wives to arrange all the necessary legal documentation to end their marriage over the course of just two days.

They meet a mediator and series of lawyers behind closed doors who will split assets, agree alimony payments and arrange visitation rights - all for a fixed fee.

It is the brainchild of entrepreneur Jim Halfens, who said he spotted a gap in the market in a country where the average divorce can easily run into five figures and take months to complete.

"When they leave the hotel, all work is done," he told Sky News.

"The only thing that happens then in Dutch law is that they have to show the agreement to a judge in the Netherlands and that takes a couple of weeks.

"They walk divorced out of this door and to make it official takes a couple of weeks."

If you're wondering, the couples mostly choose to stay in separate rooms: Link

Previously on Neatorama: The Increasingly Rapid Decline of Marriage

The world may be ending, but that's no reason to fret! Be prepared, instead! (That's so catchy we ought to trademark it). Meet the Doomsday "Preppers," survivalists who prepare for the coming Apocalypse and, in some cases, profit at the same time:

"There's a lot of different things that could happen," Ralston said. "For me, I look at prepping as kind of like insurance. You have car insurance, health insurance, life insurance."

Call it Apocalypse insurance. Ralston turned his family's two-car garage into a staging area. Inside is a trailer, which he keeps packed and ready to go at all times, stockpiles of freeze-dried food, including cartons of canned chicken with a shelf life of 15 years, survival gear, such as a system for purifying polluted water, first aid kits and lots of weapons and ammunition. His son has his own AK-47.

"In the beginning, my wife really wasn't on the same page as I was," Ralston said. "But in reality, the more information I started to give to her, it opened up her eyes to the other potential threats that are out there."

You’ve been warned. Indie filmmakers Andrew McMurry and Nathan McMurry put together this short clip, “Psycho Siri,” as an example of what could happen if you piss off an iPhone.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Tiffany!

A team of Russian scientists drilling 2 miles into the ice in the middle of the Antarctic to tap the underground Vostok lake that has been untouched for 15 million years has not been heard from for more than five days.

The start of a new science fiction novel? Well, almost.

The first part is real: there is an underground lake miles beneath the Antarctic ice that has been isolated for millions of years. And the Russians are drilling into it, despite oppositions from environmental groups who feared contaminations.

The second part - the one about the team being "lost" - is not. But, you know, of course that's what they'd say to cover up the conspiracy ;)

Our pal Frank Warren of PostSecret has just posted his 2012 PostSecret Live speaking tour and book signing schedule (The one near me is sold out, boo hoo!). If you're nearby, it's definitely worth going:

PostSecret "Live” is a multi-media presentation by Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret. See the postcards that were banned from the books. Hear the inspiring and funny stories behind the secrets. See the App secret that got the biggest response. Share your secret at the microphone.

See the full list here: Link - Thanks Frank!

So. Eight years ago, there was the infamous Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction. Now, we have rapper M.I.A.'s "Middle Finger Malfunction":

The NFL and a major television network are apologizing for another Super Bowl halftime show.

There was no wardrobe malfunction, nothing like that glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple eight years ago that caused an uproar and a government scrutiny. Instead, it was an extended middle finger from British singer M.I.A. during Sunday night's performance of Madonna's new single, "Give Me All Your Luvin.'"

In front of some 110 million viewers on NBC and uncounted others online, she flipped the bird and appeared to sing, "I don't give a (expletive)" at one point, though it was hard to hear her clearly.

Did you watch the Super Bowl halftime show? Whatcha think?

Link (Photo: NBC)

We’ve previously featured Spabettie’s scrumptious-looking vegan s’more cocktails. The cups were made out of chocolate using Cool Shooters ice trays, so you can devour them with no clean up concerns.

Now Spabettie is continuing with the same theme, this time using vegan white chocolate. She poured a pepper-infused vodka into the chocolate cups to create a hot Valentine’s Day treat.

