A woman in Tasmania pled guilty to five counts of sex with a minor after she was caught in the act with her boyfriend's 16-year-old son. She explained that she mistakenly thought 16 was the age of consent. But the real kicker is how they were caught.

Crown Prosecutor Jackie Hartnett told the court in October last year the woman had gone to her stepson's room to discuss his driving lessons.

Although the pair had previously had a strained relationship, tickling led to kissing and then to intercourse, the prosecutor said.

The following day, the woman's de facto partner set up a video camera in a bid to capture evidence of paranormal activity in the house, but forgot to turn it off.

When he returned from work and reviewed the footage, he saw his son and the woman kissing and cuddling.

So instead of "paranormal activity," the camera caught normal, but illegal, activity. Link  -via news.com.au

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It's amazing what you can do with time, imagination, and modern cameras. The group Homemade Movies recreated the "chestburster" scene from the movie Alien -and nailed it. You can see a behind-the-scenes video and a side-by-side comparison with the original at Laughing Squid. Link

Movie posters are pretty important to the overall success of a film. They go through different drafts of different visions before the final product is released. What didn't make the cut gives us a glimpse into the creative process. In this collection at Flavorwire, you will see that changing and refining the initial concept is usually a good idea. Link

Imagine that you bake so many pies that you need a special tool for crimping the top and bottom crust together -one that makes different patterns to keep things interesting. Then imagine that yours was custom-carved from whalebone or walrus tusk by someone who loves you. The New Bedford Whaling Museum has many, many scrimshaw pie crimpers.

The exhibit attributes this functional extravagance to many hours of boredom at sea, but also to the American diet in the nineteenth century. A typical New England meal of the era would involve not just pie, but pies, in both savoury and sweet form. Armed with a crimping multi-tool, a lucky whaler’s spouse or mother need never fear a moment’s confusion differentiating between her cherry and chicken pies.

Read more about these intricately-carved tools at Edible Geography. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Nicola Twilley)

You hear stories about waiters being stiffed, which is inevitably followed by a storm in the comments about the entire system of tipping. But how about some really good tipping stories? Every so often, a very generous diner surprises the server with the tip of a lifetime.

Rhode Islander Kristen Ruggiero is a single mom of three who has had a tough time making ends meet by working the restaurant job she’s held for the last 15 years. One day last year, a couple came in and ordered a pizza, a salad and a pitcher of beer only to settle their $42 bill by leaving $500 on the table. At first, the waitress thought they made a mistake and accidentally left the five hundreds thinking they were ten dollar bills. So Kristen set the money aside until the pair returned to the restaurant and tried to return it to them. That’s when they assured her that the $458 tip was no mistake. "He said no it was absolutely not a mistake, you deserved it," Kristen said.

But that's far from the biggest tip in this roundup of stories at mental_floss. Link

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A juvenile fox takes advantage of a golf ball coming his way. This hazard wasn't explained back at the club house. Still, watching him play was probably more fun than the game. -via Daily of the Day

Quick -how many nuclear accidents can you name? Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima …any more? There have been quite a few nuclear accidents of varying danger that you probably never heard of, including some fatal incidents. For example, in 1957, nuclear waste exploded at a reactor near the Soviet town of Ozyorsk.

One of the storage tanks contained around 70 to 80 tons of radioactive liquid waste, and its cooling mechanism stopped working and wasn’t fixed. The tank’s contents, made up mostly of ammonium nitrate and acetates, began to dry out as the liquid heated up and evaporated. Moreover, the temperature increase caused an explosion whose force was equivalent to 70 to 100 tons of TNT, and this sent huge amounts of radioactivity – roughly 20 MCi (800 PBq) – into the environment. The fallout cloud from the explosion contaminated an area of up to 7,722 square miles (20,000 square kilometers).

Over a period of nearly two years, about 10,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area. In terms of fatalities, the exact cost of the incident is not known, but immediately around the site of the explosion there were 66 diagnosed cases of chronic radiation syndrome.

Read more about the Ozyorsk incident and nine others in a list at Tech Graffiti. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Ecodefense, Heinrich Boell Stiftung Russia, Alla Slapovskaya, Alisa Nikulina)

A truck carrying tons of grapes overturned and spilled on the 210 in the San Gabriel Valley in California. You don't get an opportunity to write a headline like that often. Link -Thanks, Michael Carney!

