When the zombie apocalypse comes, it may be difficult to consult a lawyer or judge about the consequences of killing zombies. Is it murder to kill a zombie?

From a legal standpoint, the most important issue is whether or not they are still considered humans. If not, you'd probably be fine going on a zombie slaughter as long as you don't accidentally kill any uninfected person in the process. If they are considered humans though, you can still kill zombies, but only in self-defense or to defend others. If you start sniping zombies from a rooftop when they present no direct threat to you, you might be in trouble later on.

If there's a question of whether zombies are human, a thorough medical investigation might lay the question to rest. But what about mutants? Are super heroes liable for the damage they cause in the quest for justice, or would they be considered "not human" as well? Or would they be considered humans with disabilities, and therefore covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act? These and other questioned are considered in the post 8 Hilarious Legal Examinations of Unexpected Pop Culture Issues, which covers questionable but completely human perpetrators as well. Link

Iron Man Be The Hero Apron

Are you a genius in the kitchen. Protect yourself from and your clothes from villainous spills with the Iron Man Be The Hero Apron from the NeatoShop. This full-length, adult-sized apron is perfect for engineering crazy culinary experiments.   

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Aprons and fantastic Iron Man items. 

Link

"How could you eat something that adorable?" That's what my wife asked me as I loaded this picture. Good question. Sugar High's fondant cake toppers are works of art to be preserved, not eaten.

Link -via Between the Pages

(YouTube link)

The good news is that three women who have been missing for a decade were found in a house in Cleveland. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight all went missing in separate incidents when they were teenagers. Amanda Berry took advantage of a broken door and called to neighbor Charles Ramsey, who helped her escape. Police later found the other two women in the house. Three brothers in their 50s have been arrested. The three women and a child are at a local hospital, shielded from the media, but Charles Ramsey tells the story of Amanda Berry's moment of freedom. And he tells it well. Ramsey will soon be memed and autotuned and made into an internet star. Link

You can experience elegance even on a simple park bench. Dutch designer Joost Goudriaan made this bench to look like an upholstered and padded Chesterfield sofa. 

Link | Designer's Website

The following is an article from the Annals of Improbable Research.

The sounds of crisp chips (crisps) and stale chips (crisps)
by Marc Abrahams, Improbable Research staff

Crispness is associated with crunchiness, but your ears make a difference. That’s the take-away-and-chew-on-it message of an Oxford University study¹ called “The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips.”

The authors, experimental psychologists Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence, wax distantly poetical:

We investigated whether the perception of the crispness and staleness of potato chips can be affected by modifying the sounds produced during the biting action. Participants in our study bit into potato chips with their front teeth while rating either their crispness or freshness using a computer-based visual analog scale.

They recruited volunteers who were willing to chew, in a highly regulated way, on Pringles potato crisps. Pringles themselves are, as enthusiasts well know, highly regulated. Each potato chip (or crisp, as it is known in the U.K.) is of nearly identical shape, size and texture, having been carefully manufactured from reconstituted potato goo.

The volunteers were unaware of the true nature of their encounter -- that they would be hearing adulterated crunch sounds. But whatever risks this entailed were small. The experiment, Zampini and Spence take pains to say in their report, “was performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Participants were paid £5 for taking part in the study.”

Each volunteer sat in a soundproofed experimental booth, wearing headphones, facing a microphone, and operating a pair of foot pedals.

The headphones delivered Pringles crunch sounds that, though born in the chewer’s mouth, had been captured by the microphone and electronically cooked. At times, the crunch sounds were delivered to the headphones with exacting, lifelike fidelity. At other times, the sounds were magnified. At still other times, only the high frequencies of the crunch were intensified.

The foot pedals were the means by which a volunteer could register his or her judgments as to (a) the crispness and (b) the freshness of a particular crisp.

Each crisp’s crispness was judged from a single, headphone-enhanced bite delivered with the front teeth. Zampini and Spence adopted this approach for two reasons. It maximized the uniformity of the participant’s contact with each crisp. And previous research, by others, showed that the sound of the first bite is what counts most for judging crispness.

There aren't enough honeybees in the wild to pollinate all the commercial crops these days, so John Kraus steps in as a migratory beekeeper. He sends hives of bees to agricultural areas that need them during each crop's pollination season. That means shipping hives in big trucks, two trucks at a time, for a total load of over three million bees!

It’s different at different times of year. When we ship them to California, we don’t leave home. We just hire somebody to unload them down there and put them on a ranch up towards the gate of Yosemite. Then we go down to California in January and we spend about three weeks there. We go through the hives, check them for queens, for strength, and then put them in the almond groves. And then we’re back home for five or six weeks depending on the season. It takes about a week to go down and gather them all together and ship them back north.

