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This valentine was given to a second grade teacher. If it’s real, it is definitely in the running for the best valentine of 2012. Link
Researchers at the University of Manitoba are working on a robot that plays hockey. They called it Jennifer, after player Jennifer Botterill. The robot was built by the Korean company Robotis, and the university has modified it and is working on its hockey and skating skills. As far as George Carlin’s three activities of hockey, Jennifer does pretty well with a puck, she could use some work on her skating, but can she fight? The project team hopes to get Jennifer into the the DARwin-op Humanoid Application Challenge in May. Link -via BroBible
A
customer eating a "triple bypass burger" at the Heart Attack
Grille in Las Vegas ... may actually need one:
A man who scarfed down a burger and fries at a Heart Attack Grill restaurant in Las Vegas over the weekend actually suffered a heart attack mid chew, authorities said.
Witnesses said the man, who was in his 40s, was grubbing on one of the grill's notorious "Triple Bypass Burgers" when his symptoms started.
Link (Photo: Matt York/AP)
There are eleven, count them, eleven puppies in this litter. Eleven. Ah-ah-ah! It looks as if they have imprinted on the guy in the bathrobe. -via Buzzfeed
A preschooler in Raeford, North Carolina, was given a school cafeteria lunch when a state inspector deemed her sack lunch inadequate by USDA nutritional standards. The 4-year-old girl ate three chicken nuggets from the cafeteria meal.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.
Now, you may think that apple juice, potato chips, and a banana would count as at least two fruits or vegetables, but it appears to be a matter of interpretation. Jani Kozlowski of the state’s Division of Child Development said there was nothing wrong with the bagged lunch, and the parent should not have been charged for the cafeteria meal. She hinted that the school may need more “technical assistance,” meaning training. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Flickr user Jeffrey Beall)
“I’ve got two moles to attack, a cub to feed and a field to frolic in, can we get this line moving already?” Just be patient Mr. Fox, be patient, you’ll get to use the ATM eventually.
First spotted by Ash Warner Via BoingBoing
Disney animators, take note and make a movie based on these adorable little buddies NOW! Lil’ Bear and Tala the wolf pup are best friends, and they play the day away at Farmington, Pennsylvania’s Woodland Zoo in this heartwarming video.
They’re so cute together, and even though it’s been 6 years since this video was made the two are still best friends! Forget Disney, let’s just make a feature length movie out of footage of these two unlikely best friends growing up together!
–via TDW
Lazy dog owners across the world could use these brilliant inventions to help exercise their pets without actually having to walk themselves.
Fake Science is a great blog filled with all kinds of fun facts like the one above. Who knew that cats actually have built in danger sensors?
One of the newest chameleon species discovered in the wild is so small it’s no wonder they’ve slipped through the cracks for so many years. Found in Madagascar, the Brookesia micra is a miniscule 3cm in length, and is so cute that the Geico gecko has started looking for a new job!
Here’s more on this little cutie:
Ted Townsend, of San Diego State University did some genetic testing on the little guys and has come to the conclusion that they probably trace their roots back to a smaller variety of chameleon than what most of us are familiar with. “Their size suggests that chameleons might have evolved in Madagascar from small and inconspicuous ancestors, quite unlike the larger and more colourful chameleons most familiar to us today,” he told the Daily Mail.
As for the smallest reptile overall, that title still belongs to 16 millimeter Jaragua Sphaero, or dwarf gecko, but even at twice the size, the Brookesia micra are tiny little guys.
If you ever visit Madagascar, tread lightly and check your pockets before you head home, because these chameleons are so tiny that they’re easy to miss!
Link –image credit: Animal Press/Barcroft Media
Chefs at Chicago’s Alinea Restaurant devised a way to shape sugar into balloons, and then inflated the balloons with helium. How do you eat a sugar balloon? It’s not that different from eating a regular balloon.
Link -via That’s Nerdalicious!
When I wear high heeled shoes, I want to look good and be comfortable. These cupcakes should be just squishy enough. They were made by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson for their book Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My!
Link -via Bit Rebels | Authors’ Website
Antony Bowness, a butcher, knows that true love is (served) rare. That’s why he made a rose bouquet out of steak. Gentlemen, take note: this is how to be romantic.
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Hungeree
Don’t come to the table late or you’ll miss your chance! Kivaq is a Greelandic meat dish that you’ll never forget. Start by emptying the body cavity of a seal. Stuff inside a few hundred raw auk birds, feathers and all. Sew it up and cover the seams with fat. Let it sit under rocks for three to eighteen months. Serves eight.