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A David Attenborough soundalike delivers a anthropological piece poking fun at Sweden's equality, agnosticism, tolerance, and sexual liberation. Featuring the actual prime minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt, plus several famous Swedish actors. Contains NSFW language. -via reddit

Photographer Nolan Conway was impressed by the wide variety of  people who visited his local McDonalds, which led to a photo project called Happy Meals. He's traveled the country, finding interesting people at McDonalds. Of course, you recognize this couple. That's Vance and Nancy Evans of Bakersfield, California. At least that's who they say they are. See more photos from the series at Wired. Link -via Laughing Squid

Congratulations! And welcome to the adult world of debt. Remember: A Lannister always pays his debts, even if it might takes a long time. Link -via Blame It On The Voices

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This guy's such a great gymnast, he appears to totally defy gravity! The popular Japanese TV show Masquerade is a talent contest. Look through their YouTube channel and you'll see many such physical illusions. -via Tastefully Offensive

Who is the young fan in this 1935 photograph? You might be surprised to see 15-year-old Ray Bradbury. Seems he was quite a fan of movie stars when his family moved to California. Read about it at Dangerous Minds. Link

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AsapSCIENCE gives us a song with all the elements in order, including the recently-added ones. Those go pretty fast, so try to keep up! The tune is "Infernal Gallop" by Jacques Offenbach, which most folks call "the Can Can Song."  -via Blame It On The Voices

Copper Beech Farm in Greenwich, Connecticut (already known as a very expensive neighborhood) is for sale for $190 million dollars. But if you know how real estate works, you might be able to talk them down a million or so.

Copper Beech Farm spans 50 prized acres that boast roughly a mile of water frontage on the Long Island Sound, thanks in part to two offshore islands included in the offering. The main house, a French-renaissance mansion, boasts 13,519 square feet of living space including 12 bedrooms, seven full baths and two half baths, a wood-paneled library, an ornate dining room with a tracery ceiling and oak columns, a solarium, a wine cellar, a third-floor staff wing, and a three-story, wood-paneled entry foyer. The original kitchen, equipped with a dumb waiter, sits in the basement, originally part of the staff quarters. Fireplaces adorn most rooms in the Victorian manse and sleeping porches, once used during summer months before the advent of air conditioning, extend off of bedrooms.

Oh, there's also several other buildings on the property, two pools and a spa, an orchard, gardens, and a big forest. See more pictures at Forbes. Link -via Digg

(Image credit: David Ogilvy & Associates, Christie's International Real Estate)

An unnamed 16-year-old boy was sentenced to a juvenile curfew for conspiracy to commit burglary in Gloucester,  England. He was fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet so his movements could be monitored. But when the security company set up with monitor -over the phone- he had an idea to get around the business of staying in his home.  

The teenager was asked over the phone by an official from G4S to walk around the perimeter of his home so they could map the curfew zone they had to monitor.

But the quick-thinking lad decided to give himself a lot more freedom – by running as fast as he could down the road and back.

His speedy dash meant that the G4S official inadvertently gave him a much bigger area to roam around during his curfew hours.

Normally a criminal who is electronically tagged has to stay indoors or in the immediate garden area of his home during curfew hours.

The 16 year-old's ploy meant he could still venture down the road without triggering the tag.

The scheme was only uncovered about five weeks later, when the delinquent's landlady reported him not in the home. The security company had not received any alarms from the anklet bracelet, so they investigated and found out what he'd done to increase his restricted area. Link -via Geekosystem

(Image credit: Rex Features)

The train might move in a different direction each time you look at it. Stare long enough and you can make the train change directions. There is no correct answer, because this .gif is only four frames long; the optical illusion is in your brain. However, there is that one guy who recognized the subway station and just knew which direction the train comes there. -via Geeks Are Sexy

An animal control officer in Anderson, South Carolina, responded to a call about a barking dog. When Michelle Smith went to investigate, she found a tiny Shih Tzu mix barking in a ravine. Smith climbed down the embankment, which she says the dog could have easily climbed out of herself, and found out why the dog was there. She was nursing a tiny kitten!

"I didn’t know what to think," she said. "I was shocked and surprised and then of course, awww."

