I could grow a man bun. And I obviously should. Then I could look like famous world leaders and wear tiny fedoras on the bun. But I don't want to wait to grow my hair out until it's long enough to have one. By the time it is for me to have a natural man bun, the fashion trend could have passed.
The solution is to wear a clip-on man bun. It's like a clip-on tie, but obviously more dignified. And now is the time to invest in this fashion solution because the discount site Groupon is offering them for a mere $9.99 each. That's easily worth the chance to become an object of desire among women and envy among men. Choose one to match your own natural hair color, or a different one for an eye-grabbing contrast.
CNN reports that Groupon has already sold a thousand of these wonders. So you'd better get one while they're still available.
On June 18, 1947, a commercial airliner crashed in Syria. The young co-pilot took the time in the midst of the chaos and fear to tell a young woman that she was going to be alright. He helped a stranger in a small but important way.
About a third of the way through the story, I recognized the co-pilot. He would later become famous for inspiring millions of other people through television.
Your daily commute may be a bit shorter on this ride--possibly only a few bike lengths.
Mijil Van Mares Werkploeg, a cycling organization in the Netherlands, built this custom bicycle in order to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's longest bicycle. As it's 117 feet and 5 inches long, it succeeded! The bike is made of the same sort of aluminum trusses used in concert lighting rigs. One person steers from the front and another pedals from the rear. There are no stabilizers, so it's a real bike!
Is it hard to ride? Team leader Frank Pelt says that it's no problem. You can ride it as long as you like, so as long as you don't need to turn a corner.
Jon Masters is homeless. But that may end very soon.
In September, he begged for money by a road in Pensacola, Florida. He collected $40. With that, he purchased art supplies. He began painting landscapes, then selling them by the side of the road. Each one goes for about $25-40. You can find an online gallery of his work here.
Masters and his dog, Sheba, still live outdoors for now. But as Masters's fame and income rise, he's embracing new opportunities. USA Today (warning: auto-start video) reports:
On Tuesday, Daniel Dugan, organizer of the weekly Gulf Breeze Farmers Market, picked Masters up and drove him out to Gulf Breeze Community Center, where a covered booth awaited the artist. But first, with a little extra money in his pocket from a few sales, he went and purchased a new shirt and jeans. He has been wearing his previous outfit, splattered with paint, since his release.
"Don't I look fancy?" he asked with a smile, sitting under the covered booth tent at the market. "I'm hoity-toity now."
Dugan, who operates three farmers markets in Northwest Florida, said he hopes more homeless people follow Masters' lead.
"I saw the PNJ article and I was impressed and inspired and had the ability to offer him some space," he said. "That's what we want to do. If one person can inspire our homeless population, that is what we need. He's doing it right. He knocked on the door and it got opened."
Maddy, the daughter of Jenn Morrison Douglas, had an unusual word problem on a fourth grade math test. In it, four boys and four girls all took turns dating each other. The task was to determine all possible unique dating permutations.
Maddy understood that the premise of the question was faulty, if not alarming. You don't date a friend's ex-boyfriend. That's in the Girl Code. So Maddy wrote:
I can't answer this problem because my mom says according to Girl Code you shouldn't date a friend's x-boyfriend.
She's right. If this was an ethics test, any other answer would have been wrong.
From Rocket News 24 comes news of the cutest cat and baby couple in the world. Japanese twitter user @kokesukeppa's little boy was napping on a cushion. The family cat decided to join him, stretching out across his belly.
Now I want a blanket made of cats! Can I get one to fit a queen size bed?
A couple weeks ago, Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal argued that it's better to have a cat instead of a baby. This photo makes a compelling argument for getting both.
Charleston, South Carolina is a beautiful city. Despite the ravages of war in previous centuries, it has preserved much of its historical architecture--that is, until 1989, when Hurricane Hugo did what British and Union armies could not.
Lovely old buildings were badly damaged. To make matters worse, no one knew how to repair them because those historical trades had almost vanished. Amy Crawford explains in CityLab:
Not since the earthquake of 1886 had the city seen such devastation, and as residents set about rebuilding, they soon realized they had another problem on their hands: a shortage of artisans trained in skills like masonry, ironwork, and plastering, necessary to repair the city's famous historic buildings.
City leaders responded by establishing a new school to teach these old building trades. But the American College of the Building Arts isn't just a trade school. Students who attend get a thorough liberal arts education. In fact, Amy Cawford tells us, it's "the only school in the United States to offer a bachelor's degree in the traditional building trades." She describes it:
Every student in the college majors in building arts, but can choose one of six specializations: architectural stone, carpentry, forged architectural iron, masonry, plasterwork, or timber framing. The college seeks to combine a traditional liberal arts curriculum with intensive crafts training, often teaching disciplines like history or math by way of the latter; for example, history is taught with an architectural history focus.
"The graduate here has learned both the art and the science of preservation and new construction," says Colby M. Broadwater III, a retired Army lieutenant general brought in as president in 2008 to apply some military discipline to the school's finances. "How to build a business, the drawing and drafting that underlies all of it … the language, the math that supports the building functions, the science of why materials fail—all of those things wrapped into a liberal arts and science education."
The college is currently located in the jail that Charleston built in 1802. When the school acquired the building, it had been vacant for half a century. The students restored it themselves, learning their trades as they did so.
Kjell Lindgren, an astronaut currently on the International Space Station, recently became the first person to play the bagpipes in space. He played the hymn "Amazing Grace" in memory of Victor Hurst, a scientist who worked closely with Lindgren during his astronaut training. Hurst recently died unexpectedly at the age of 48.
