Vijay Kumari was granted bail, but the poor Indian woman couldn't pay the $180 needed to secure her release, so she sat in jail, forgotten by the system and everybody else. For 19 long years. But someone remembered her.

She thought she was going to die in jail, but then one day, her son who was born while in jail, managed to scrape enough money working as a seamstress to get her out.

Sanjoy Mujamder reports from Kanpur, India, for the BBC about the state of the Indian justice system in the 21st century: Link

Play a Bach concerto, close your eyes, then envision a color. What color do you see? Stephen Palmer, a vision scientists from UC Berkeley, can predict what sort of colors you'd pick from the music you're listening to:

“We can predict with 95 percent accuracy how happy or sad the colors people pick will be, based on how happy or sad the music is that they’re listening to,” said Stephen Palmer, a University of California, Berkeley vision scientist, in a statement.

Palmer and a team of researchers at Berkeley asked nearly 100 people to listen to 18 pieces of classical music that varied in key and tempo. The participants —half from San Francisco and half from Guadalajara, Mexico—were then asked to choose five colors that they most associated with each piece, selecting from a 37-color palette.

The results, published May 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that people in both countries picked bright, warmer colors when they heard faster, more upbeat music and darker, cooler colors for pieces in minor keys.

Those connections, he says, are largely based on emotional connections our brains make. In other words, if a classical music piece is happy and lively, people are more likely to pick colors that are also happy and lively because they feel happy and lively when listening to the music. 

Melody Kramer of National Geographic's Pop Omnivore has the post: Link - Thanks Anna Kukelhaus!

Man, that's a lot of frequent flyer miles! Canadian transportation planner Michael Markieta who works at engineering firm Arup in Toronto as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) consultant, crunched the data of more than 58,000 global flight paths and visualized them in these fantastic images:

Hidden in countless hours of C-SPAN footage of Senators and Congress members droning on and on are these snapshots of their visual aids. Thankfully, a C-SPAN producer named Bill Gray has compiled the most ridiculous ones on his Tumblr blog Floor Charts.

Your tax dollars at work: Link - via Co.DESIGN

Dude, where's the getaway car?

After two criminals robbed a local Burger King last week, they ran out of the fast food joint to realize that their getaway car was missing:

As the men allegedly forced two employees to hand over money from the cash register and safe, a third employee ran outside—where he found their running car and drove it around the block and out of sight, reports the Record. "I haven't heard of any employee actually leaving a business, getting inside the suspect vehicle, and trying to hide it," says a Stockton officer.

Link

Photo: Michal Kowalski/Shutterstock

With cute animals like koalas and rockin' economy, it's no wonder that Australia is a happy place. In fact, it has just been ranked as the world's happiest nation three years running by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD):

Australia has been named the world's happiest industrialized nation for the third year running, based on criteria including satisfaction, work-life balance, income and housing, a survey released Tuesday has found.

The so-called "lucky country" beat Sweden and Canada to take the top spot in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Better Life Index.

Australia has remained largely immune from the global financial crisis, with its economy growing on average 3.5% over the last 20 years to 2012, according to the CIA Factbook.

CNN's Irene Chapple reports: Link

You don't see many engineers in movies, said structural engineer Tristram Carfrae, and when you do, they're often "portrayed as socially inadequate mechanics, supporting the vision and ideas of others." That, according to Carfrae, is how a lot of people see engineers (case in point: do you see Iron Man's Tony Stark as a genius entrepreneur or a brilliant engineer?)

But why? Why has the engineering profession fallen from grace?

How did we get to this position? The panel discussion started by considering whether the Second World War was a turning point in the perception of engineers. It asked if seeing engineers put their skills to such destructive effect changed people’s opinions of them. I had to agree, particularly in regards to the dropping of the H-bomb at the end of the war.

Compare this with the perception of engineers during the industrial revolution. We think of engineers from that time as part of a great leap forward – distinctive heroes with distinctive personas like Isambard Kingdom Brunel doing great things. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that characters like Brunel were public relations-savvy entrepreneurs as well as being brilliant engineers. [...]

In building engineering, the Western world currently has around ten times more engineers than it does architects. But I’d be willing to bet you can find at least ten times more comments and opinions in the media from architects than from engineers. We have to close this gap.

Another related issue is our background in mathematics. We’re examined by questions that ask us to find the single, definitive answer – all other answers being wrong. Being trained to solve puzzles means we’re less comfortable dealing with more subjective areas where one solution may be as good as another; where it comes down to our opinion. 

Read the rest over at Carfrae's blog post: Link

Ah, aaahh, aaaaahhh LOVE this video clip compilation of sneezing animals over at VideoSift. Who knew that turtles can sneeze? Link

I wonder how blogger would fare in Dante Shepherd's Surviving the World series, a nifty webcomic "lessons" he started back in 2008 (and has been going strong ever since! I can't believe we haven't featured him before here on Neatorama).

Take a look at the whole series, starting from the first lesson: Link (Be prepared to lose hours hitting the "random" button)

Did you forget to lock your front door? Take heart, at least you didn't forget to lock the cell doors of prison inmates, like what happened to the warden of Norrätlje prison in Sweden:

Via Criggo and Miss Cellania

Having a bad day? Not compared to this scooter guy, you're not! Watch till the very end, mmkay? Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Arbroath

Forget the League of Shadows, Batman has joined the League of Eye Shadow, and found it fabulous! From the fertile mind of Anna Stiffler of Chaos Life, here's something you don't know about the Dark Knight: Link - via Pleated Jeans

There's a fungus among us - actually, scratch that - there are many more fungi living on our body. More then 200 different species in our feet alone:

In the first study of its kind, a US team catalogued the different groups of fungi living on the body in healthy adults.

A team led by the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, sequenced the DNA of fungi living on the skin at 14 different body areas in 10 healthy adults.

Samples were taken from the ear canal, between the eyebrows, the back of the head, behind the ear, the heel, toenails, between the toes, forearm, back, groin, nostrils, chest, palm, and the crook of the elbow.

The data reveal that fungal richness varies across the body. The most complex fungal habitat is the heel, home to about 80 types of fungi. The researchers found about 60 types in toenail clippings and 40 types in swabs between the toes.

Link

3D printing has never looked so good! With their background in architecture and penchant for complex geometries, Kyle and Liz von Hasseln of The Sugar Lab have come up with a way to 3D print sugar sculptures.

Duh! With its eyes closed, of course! Take a look at these cute photos of baby giraffes sleeping, using their own bodies as pillows for their heads, courtesy of their loooong necks (except the last one, whose head I think plopped to the ground in the sleep).

Next question: Do they wake up with a giant crick in their necks? (Images: Imgur - via Lost at E Minor)