At the link, you can watch a video of people opening and eating a Kivaq after this long preparation process.
Link | Photo: Inga Sørensen
Whatever you’re doing for Valentine’s Day, it can’t possibly top this man’s hobby. Joe, a Canadian, is digging out his basement. It’s been taking a while because he’s using only tiny, scale model earthmoving equipment. At the link, you can see a large number of photos and videos that he’s posted over the years.
Link -via Dave Barry
Looks like some people had a great time at a party. Tons of cupcakes, sweets, and ... what are those yucky ashtrays and cigarette butts doing on the table?
Turns out, those are edible ashtrays by Miss Cakehead and Nevie Pie Cakes. They also came up with this one below, which includes blackened cancer lung cookies. Yum! Or Yuck! Or ... both? Yuckm!
Link - Thanks Miss Cakehead!
It was only a week or so ago that Miss C posted a link to Oddee’s 10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Sex, but as it turns out, there is plenty more information you might be missing out on. That’s why io9 was able to post a similar article with almost the exact same title with almost no crossover between the two. Here’s some more info you might not know that the “seven year itch” is real:
If you’re measuring by way of divorce, the myth of the seven year itch may not be a myth after all; according to the 2009 U.S. Census Bureau, the median duration of first marriages that end in divorce is 7.9 years.
Like the Oddee one, there are no naughty pictures, but it still might be something you won’t want to read at work.
C.G.P. Grey busts some myths you may have heard about animals. He goes pretty fast, so in case you want to check the facts more slowly, the script is available at his site. Link -via The Daily What
The address is Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Boulevard, Saint Louis, MO 63112. Now get moving. There’s no time to waste.
Oh, you want details? Fine, fine. From the Show Me State:
The museum is planning a major exhibit on the evolution of women’s underwear and needs the public’s help to round out its collection of old-fashioned and modern unmentionables. The “Underneath It All” exhibit is slated to open July 1.
Curators are understandably picky about what they’ll take, and the museum’s underwear interests tend toward the antique and the exotic — like 19th century corsets and inflatable brassieres. But they also are looking for good examples of more everyday items of more recent vintage — like padded panties, 1980s shoulder pads and a Wonderbra or two.
The goal is to chart the course of American women, industry and consumer culture through the lens of lingerie, said Shannon Meyer, a senior curator who is organizing the exhibit.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Flickr user williamnyk
Found via Arbroath - does anyone know where this was from?
That's
what Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said, in defense of an Alaskan
oil pipeline project. It's all about the caribou:
Here’s his theory: The caribou very much enjoy the warmth the pipeline radiates. “So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline,” he informed his colleagues. It’s apparently the equivalent of being wined and dined. And that has resulted in a tenfold caribou population boom, he concluded.
“So my real concern now ...if oil stops running through the pipeline...do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing?” he asked.
Link - via News of the Weird
Do
you love working but are constantly told by naysayers that you're a workaholic
working yourself into an early grave?
Science to the rescue! Researchers say that there's nothing wrong with "engaged workaholics":
Engaged workaholics, these experts say, are distinct from the classic, compulsively driven worker who can't unplug ever and always feels like he or she should be working and suffer greater-than-average ill effects: more conflicts at work, less job satisfaction, poorer social relationships, more heart attacks, more divorces.
Engaged workaholics may dodge some or all of those nasty repercussions for one simple reason: They love what they do. They get a kick out of it. They don't feel stressed by it.
'"They work because work is fun," says Wilmar Schaufeli, professor of work and organizational psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, whose team coined the "engaged workaholic" term.
Work engagement is a fairly new term in occupational psychology circles: It's basically defined as a healthy, positive passion for work — the opposite of the stereotypical uninterested slacker who slides by doing as little as possible throughout the day.
Link (Photo: Shutterstock)
Sweethearts: those little chalky heart candies you know so well -or do you? They’ve been in production for decades, but they weren’t always hearts. At one time, they came in the shapes of scallops, baseballs, and horseshoes. And they didn’t always have messages on top; those messages used to be printed on paper and were inside the candy!
More than eight billion (some 13 million pounds) of the little hearts are sold in the six weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. Sweethearts make up 40 percent of the Valentine candy market, just behind chocolate, according to Aimee Scott, Necco’s marketing director.
One of America’s oldest candy companies, Necco was founded in 1847 in Boston by Englishman Oliver Chase, who got the business off to a good start by inventing devices that cut candy lozenges and pulverized sugar. Necco first sold confections similar to Sweethearts, but in the shape of scallop shells.