Lindgren used bagpipes made by the Scottish firm McCallum Bagpipes to withstand the rigors of space travel. The BBC reports:
Kenny Macleod, who works at McCallum Bagpipes, told BBC Scotland the 42-year-old astronaut had got in touch two years ago to say he was going to the space station and wanted to play the pipes while he was there.
"He wondered if it was feasible to play bagpipes," he said.
"They're made of plastic - they're just easier to keep clean and to make sure they're not contaminated. They're also lighter."
In the video, Mr Lindgren is seen to give the pipes a punch before he starts playing. Mr Macleod said it was normal for pipers to massage the bag to get the air flowing, "but not quite as vigorously as that".
"The thing about bagpipes is that they're very difficult to play at high altitude because the air is that bit thinner. They're quite hard to blow so he's done well," he added.
Although haggis may be found in the wild and hunted in Scotland and some parts of northern England, it is not native to the United States and attempts to introduce it have failed.
For those of us in the States who enjoy the refined taste of haggis, the 1971 federal ban on the importation of this Scottish delicacy has long been a source of frustration. But now the US is considering dropping the ban, provided that haggis manufacturers remove one essential ingredient from the dish: sheep lungs. The BBC reports on the saintly labors of the Scottish official Richard Lochhead:
The rural affairs secretary told the BBC: "Tens of millions of Americans want to enjoy Scotland's national dish. Now it may be that we'd have to tweak the recipe for haggis to get into the US market, because some of the ingredients - such as sheep lungs - have been banned since 1971.
"But I think our own producers here in Scotland are up for tweaking the recipe so that US customers can still get as close as possible to the real thing.
Perhaps we will finally see the end of this irrational Scotophobic prohibition.
Oh, YouTube user Cakes Step By Step implicitly suggests using them to serve cereal in the tutorial video. But let's not kid ourselves: ice cream is essential for a balanced breakfast.
To make your own, first crush 240 grams of Oreos into a fine paste and add 80 grams of butter to it. Shape the mixture into a bowl using a stainless steel mold. Chill that for 2 hours, then add melted chocolate to the inside surfaces. Chill the bowl again, then add melted chocolate on the outside. While it's still warm and molten, add Froot Loops.
Love Hultén is a technology artist in Sweden. His work combines classic styles and technologies in new ways, such as this lovely replica Macintosh 128k. Yes, that’s a 128 Mac—the original Macintosh that came out in 1984. That machine ushered in a golden age of personal computing because it made new abilities accessible to people with limited technological knowledge.
The Golden Apple has a handmade walnut case and gold plated keys. There’s a Mac Mini inside the case. The 3.5 inch floppy disk drive is now a DVD reader and the mouse, unlike the original, is wireless.
Looking back, it should have been obvious. We thought that we were free, but we were actually just free range. The lack of fences on the PlayPlace was a feature, not a bug. We wouldn’t need them if we were too slow to run away and too happy from our Happy Meals to even try. Far too late we realized that we should have gone with the Big Mc instead of the Big Mac.
In the mood for a fight, but don’t want anything serious? If you like casual encounters with no strings attached, then have I got an app for you! This is Rumblr, a new app in development. Think of it as Tinder, except for a different kind of strictly physical relationship: a brawl. The New York Daily News reports:
"Rumblr is an app for recreational fighters to find, meet and fight other brawl enthusiasts nearby," according the app's website. It encourages users to insult their matched opponents with this pro-tip: "tell your match what you don't like about their picture."
The fight's location and time is also publicly broadcasted so other users can come and watch the melee, according to the website.
The app comes with a chat feature to talk trash and an interactive map, for users to find fights happening near them. It also has a filter system, with "RumblrHER" to find women fighting, and "RumblrGROUP" for crew brawls.
If Tyler Durden of Fight Club built an app, it would function like Rumblr. Just be aware that if this is your first night at fight club, you have to swipe right.
The crab stands in front of a house that looks just like SpongeBob's. Perhaps he is Mr. Crabs. But instead of using his time to earn more money by selling Bikini Bottom's finest burgers, he's playing peek-a-boo with human non-customer.
What makes John Maultsby's accomplishment all the more amazing is that he only started running marathons at the age of 60!
He's been running since 1972, but always shorter distances. Maultsby long wanted to run a marathon, but only qualified after turning 60. During that run, he saw a man wearing a t-shirt marked "50 States Finisher." This is a unique title coveted by American marathon runners: to run a marathon in every state of the union.
Maultsby decided that that's what he would do. It's been hard. He had a run-in with a moose in Alaska and almost froze to death during his Florida run. But he's persevered, running 7 marathons this year alone. Last week, Maultsby finally accomplished his dream when he crossed the finish line at a marathon in Manchester, New Hampshire. The Today show reports:
Maultsby regularly ran six or 10 miles a day multiple times a week and would run 22 miles every other Wednesday to keep himself in shape.
He also still works at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas.
Scheduling marathons often became a nightmare because he had to put in for his vacation at MGM a year in advance, before the dates of many of the marathons were officially set.
The other threat to derail his quest was injuries. One year, a torn meniscus tendon in his knee sidelined him for six months.
"There were a lot of times when I was running through injuries thinking, 'I don't know if I'm going to make this or not,''' he said.
He also was often only one of a handful of runners his age in each marathon. In several races, he said it was just him and one other runner over 70.