Link -via Tasteologie

On the left is a normal testicle. On the right is one that has been blasted with ultrasound. The latter has a reduced sperm count, which is why researchers at the University of North Carolina think that they may have discovered an effective male contraceptive:

They found that two, 15-minute doses “significantly reduced” the number of sperm-producing cells and sperm levels. [...]

Lead researcher Dr James Tsuruta said: “Further studies are required to determine how long the contraceptive effect lasts and if it is safe to use multiple times.”

The team needs to ensure that the ultrasound produces a reversible effect, contraception not sterilisation, as well as investigate whether there would be cumulative damage from repeated doses.

Link -via Popular Science | Photo: James Tsuruta and Paul Dayton

Have you ever frantically searched for your keys, only to pick them up and move them without realizing it? Blame your brain: it's out of sync with itself.

Grayden Solman and colleagues at the University of Waterloo explains:

Solman's team propose that the system in the brain that deals with movement is running too quickly for the visual system to keep up. While you are rummaging around a messy house to find your keys, you might not be giving your visual system enough time to work out what each object is. Since time can be costly, sacrificing accuracy on occasion for speed might be beneficial overall, Solman thinks.

The slowing of mouse movements suggests that at some level the volunteers were aware that they had missed their target, a theory that is backed up by other studies that show people tend to slow down their actions after they have made a mistake, even if they don't consciously realise the mistake. Solman reckons this reflects the brain's "attempt to slow down the motor system", to allow the visual system to catch up and conscious perception to occur.

"What's really interesting is the notion that the motor and perceptual system are decoupled. They're both trying to help you find [your keys] but they're not coordinating," says Todd Horowitz, at Harvard University. "There are implications for social search, such as a doctor looking through an X-ray or [security] looking through luggage."

Link

A truck full of fish overturned and dumped its load into Northern Ireland farmer Gordon Flinn’s field on Thursday. The tonnes of mackerel were piled two feet deep in places. The driver of the truck was taken to the hospital, but was not seriously injured and was able to return to the scene. The truck was removed and the road opened later that night, but the Flinns may have to put up with a fishy smell for some time. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Louise Flinn)

Be still my nerdy heart! I've found a slice of Nerd Heaven: Behold the nerdiest collection to ever grace the InterWeb: Louisiana State University's Chemistry professor John A. Pojman's huge collection of pocket protectors (1,200 and growing!): Link - via It's Okay To Be Smart

Fifteen years ago, Barry Chappell quit smoking and started chewing nicotine gum. But it was only six years ago that he made a fateful decision to start keeping his old gum. Now, 95,200 pieces later, Chappell possesses a 175-pound ball of used nicotine gum.

Remember Chappell’s example, and pursue greatness in your own way.

Link -via Oddity Central | Photo: Art and Coin

After naming a fly after her, academia continues its fascination with Beyonce with this latest move: a college course that uses the diva to explore "American race, gender, and sexual politics."

“This isn’t a course about Beyoncé’s political engagement or how many times she performed during President Obama’s inauguration weekend,” he says. Rather, the performer’s music and career are used as lenses to explore American race, gender, and sexual politics. Allred pairs Beyoncé’s music videos and lyrics with readings from the Black feminist canon, including the writings of bell hooks, Alice Walker, and even abolitionist Sojourner Truth.

Link (Photo: Jen Keys/Wikipedia) - via HuffPo

Add this to the list of mysterious things that fell from the sky:

Steve Hornsby from Bournemouth said the 3cm diameter balls came raining down late on Thursday afternoon during a hail storm.

He found about a dozen of the balls in his garden. He said: "[They're] difficult to pick up, I had to get a spoon and flick them into a jam jar." [...]

Walking around his garden he found many more blue spheres were scattered across the grass.

He said: "The have an exterior shell with a softer inner but have no smell, aren't sticky and do not melt."

Link

Well, Neatoramanauts, what do you think is the explanation?

After curing cancer and other serious maladies of man, science turned its attention to solving the mystery of the best scratching spot in the human body.

Behold, the magic of science:

In the study, reported in the British Journal of Dermatology, healthy male and female volunteers aged 22 to 59 were made to itch by rubbing them with cowhage, a plant with tiny hairs that irritate the skin.

