(Photo: unrelated mural via Hajor)

Since 1957, the Mexican government agency responsible for collecting income tax has permitted artists to pay their income taxes by submitting pieces of art. It's the only pay-in-kind income tax system in the world.

It began when David Alfaro Siqueiros, an influential artist, approached a senior government official on behalf of a friend who faced tax evasion charges. The government decided to permit this artist to pay his tax bill with pieces of his own artwork.

The program has been greatly expanded since that time. As a result, the government now possesses 7,000 pieces of art held in public trust. In The Atlantic, Eva Hershaw describes it:

The program is simple—donations are made according to reported sales. If an artist sells between one and five pieces of art in a given year, he or she donates one piece to the federal government. If the artist sells between six and eight pieces, he or she donates two, and so on, with an annual cap of six donations. Only painters, sculptors, and graphic artists can participate, though program administrators are currently considering whether to include performance art as an acceptable means of payment. A committee of artists and curators oversees the donations process to ensure that the art received meets certain quality standards. If the art is of a particularly high caliber, it becomes part of the “national-heritage collection,” which is displayed in a permanent exhibit in Mexico City. All other pieces are divided up and shipped across the country to fill public museums and administrative buildings. Certain pieces are also sent abroad as part of exhibitions coordinated with museums across the world. Last year alone, the program sent Pago en Especie pieces to 13 international galleries.

If you paid your taxes in your own work product, what would you send to the government?

-via The Hairpin

"Hey, you got scooter on my bicycle!"

"Well, you got bicycle on my scooter!"

In the near future, you can have both with the Pibal. The French carmaker Peugeot and designer Philippe Starck have developed this vehicle which can function either way. It was their submission to a contest by the city of Bordeaux to design an urban bike.

Starck sees the Pibal as ideal for this environment. In congested traffic, the user can move slowly as a scooter. When there's more room, the user can ride it as a bicycle. Bright yellow tires make it more visible and a heavy rack in the rear can be used for storage. You can see more photos of it at Dezeen.

-via OhGizmo!

Kirbie writes that her experimental dessert tastes "like a fried dough ball of goodness with chocolate and a melted creme center." So it would be an awesome treat for Easter. She made them by wrapping them in canned pizza dough and then deep frying them in a pan of oil. It's important to time the frying just right so that the chocolate is melted but not disintegrated.

-via Tasteologie

(Photo of vaginal scaffold by Dr. Yuanyuan Zhang)

Medical researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center grew human vaginas in a laboratory setting, then successfully implanted them in patients. More than 8 years after the transplants, those vaginas are fully functional.

The researchers led by Dr. Anthony Atala published their results in a recent issue of Lancet. The project began by taking small tissue samples from patients, then growing those samples into larger pieces of flesh. Then they implanted those nascent organs in patients along a biodegradable scaffolding that provided a champagne glass-like shape for the organ to grow on.

The transplants took place in 2005 and 2008. Four patients who participated in the study report that they now have normal sexual function as a result. Dr. Atala said that this new approach could be beneficial to other women who have experienced vaginal injury or cancer.

-via Nerdcore

Or maybe channel power through the main deflector dish while routing the tachyons through the inertial dampers?

Jeremy Kaye writes, "Sometimes Star Trek is amazing. Other times though." Well, yes. The technobabble could be a bit much at times. But I think that anti-fans emphasize this point excessively. The Next Generation provided a steady diet of quality science fiction for 7 years. You can't have Darmok or The Inner Light every week.

(Video Link)

The Doma Indian School is a horse farm in San Luis, Argentina. It's operated by the father and son team of Oscar and Cristobal Scarpati. They've developed a meditative exercise practice that help calm wild or traumatized horses. It involves prolonged skin-to-skin contact with the horses in poses that relax them. The Daily Mail quotes them:

'Acts that are widely considered dangerous (due to the intense physical contact between horse and tamer) become safety techniques and methods by which the horses quickly lose the fear (spooking/sensibility) which renders them so unpredictable.

'The removal of fear (spooking/sensibility) using the Scarpati method guarantees a loyal relationship with an untamed horse.'

-via Dave Barry

Anna Keville Joyce is a food stylist and photographer. It's an art form that I've become aware of only in the past few years. Masters of it like Joyce can create arresting images like these. With carefully sliced, chopped, and arranged foods, she's made birds that look both realistic and tasty. You can view more works in her portfolio here.