Sweethearts are still evolving every year. Smithsonian magazine has all kinds of interesting facts about Sweethearts. Link
(Image generated at Cryptogram)
A 20-million-year-old bat fly was discovered in a mine in the Dominican Republic, the first fossilized fly of its type ever found. Its descendants are still around, sucking blood from modern bats, but scientists did not know how far back these parasites existed. But what’s even more enlightening is that this fly carried an ancient strain of bat malaria, of a species new to science. George Poinar, Jr. of Oregon State University found the fly, and also found the malaria while examining the fly under a microscope.
Before he became a specialist in ancient diseases inside equally ancient bugs, Poinar had worked on attempting to extract DNA from insects trapped in amber—work which author Michael Crichton has acknowledged as part of his inspiration for Jurassic Park.
But no ancient bats will be reconstructed from this specimen, even if it were possible.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Poinar said, “this specimen is so rare that we wouldn’t want to attempt to try it.”
Read more about the bat fly at National Geographic News. Link
Sometimes it’s too hard to actually get your kitty in a costume. Fortunately, with a simple cardboard box and a marker, you can make your little one the coolest geek kitty in town. Click the link to see the picture even bigger.
Link Via I Can Has Cheezburger
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, these kitties want to show us just how to celebrate the upcoming holiday. Isn’t love beautiful?
When Tommy Jordan came across a Facebook post written by his teenage daughter complaining about how she had to do chores, he decided to film his response and upload it to YouTube:
This dramatic situation started when Jordan discovered a Facebook post from Hannah, complaining about her daily life at home. The note, which Jordan read and analyzed in his sit-down chat with the camera, takes issue with the slew of chores she’s forced to do each day. “To my parents: I’m not your damn slave,” the note begins. The teenage angst bleeds from the note, as Hannah proposes that her parents pay her for the chores that she does. This point, in particular, sets off Jordan, an IT worker from Albemarle, N.C., who proceeds to delineate how entitled Hannah sounds in the note. But that wasn’t the only punishment he planned for his daughter’s supposedly “hard” life.
“That right there is your laptop,” he explains, filming the newly-upgraded computer perched vulnerably in the grass. “This right here is my .45.” A quick cock of the gun, and Hannah’s laptop takes a shot through the screen. In the next 30 seconds, he proceeds to empty his gun, and the bullets shatter the computer’s plastic shell.
What do you think Neatoramanauts? A justified or over-the-top reaction? Link | The YouTube video clip
Europe has had a hard winter, but the upside may be that the Netherlands gets to hold a rare ice skating race. The Elfstedentocht is conducted in the province of Friesland whenever the 125-mile course of canals and lakes has frozen to a thickness of six inches:
Called the Elfstedentocht (or in English, the Eleven Cities Tour), the race is a roughly 200 kilometer trek across the frozen landscape and takes, at its fastest, over six hours. For the race to occur, the ice must be at least 15 centimeters thick throughout the course — which is rare. While the tradition of skating from city to city dates back to 1760, the race was not formalized until 1909. In the century-plus since, the Elfstedentocht has only taken place 15 times and not since 1997. [...]
If the race occurs in 2012, area officials expect as many as 15,000 skaters — and more than ten million viewers watching on television. Nearly 2 million fans will travel to the region as spectators — an absolutely enormous number given that the total population of the Netherlands is only about 17 million, and doubly so given that the race only occurs at sub-zero temperatures.
Link | News Story | Photo: Flickr user nikontino
Natalie Sampson’s table isn’t just pretty; it’s practical too. It folds into a small space and can be stuck wherever there’s loose soil.
Link -via Dude Craft | Sampson’s Website
Huzzah! Another scientific mystery bites the dust! Scientists have finally cracked a problem that has "perplexed humanity since Leonardo da Vinci pondered it 500 years ago."
Learn all about the Rapunzel Number, which provides a key ratio needed to calculate the effect of gravity on hair relative to its length. In the right hands, this dangerous number can predict the shape of any ponytail:
Cambridge Professor Raymond Goldstein told Reuters that he and his colleagues took account of the stiffness of individual hairs, the effects of gravity and the average waviness of human hair to come up with their formula. [...]
"That determines whether the ponytail looks like a fan or whether it arcs over and becomes nearly vertical at the bottom," Goldstein said in a telephone interview.
The research also took into account how a bundle of hair is swelled by the outward pressure that arises from collisions between the component hairs.
Oh, he also mentioned how the Rapunzel Number would also help scientists deepend their understanding of fibers, as well as be useful in computer graphics and animation, but we all know that the real reason for the study is to break the stronghold of the hair stylist mafia on ponytail-wearing populace.