The itches were induced on three parts of the body – forearm, ankle and back. For five minutes participants were banned from scratching, while being asked to record how itchy they felt at each spot.

Then the researchers scratched each location themselves with a laboratory brush, to ensure a consistent technique. The volunteers were asked how pleasurable the sensation was.

Results showed that the itch was felt most intensely at the ankle, and that was also the spot where the pleasure of scratching was felt most keenly and persisted longest.

I think they purposely didn't test a few other spots on the human body: Link

Photo: Backscratcher Pen from the NeatoShop

Planning something special for Valentine's Day? Not if you're in Uzbekistan. The authorities in the Central Asian nation has canceled Valentine's Day:

Instead, residents in the capital of Tashkent can enjoy readings of poems by Mughal emperor Babur, who died in the 16th century.

The unofficial ban on romance-related festivities echoes long-standing antagonism in Uzbekistan toward the holiday. Last year, the Turkiston newspaper described Valentine's Day as the work of "forces with evil goals bent on putting an end to national values."

Link

See also: Neat Valentine's Day gifts from the NeatoShop

Melanie Janem is a modern day Prometheus, shining a sugary light into the darkness of our stomachs. Let us be thankful.

Link -via That’s Nerdalicious! | Previously: Death by Oreo Cupcake

Does it look like Cajun Mike’s in New Orleans is offering a bargain? Counteroffer: the NeatoShop will give you the same service at 10% off whatever price Cajun Mike’s quotes you.

-via That’s Nerdalicious! | Bar Website

Image via the National Library of New Zealand

The 13 rules of eye flirtation above probably saved society from descending into eye flirtation chaos - I mean, could you imagine what would happen if someone mistook the secret signals? *Shudders*

Thank goodness that the now-defunct Taranaki Herald of New Zealand publshed the complete guides for flirtation, which includes the rules for fan flirtation, glove flirtation, hat flirtation, and parasol flirtation, reproduced here:

via Lists of Note

The Islington Council made a sign warning people not to attach anything to park furniture or trees -and then attached it to a tree at Highbury Fields in north London, England. A neighboring architect, who was annoyed at the many signs posted recently, went to remove the sign and was surprised to see who had posted it on the tree. Soon, others gathered around to laugh at the nonsensical notice. The council soon relocated the notice to a nearby message board. They blamed the mistake on a junior member with good intentions. Link

Everybody needs business cards, even street gangs! In the late '70s and '80s, gang members in Chicago gave out these calling cards with handdrawn logos to introduce themselves to others, and either to intimidate or to impress with their stylish flair.

Link | More at Gang Cards - via Flavorwire

Forget about fresh produce or fresh baked goods or fresh anything. Canned vegetables are as cheap as a gang tattoo, and every poor person I knew (including myself) had them as a staple of their diet. Fruit was the same way. Canned peaches could be split between three kids for half the cost of fresh ones, and at the end you had the extra surprise of pure, liquefied sugar to push you into full-blown hyperglycemia.

If it wasn’t canned, it was frozen. TV dinners, pot pies, chicken nuggets … meals that can be frozen forever, and preparation isn’t more complicated than “Remove from box. Nuke. Eat.” Because of that, by week two, half of everything we bought would be freezer burned. Just like with the canned food, you grow up thinking that this is the way it’s supposed to taste. It’s not that you grow to like it, necessarily, but you do grow to expect it.

This is not the humorous Cracked article you may expect, but the text is still NSFW. Link

With this equation, of course:

Graph that and you'll get this:

via Krulwich Wonders

See also: I Heart Math T-Shirt over at the NeatoShop

He’d better find his spectacles before he heads into battle. There! Russian street artist Pavel Puhov found them. You can view more creative works by him at the link.

Link -via Colossal | Artist’s Website (Google Translate)

Trent Arsenault told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he has never had sex and “committed 100 percent of my sexual energy for producing sperm for childless couples to have babies. So I don’t have other activity outside of that.”