-via Foodiggity

On Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen is often addressed by the Dothraki title "Khaleesi." Like many Game of Thrones character names, Khaleesi is becoming a popular girls' name in the United States. In fact, according to data collected by the Social Security Administration, in 2012, there were more newborn girls named Khaleesi than Betsy.

You can see more charts of Game of Thrones baby names at Vox.

If you're considering naming a child after a Game of Thrones character, then at least find out what has happened to that character in the books. What if the chosen namesake turns out to be a nasty person? Sure, you could name a child "Joffrey" after the second season of the show. But what connotations does that name have now?

-via Geekosystem

The ancient Greeks believed that the internet was ruled by a collection of anthropomorphic gods. Depending upon your needs, you might offer prayers and sacrifices to different gods, seeking their favor and a fast wireless connection. Caldwell Tanner and Nathan Yaffe illustrated 13 of them and briefly described their purposes to lowly denizens of the let like us. You can find them all here.

The boyfriend of Instructables member Rachel bought an ostrich egg. What should you do with such an unusual food? Make something fancy, of course! They boiled and deviled it. You can view more photos here.

We all want to be Luke Skywalker on the trench run in an X-wing starfighter. With each passing day, we're getting closer to making that dream a reality. Rodger Cleye made this 5-foot long model as a part of that ongoing effort.

It's made of PVC pipe which is why it looks hollow. That was necessary because anything more would have been too heavy for the 3 drone motors that make it airworthy. Check it out in action:

(Video Link)

-via Hack A Day

(Photos: Cunard/James Morgan)

The RMS Queen Mary 2 is the largest ocean liner ever built. It's operated by the Cunard Line, under which it makes regular transatlantic voyages. It's 1,132 feet long, which is twice as long as the height of the Washington Monument.

The ship has a bulbous bow designed to help water flow smoothly over the hull. Naval architects developed this concept in the 1950s. Ideally, it reduces fuel consumption by 5%. On a massive ship like the Queen Mary 2, that's a lot of fuel.

Cunard worked with photographer James Morgan to take these amazing pictures of Kevin Osprey, the captain of the ship, standing on the bulbous bow while it peeked above the surface of the water. You can view more photos in the series at Twisted Sifter.

Action film star Jackie Chan just turned 60 years old. To mark the occasion, artist Hong Yi created this massive portrait of him consisting of bundles of chopsticks hanging at varied lengths. When viewed from the front, they look just like Chan, who is pictured on the left with the artist.

The video embedded below briefly shows how Hong made it. Even if you're not interested in that, you should at least watch the first part of it in which Jackie Chan makes a funny cameo.

(Video Link)

-via Foodiggity

P.S. If the name Hong Yi is familiar to you, it may be because she's one of our favorite artists here at Neatorama. She makes amazing portraits out of unusual materials, such as socks, coffee stains, and paint splattered with a basketball.

I won't judge you.

It's a brutal world out there. We do what we can to get by the everyday agony of isolation from real human connections. Etsy seller Amy Brown explains why she made this body pillow:

Yes, it is 4 feet long. Made of super-soft orange fleece and filled with polyester fibers and bean bag filler, it is a huggable "body pillow" and molds to your embrace. The carrot tops are whisper soft, and at almost 2 feet long wrap them around yourself and pretend they belong to someone else.

Do you still long for the carrot that got away? Its earthy smell and soft, fluttery leaves? When you were together, you felt so grounded. It was a healthy relationship.

But now it is over.

It's too late for a Valentine's Day purchase. But it's not too late to acquire a coping mechanism to make the days pass a little bit easier since...

Well, since Carrot left.

-via Amanda Brennan

At What If?, webcomic artist Randall Munroe answers reader questions about scientific possibilities. He draws stick figures at xkcd, but he's also a scientist and roboticist. So he carefully thinks through reader questions using his considerable brain power.

Most recently, David Axel Kurtz asked him:

I just moved into a new apartment. It includes hot water but I have to pay the electric bill. So being a person on a budget ... what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity?

Munroe proposes building a hydroelectric dam in the bathtub:

It would generate power, though not very much of it. The formula for power is pressure times flow rate.[1] Since bathtubs are pretty shallow, the pressure at the bottom isn't very high, so this works out to around two watts of power, or about 25 cents per month.

You can get more power if you increase the pressure of the water passing through the generator. To do this, you could increase the depth of the water. If you have two floors in your apartment, you could have the water column stretch from the second to the first floor, generating at least ten times the pressure and ten times the power.[2] In effect, the local authorities would be paying to pump the water up to your apartment, and you're getting some of that energy back when you let it flow back down.