After almonds, we go through again and move them into the soft fruit. That’s probably the worst move because we load them ourselves, beat feet and drive all night, and then unload. Load them up on a semi at dusk, drive 300 miles, and then unload them.

Read more about the intricacy of shipping bees across country in an interview with Kraus at Modern Farmer. Link  -via Digg

This photo is circulating the intertubes. According to rumor, a fan of the Vancouver Canucks, a hockey team, ordered a pizza for pickup. But when the game became tied between the Canucks and the San Jose Sharks, the fan simply couldn't leave to pick up the pizza. So he called and asked for delivery.

Link -via Foodbeast

While the rest of us were busy talking about the potential of quantum networks, which would allow for perfectly secure communication based on the laws of quantum mechanics, the gub'ment has been running one for at least two years:

Today, Richard Hughes and pals at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico reveal an alternative quantum internet, which they say they’ve been running for two and half years. Their approach is to create a quantum network based around a hub and spoke-type network. All messages get routed from any point in the network to another via this central hub. [...]

Hughes and co say they’ve solved this with their unique approach which equips each node in the network with quantum transmitters–ie lasers–but not with photon detectors which are expensive and bulky. Only the hub is capable of receiving a quantum message (although all nodes can send and receiving conventional messages in the normal way).

Link - via digg

Let them eat virtual cake! Exile Game Jam used the Oculus Rift virtual reality system to build a guillotine simulator. As you can see from the video, it's convincing enough to startle and frighten the test subjects.

Video Link (warning: NSFW language) -via Geekosystem

Classic Gamer T-shirt by Donnie

I have a soft spot for classic video games, so I love this new Classic Gamer T-shirt from Donnie, over at the NeatoShop. If you prefer 8-bit over the fancy shmancy graphics of today's video games, this T-shirt is for you!

Check out Donnie's Behance profile for more neat designs, then head on over to his NeatoShop page: Link - Your purchase helps support indie artists like him, as well as this blog.

More recently listed T-shirts:

Dog Hunt	Chibi Heroes	Coffee Addict	Triforce Art

View more Tees by Donnie | Funny T-shirts

Members of a women's club, the Parkham Women's Institute in North Devon, England, knew they were going to hear a talk about piracy at their meeting. So they wore pirate costumes, complete with eye patches and even a fake parrot. They were quite embarrassed when they arrived at the meeting and realized the speaker was Captain Colin Darch, who spoke of his experience as a hostage of a band of Somali pirates in 2008.

Captain Darch said he found the whole thing amusing and more like a scene from the Pirates of Penzance than anything like he had experienced while he being held hostage.

He said: “Of course I didn’t take offence or mind. It was more like the Pirates of Penzance.

“I must admit I quite enjoy giving talks to groups such as WIs. I am doing quite a few of them and it is a good way to flog my book.

“They were lovely ladies. They made me judge who was the best dressed which was a difficult choice. In the end I decided to choose the one with who had a fluffy parrot on her shoulder. Of course there weren’t any parrots near the real pirates.”

A good time was had by all. Link -via Arbroath

Zombie Gnome

Zombies make great garden gnomes, because they are soft spoken creatures who really love spending time outdoors. You will often find zombies slowly wandering around neighborhoods thinking about nothing in particular. Sure, they may stop to pick a brain or two. And, they may even try to convert you into a like minded nature goer. In general, however, they are just go lucky folks without a care in the world. Invite a Zombie Gnome from the NeatoShop into your garden and experience firsthand how these undead friends can really liven-up your yard. 

The Zombie Gnome is a garden decoration shaped like a zombified gnome. It is made of terracotta and features weather resistant paint. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Zombie items. 

Link

For a long time, I've suspected that much of the footage of the Battle of Hoth was digitally altered. Now physicist Rhett Allain gives me reason to have those doubts. He's crunched the numbers and determined that the AT-AT that Luke Skywalker allegedly destroyed was actually a model. How can Prof. Allain be sure? Because a real AT-AT would have taken longer to fall over:

According to this, how tall would the center of mass have to be in order to just take 3.5 seconds to fall over? It would just be about 9 meters tall. So, here are my options.

• The gravitational field on Hoth is not like Earth. I crunched the numbers (re-ran the calculation) and you would need g to be about twice the value of Earth’s in order to get a tip over time of 3.5 seconds (starting from 5 degrees). However, this would not agree with the falling Luke.
• The center of mass of the AT-AT is not where you think it is. This could be the case if the legs were super massive. Why would they be so massive? Who knows? (well, maybe George Lucas would know)
• The AT-AT is not 22.5 meters tall but instead like half that height. Of course, this wouldn’t agree with Luke’s fall time.
• The AT-AT didn’t actually tip over. Instead, it was an inside sabotage job by some disgruntled Storm Troopers. Wait, this wouldn’t explain the fall time.