The Food and Drug Administration, however, wants to put an end to Arsenault’s activity.

Through his own website, Arsenault connects with Bay Area couples looking to conceive. The website is extensive and lists his medical records, including a list of sexually transmitted diseases he has been tested for, his diet, sperm count, and personality traits.

The federal government is not happy he sells his sperm directly, but Arsenault believes he is helping couples start families.

Link - Thanks Tiffany! | Photo: Sperm Cell from the NeatoShop

Scientists are confirming that 15 pounds of rock collected recently in Morocco fell to Earth from Mars during a meteorite shower last July.

This is only the fifth time in history scientists have chemically confirmed Martian meteorites that people witnessed falling. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks weren’t discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December. [...]

Astronomers think millions of years ago something big smashed into Mars and sent rocks hurtling through the solar system. After a long journey through space, one of those rocks plunged through Earth’s atmosphere, breaking into smaller pieces.

Most other Martian meteorite samples sat around on Earth for millions of years — or at the very least, decades — before they were discovered, which makes them tainted with Earth materials and life. These new rocks, while still probably contaminated because they have been on Earth for months, are purer.

The last time a Martian meteorite fell and was found fresh was in 1962. All the known Martian rocks on Earth add up to less than 240 pounds.

Link -via io9 | Photo: Darryl Pitt

Employers often complain of lazy workers, but in this bizarro world of corporate human resources management, a woman was fired for working during her lunch break:

Smiley, 48, punched out of work for lunch Jan. 28, 2010, but remained at her desk to finish a project assigned by a manager because she did not plan to eat that day, she said.

Smiley, who had passed her 10-year anniversary with the company more than a month before, said another manager told her it was time for her to go to lunch and step away from her desk, but she refused. That manager observed Smiley working on a spreadsheet on her computer, answering the phone and responding to questions by people who approached her desk, according to a filing from the appellate court of Illinois. [...]

The company's human resources director then became involved, explaining that hourly non-exempt employees were required to take a 30-minute lunch break, a policy that had been in the company handbook for 10 years, according to the filing. Not following the policy would be a violation of Illinois' labor laws, the HR director said.

Link

Ever heard the saying that "a camel is a horse designed by committee"?

Despite the many downside of working in a group, your boss may be insisting that you "be a team player" or put you in an office without walls.

Well, hand him this article by Susan Cain, author of the forthcoming book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, excerpted here in The New York Times Sunday Review:

SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature. [...]

The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I’m talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open-plan offices, in which no one has “a room of one’s own.” During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.

Link (Image: Andy Rementer)

"Till death do us part" does not apply to this tragic love story from Thailand, where a man decided to marry his bride, who died in a car accident just days before their planned wedding.

Oddity Central has the story of the real life corpse bride:

Merely days before the wedding, Sarinya was involved in a car crash, leaving her severely injured. She still could have been saved with timely medical attention. However, the doctors made her wait for 6 hours due to an overcrowded ICU instead of transferring her to another hospital. During this time, she succumbed to her injuries and passed away.

Deffy and Sarinya had been together for 10 years, before they finally decided to settle down. They had postponed the wedding several times, due to busy schedules and the fact that Deffy wanted to complete his education before he got married. However, after Sarinya’s untimely death, he couldn’t let her go without fulfilling her deepest desire. So, he decided to marry her anyway. On the 4th of January, in Buddhist ceremony, Deffy married the corpse of his girlfriend. The event took place in Surin, a city in northern Thailand. During the ceremony, he expressed his devotion and deep love for Sarinya.

Link (Photo: MThai)

Late to work again? Don't settle for drab excuses like traffic or oversleeping - your boss has undoubtedly heard those before. Instead, distract 'em with a creative excuse for your tardiness!