So, you see there are some problems with this scene. I guess the only reasonable thing to do is to make a new version of The Empire Strikes Back. In this new version, the AT-AT would take another second to fall over. Sure, this might be a lot of work to redo the whole movie for just one scene – but think of all the new Star Wars Blu-ray sales.

The secrets are emerging.

Link

(Images: Lucasfilm, Rhett Allain)

Funny Baby Pacifiers over the NeatoShop

Parents, here's a quick way to clean your baby's pacifier and help it become healthier in one fell swoop. Or, make that in one big lick:

The researchers found that the 65 babies whose mother or father sucked on their pacifiers to cleanse them were significantly less likely to get eczema and asthma, two conditions caused by allergic reactions, than babies whose parents did not use the cleaning technique. [...]

To investigate the role of pacifier cleaning, Bill Hesselmar of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and his colleagues analyzed data they had collected for a broader study about babies' allergies. Among the questions the parents had answered was what they did when their child's pacifier fell out of his or her mouth.

"We asked them how they cleaned the pacifier — if they rinsed them in water — and of course most of them did," Hesselmar says. But a lot of the parents did something else.

"They put it in their mouth, sucked on it and then gave it back to the children," Hesselmar says. "It's a quite common way to clean pacifier."

Rob Stein of NPR's Shots has the story: Link

Gross? It's better than eating boogers to boost your immune system!

The 1:1 scale shuttlecraft prop from the original Star Trek somehow survived the decades that passed since the end of the show. Last year, it sold at auction. The new owners, Adam Schneider and Alec Peters, took the prop to professional boat restorers and asked them to make the old girl spaceworthy again. Space.com interviewed them about their efforts. Mr. Schneider wrote:

It's probably taken 2,000 man hours of work. It's a world-class restoration at a world-class shop. This is not me because I have no skills as an amateur doing work. This is a fabulous facility [Master Shipwrights in New Jersey].

Not only is it going to be cosmetically good, but from a structural point of view, from a quality of finish point of view, from a quality of wood point of view, and from an ability to move it safely without damaging it. It has never been in better shape.

Link -via Ace of Spades HQ

The hair dryers in salons of my childhood looked like space helmets, and it was fun to pretend that they were. Those from an even earlier era resembled instruments of torture, or at least science fiction. Oh, the things we go through to be beautiful! Dark Roasted Blend looks back at vintage hair dryers and other beauty salon gadgets that don't even seem real from the vantage point of the 21st century. Link

McCovey Cove in San Francisco Bay lies just beyond the right field wall of a baseball stadium. Boating baseball fans often hang out there during games in the hope of catching stray balls. To give them the full ballpark experience, ESPN and its ad agency hired a kayaker to sell them hot dogs:

Enter London Van Der Kamp, a professional kayaker who briefly stepped away from his day job at an outdoor sporting goods company and into a specially made kayak that was used during Sunday's game between the Giants and Dodgers.

Van Der Kamp, recruited by ESPN and its advertising agency, Wieden+Kennedy, was targeted to be a floating hot dog vendor for the night. His job? To serve other Cove kayakers hot dogs, free of charge, from a custom-built contraption that contains a warming compartment and bottles of mustard and ketchup.

Link -via Super Punch

(Photo: MLB.com)

There are many things in life we can celebrate with a drink, but getting one's driver's license back after having it suspended for a DUI shouldn't be one of them. For an obvious reason:

While being processed on the DUI charge, James told the officer the reason she was drinking was to celebrate the fact that was would be getting her license back from a DUI arrest in 2012, according to police.

“Ms. James purposely drove a car that she did not own to avoid the ignition lock device and was driving back from a Forest Park bar where she was celebrating that fact that she would finally have her driving privileges back after her 2012 conviction for DUI,” Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel said in a statement. “Ms. James is exactly the type of motorist I want kept off the road permanently under a new proposed habitual DUI law that I will be proposing in the very near future.”

From NBC4: Link - via Holykaw

Image: Hello My Name is Drunk Flask

(vimeo link)

The Sugar Bugs valiantly defend their kingdom, but they are no match for …dental hygiene! John Kim produced this student project at Cal Arts. The ending is somewhat unbelievable, but the action is epic. -via Kuriositas

Merrydale Elementary School in Baton Rouge, Louisana, has a problem: its test scores were abysmal. That in and of itself isn't a unique problem - many schools have low tests scores - but Merrydale's solution on how to raise its test scores is.