Here are some of the most ingenious explanations for being late, as compiled by CareerBuilder:

Some of the more outrageous justifications reported by the employers included:

Employee's cat had the hiccups.
Employee got distracted watching the "Today" show.
Employee thought she had won the lottery (she hadn't).
Employee's angry roommate cut the cord to his phone charger, so it didn't charge and his alarm didn't go off.
Employee believed his commute time should count toward his work hours.
Employee claimed a fox stole her car keys.
Employee's leg was trapped between a subway car and the platform (turned out to be true).
Employee said he wasn't late because he had no intention of getting to work before 9 a.m. (his start time was 8 a.m.)
Employee was late because of a job interview with another firm.
Employee had to take a personal call from the state governor (turned out to be true).
The study was based on surveys of more than 3,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals and 7,780 U.S. workers.

If my cat has a hiccup, you'd be darned sure that I'd be late, too! Link (Photo: Shutterstock)

Fireflies and jellyfish glow, but humans? Believe it. The phenomenon is a natural byproduct of the metabolic process, and scientists have long been aware of the presence of bioluminescence in most living creatures. But it wasn’t until 2009, when a team of Japanese researchers developed a camera 1000 times more sensitive than the human eye, that human bioluminescence was captured on film. The light show apparently works on a 24-hour cycle — brightest in the late afternoon and on the cheeks, forehead and neck. Next time someone tells you “you’re glowing,” you can take it literally.

That’s just one of 11 insane features that you probably haven’t thought about in the human body. Bone up on all of them at mental_floss. Link

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user Scorpions and Centaurs)

This staircase makes four 90-degree turns, yet forms a continuous loop that would not be possible in the real world.

Optillusions is a blog with more illusions like this. Pretty dumb, yes, but good for a laugh. And each post is handy for sending your annoying relative who forwards things to you constantly. Link -via Metafilter

People outside Uppsala, for example, can take a stroll in the terrain of Djupröven (Deep Arse), and outside Gothenburg one can enjoy a swim in any of the Yellow, Small or Big Arse lakes (Gula Röven, Lilla Röven, Stora Röven).

A somewhat cuter name but still perhaps not the first pick to put on your resumé, is Kattsjärten in Värmland. The Local’s translation for this (hopefully) unusual name is Cat’s Bottom.

But that’s just the beginning. Check out Sex Swamp, Snot Bog, and more. Link -via Fark

Karam Chand was born in a small rural village in the Punjab in northern India in 1905.

His family worked in farming and, in keeping with the custom of the time, he married at a young age.

His bride Kartari was born in the same district in 1912. According to their passports, that currently makes Mr Chand 106 and his wife 99 years old.

They wed in a typical Sikh ceremony in December 1925 and have just celebrated their 86th year together as a married couple, which they think may qualify them as the UK’s longest married husband and wife.

The Chands live with one of their eight children. They also have 27 grandchildren and 23 great grandchildren. Link -via Arbroath

The Times’ rule is, we correct anything that is wrong, no matter how small or seemingly silly. And I don’t know any of my colleagues who would want to do differently. I hate to get any detail wrong, and when I do, I often have a moment of fantasizing about just letting it slip. But as I sat there that morning, kicking myself for a relatively small mistake that marred a story I had poured my heart into, it seemed so much worse to let it stand. Not correcting it would have undermined the credibility of the other 5,011 words of the story – at least for “My Little Pony” fans. And I think we have seen now that they are not an obsessive subculture to be taken lightly.

Another part of the Times’ corrections policy, which arose after the awfulness of Jayson Blair, is that each correction is entered in a tracking system that includes who was responsible, and an explanation of how the error came to be.

She tells how the error came to the newspaper’s attention, how important it turned out to be in the context of the article, and her explanation for it. Link -via Metafilter

This classy, if a tad expensive ($4,500!) sink doesn’t come with fish, but it does offer a habitat for them. There’s a light in the back as well as access ports on the top. The producer recommends that you get a professional plumber to install it.

Link -via My Modern Met

Back when people sent a lot of letters and postcards through the mail, the position of a stamp could send a message of its own. The “code” became popular around 1890, after it was written up in a Hungarian newspaper. It was printed on postcards in several European languages so a correspondent could clue in a recipient for future reference. See a collection of these postcards explaining the meaning of your stamp at Poemas del río Wang. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

Divorcing a spouse due to marital infidelity is sadly not uncommon. But what is newsworthy is how a 99-year-old Italian man divorced his wife after learning of that she had an affair ... 60 years ago!