See, most failing schools try to improve its teaching staff to raise test scores, but the enterprising Louisiana school decided to do something else: import smarter students!

The proposal to move 100 gifted and talented students this fall from Glen Oaks Park Elementary, a C-rated school, to nearby Merrydale Elementary, an F-rated school, generated some heat Thursday. [...]

The higher-scoring gifted students would likely increase the school performance score of Merrydale from 71.2 to an estimated 77.5 under the shift, high enough to avert a state takeover.

Charles Lussier of The Advocate has the scoop: Link

One of those things that I heard somewhere that has stuck with me is, "Wisdom is the ability to tell the difference between what is important and what is not." That seems to be the basis of research that shows that older people, even with declining memories, make better decisions overall than younger people.  

As we age, we become more selective about what we remember, says Dr. Alan Castel of UCLA, one of the study’s lead researchers. In an earlier study, his team tested older and younger adults’ ability to recall a list of words. The initial findings, as one would expect, showed that younger subjects remembered more of the words. However, when the two groups were provided the same list, but with some words assigned a higher number value than others, older participants were better than younger subjects at remembering the words assigned high scores and ignoring those with low scores.

It appears that as we age, we may become better able to differentiate between important and less important information. “While memory tends to decline as we get older, it seems that older adults selectively remember more important information,” Castel says.

Makes plenty of sense to me. As I've gotten older, my head is still filled with useless trivia, but I no longer make an effort to memorize phone numbers or song lyrics. Of course, you know the corollary to the earlier adage: "Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement." Link  -via Digg

Bacon Spatula Turner

Some would argue that bacon is the most important meal of the day. Now even when you aren't cooking your favorite meat you can still cook with your favorite meat. The Bacon Spatula Turner from the NeatoShop is a flexible nylon spatula turner shaped like tasty strips of bacon. The handle is made of sturdy brushed stainless steel.  

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more deliciously fun Cooking Stuff. 

Link

Let's see… this chimera is made up of a combination lion and tiger with pistons and red wings. You guessed it: Detroit! There are people in the city who pass by every day and don't realize The Chimera represents the city's sports teams (you can find more city symbolism if you look closely). The largest mural in Michigan is being spray-painted by Kobie Solomon, with the support of Detroit Harmonie, on the Russell Building, which houses many art studios and vendors. If you pass through on I-75, keep an eye out for the Chimera! Link

(Image credit: coreoski)

Grey hair may soon be a thing of the past. Scientists have found the cause of greying hair and a clue on how it can be reversed:

Scientists found people who are going grey build up hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.

However this could be reversed by "an antioxidant" cocktail that allows "re-pigmentation" of the hair.

The discovery of what makes hair grey, published in the FASEB (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) journal, was actually made whilst investigating the skin disease vitiligo. [...]

The team, which included experts from Bradford University's School of Life Sciences, blamed "massive epidermal oxidative stress" that leads to the build up of hydrogen peroxide.

Link

(YouTube link)

A flood in Siberia has made getting to work really difficult. How do you get your crew across to the other side -call a boat? Build a bridge? Wait for the water to go down? No need for any of that, when you've got heavy equipment handy! -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Toby Atticus Fraley installed the Robot Repair Shop in a vacant storefront in downtown Pittsburgh back in November of 2011. The fictional repair shop was never open, but always lit so passers-by could see the workshop, featuring a lonely robot who seemed to always want out. Over the 17 months the store has been in existence, Fraley frequently changed things around and added details that kept fans coming back to see what's happened at the shop.

However, the storefront has been leased to a restaurant, and the Robot Repair Shop is closing down today. But what about the lonely robot? He won't just disappear. Recently, he's been seen planning his escape, gathering tools and studying a map. He makes his escape this evening, heading for California, and will have a send off party to receive well wishes and pose for pictures before leaving on his next adventure. If you're in Pittsburgh, you don't want to miss this event!

Read more about the Robot Repair Shop art project at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Link

Instructables member cunning_fellow's cleverly named Asteroid Belt features a playable version of the classic Atari video game Asteroids. You can find a complete list of his coding and assembly instructions at the link.

Link -via Hack a Day

You can see the resemblance, can't you? This is a Megalopyge opercularis, or flannel moth caterpillar. It was spotted by photographer Jeff Cremer and biologist Phil Torres in the Peruvian rainforest. They look furry, and will become a fluffy moth as well, but don't touch it! Its "fur" is made up of venomous spines that can cause painful swelling that lasts for days. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Phil Torres)