The Italian man, identified by lawyers in the case only as Antonio C, was rifling through an old chest of drawers when he made the discovery a few days before Christmas.

Notwithstanding the time that had elapsed since the betrayal, he was so upset that he immediately confronted his wife of 77 years, named as Rosa C, and demanded a divorce.

Guilt-stricken, she reportedly confessed everything but was unable to persuade her husband to reconsider his decision.

She wrote the letters to her lover during a secret affair in the 1940s, according to court papers released in Rome this week.

The couple are now preparing to split, despite the ties they forged over nearly eight decades – they have five children, a dozen grandchildren and one great-grand child.

Link (Photo: Shutterstock)

The world's oldest profession meets science fiction. That's the vision of Dennis Hof, the owner of two of Nevada's most notorious brothels and star of the HBO documentary Cathouse.

Henry Brean of the Las Vegas Review-Journal has the story:

The reality television star and outspoken sex merchant recently bought a rundown bordello 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and unveiled plans to renovate and reopen it with a science fiction theme.

He is calling it Alien Cathouse and promising "girls from another world."

Hof has turned to an old friend to plan the costumes and decor: Hollywood Madam turned Pahrump resident Heidi Fleiss.

"She's the chief alien design queen," he said.

Link (Image: David Stroud/Las Vegas Review-Journal) - via io9

Tired of holidays falling on different days of the week year after year? So is former NASA astrophysicist Richard Conn Henry. That's why he designed the so-called rational calendar:

Irritated with inconsistency and beguiled by the possibilities of a steady-schedule world — “Every institution in the world has to change their calendar. Sports schedules. Every company. The dates of holidays have to be reset. And it’s all totally unnecessary,” he said — Henry went to work. [...]

According to Richard Conn Henry’s calendar, eight months would each have 30 days. Every third month would have 31 days. Every so often, to account for the leftover time, a whole extra week would be added.

The upshot: Years would proceed with clockwork regularity, with no annual re-jiggering of schedules required. Each day would occupy the same position as it had the previous year and would in the next. Were this 364-day calendar, known officially as the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, adopted on the first day of 2012, both Christmas and New Year’s Day would forever fall on Sunday.

Brandon Keim of Wired Science has more: Link

People in Samoa (population 193,000) want to be closer time-wise to Australia, New Zealand, China and Tonga because they do so much more day-to-day business with those relatively nearby nations than with the rest of the world. And the problem until now, for example, has been that when it’s 8 a.m. Monday in Samoa it’s 8 a.m. Tuesday in Tonga. Business people in Samoa have kind of been losing a working day when it comes to dealing with their nearest neighbors.

Now the time, literally, has come. When 11:59:59 p.m. strikes Thursday in Samoa, the next tick will take folks there to Saturday.

And no one will be born or die on Dec. 30, 2011, in Samoa. Weird.

If this had happened in any part of the U.S., you can bet we’d skip Monday before messing with a Friday. Link -via reddit

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Plenz)

A weather map from yesterday shows Godzilla eating Iowa while Mothra (or is it Rodan?) zooms in from the Pacific Northwest. We are all doomed! Link

Raul made about $10,000 total by donating a couple of times a week for a year and a half, at $70 a sample. He didn’t dwell on the outcome—the possible children, the various mothers. He went on with his plans for a legal career, his artistic pursuits, and his own family life. Last year, he mentioned to colleagues that he’d been a sperm donor during his time off. “Have you ever Googled your donor number?” one of the other lawyers asked.

Raul had not. But that morning at work he typed his donor number into the search engine. The first hit was a blog called Django Djournal, a mother’s chronicle of the baby, Django, she had conceived with Raul’s sperm. At the top of the page was a photo of a chubby 2-year-old in striped shorts, smiling halfheartedly—Raul himself as a toddler. “It was out of context,” he explained. “So it took me a minute to realize why it was familiar.” During the period he was donating, he’d sold the photograph to the bank for an extra $200, to give a sense of what a baby of his might look like.

The next photo on the page was of 6-month-old Django, and the resemblance was indeed striking—the dark hair and eyes, the open face. Raul and his wife had two children of their own by this time, and Django resembled them, too. What made the blog entry even more transfixing, though, were the photographs of two other babies also conceived with Raul’s sperm. Their mothers had tracked down the blog, and the result was an impromptu online community of mothers who’d used Raul’s sperm.

Should there be a limit to how many times one man fathers a child by donation? Depending on the clinic, maybe twenty to over a hundred children could be produced by one man. An article in The Atlantic raises the question of whether sperm, particularly sperm like Raul’s that is in demand by multiple families, should be considered a product for sale or something more. In the internet age, there are also issues of privacy, obligations, and genetics. But there are no easy answers -especially for children who were conceived in the age of secrecy and grew up to confront the openness of the internet -and all their parents. Link

The action begins shortly before sunset. Around 4:30 pm to 5:00 pm local time, just as the sky is assuming its evening hue, Venus will pop into view, glistening bright in the deepening twilight. No more than 6 degrees to the right lies the crescent Moon, exquisitely slender, grinning like the Cheshire cat with his head cocked at humorous attention. This is a wonderful time to look; there are very few sights in the heavens as splendid as Venus and the Moon gathered close and surrounded by twilight blue.

But don’t go inside yet, because the view is about to improve. As the sky fades to black, a ghostly image of the full Moon materializes within the horns of the lunar crescent. This is caused by Earthshine, a delicate veil of sunlight reflected from our own blue planet onto the dusty-dark lunar terrain. Also known as “the Da Vinci glow,” after Leonardo da Vinci who first understood it 500 years ago, Earthshine pushes the beauty of the conjunction over the top.

Meanwhile, Jupiter will be looking down on it all from a perch overhead in the constellation Pisces. In ascending order, Jupiter, Venus and the Moon are the three brightest objects in the night sky, able to pierce city lights and even thin clouds. Almost everyone, everywhere will be able to see them.

Link

(Image credit: Flickr user ozgurmulazimoglu)

Hello, what have we here? Sean Kernick of Two Four Flinching blog created this homage to Billy Dee Williams with this 40 oz bottle of smooth smoothness: a handpainted Lando Calrissian on Colt 45.

See that, Star Wars fans? Colt 45 works every time, just like Lando's little maneuver at the Battle of Taanab.

Link - via Obvious Winner

Christopher Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune went deep inside the company to find out what made it tick. Here's his report touring the American Girl distribution center in Wisconsin:

And after you buy American Girl through an American Girl catalog or website, your package likely will be shipped from one of its two distribution centers in Wisconsin. The largest is in DeForest, 40 minutes north of Middleton. I find it in the back of another drab office park, dark and enormous against the rainy afternoon. The place is vast, 400,000 square feet. Inside, holiday decorations are at a minimum, though the majority of employees — 780 of the total 870 — are seasonal. A young-looking guy in army-green cargo pants, Dave Brophy, director of the center, greets me. He's been with the company for 25 years. "We're at the point in the season where people are panicking. Everyone wants wrapping," he says.

The workers in this building shipped 60,000 packages the day before. And yet, as in Middleton, it's not a chaotic place. The gift-wrapping area holds 41 booths. Elves here are hunched over boxes in shifts from 6 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.

Redditor lahaff got his brother a Christmas gift and was determined to wrap it in a manner that would take all day to unwrap it. First, he welded it inside a metal casing. But that’s just the first step! See the rest of the process in a wordless photo essay that will leave you shaking your head. Then we’ll just pretend his brother won’t hear about it before Christmas. Link -via reddit

How much do you remember about the big events of 2011? OK, how about the not-so-big events that you should recall? That’s the subject of today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. It’s not all that easy; there are some diverse subjects covered. I scored 67%, not because I forgot already, but because there were some thing I just never knew (like the sports). Link