The dog and kitten received the same reaction when Smith took them to the animal shelter. Volunteers marveled at the way the dog, which is at least 5 years old, looks out for the 5-week-old kitten.

Jessica Cwynar, director of the shelter, says such behavior is natural for mammals.

"It would be like one of us seeing a neglected or abandoned child and taking it under our wing," she said.

Neither the dog nor the kitten has a known name, so shelter volunteers call them "Girl."

Cwynar said the 5-year-old dog likely started producing milk because of a surge of hormones when she found the kitten. The dog is obviously a pet, and the shelter is hoping the owner will come forward and take the kitten, too. Link -via Arbroath, where you can see a video.  

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Zero to 60 in three seconds! The "features" of a cheetah are presented in this video in the manner of new model of sports car. Everything that makes a cheetah different from other cats is about the acceleration. One fact that floored me: one stride of a cheetah can be 25 feet long. Imagine tracking a cat like that -you'd never know which way to look for the next paw print! -via Viral Viral Videos  

In Croatia, unexploded mines dot the landscape and still kill people who find them. But a new animal is being trained to locate them for us: honeybees.

Nikola Kezic, an expert on the behavior of honeybees, sat quietly together with a group of young researchers on a recent day in a large net tent filled with the buzzing insects on a grass field lined with acacia trees. The professor at Zagreb University outlined the idea for the experiment: Bees have a perfect sense of smell that can quickly detect the scent of the explosives. They are being trained to identify their food with the scent of TNT.

“Our basic conclusion is that the bees can clearly detect this target, and we are very satisfied,” said Kezic, who leads a part of a larger multimillion-euro program, called “Tiramisu,” sponsored by the EU to detect land mines on the continent.

Several feeding points were set up on the ground around the tent, but only a few have TNT particles in them. The method of training the bees by authenticating the scent of explosives with the food they eat appears to work: bees gather mainly at the pots containing a sugar solution mixed with TNT, and not the ones that have a different smell.

It may be quite some time before the experiment reaches actual land mines. Training a few bees is completely different from training an entire colony. Link

Machinarium is a beautifully-designed game by Amanita Design (the folks who brought us Samorost). This cake is a faithful reproduction of the robots in the game, with details so fine that it appears the lights are glowing. They're not -that's just the artist's skill with edible paint. This delightful cake was made for a 6-year-old's birthday by Sweet Disposition Cakes in Australia. Link  -via Cake Wrecks 

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This musical interlude was produced from the sounds made in a laboratory during chemistry experiments. There are links to the individual experiments at the YouTube page, in case any of them intrigues you. -via Everlasting Blort

If you discovered a new species of prehistoric arthropod fossil with scissor-like appendages, what you you name it? Name it Kooteninchela deppi, in honor of the actor who played Edward Scissorhands!

“When I first saw the pair of isolated claws in the fossil records of this species I could not help but think of Edward Scissorhands,” says researcher David Legg, who conducted the research into the fossil as part of his PhD at Imperial College London, in a statement. “Even the genus name, Kootenichela, includes the reference to this film as ‘chela’ is Latin for claws or scissors. In truth, I am also a bit of a Depp fan and so what better way to honour the man than to immortalise him as an ancient creature that once roamed the sea?”

Kooteninchela deppi scoured the sea floor for other animals to eat. It is thought to be an ancestor of modern scorpions, centipedes, and crabs. Link

(Image credit: Imperial College London)

In a strange case of nominative determinism, a Worthington, Ohio, doctor was arrested for drunk driving. Elizabeth Unk was arrested after striking a bicyclist with her vehicle.

Unk, 38, is charged with one count of vehicular assault and two counts of driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, drugs or a combination of them.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol determined that Unk's blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit.

Unk's driver's license has been suspended.

The incident happened last September, and the grand jury returned an indictment against Dr. Unk this week. Link  -via Arbroath

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Is it ballet or morning calisthenics? This juvenile bearded dragon is said to be "waving," which some say is a dragon sign of deference to a superior, but I think this critter's style puts him into the category of "performer." -via Tastefully Offensive

Famed Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet made a beautiful and complex watch for Marie Antoinette. The works were mostly gold, and its value is hard to estimate not only because of its history, but because of its workmanship. But Marie Antoinette never wore the watch that eventually became known as the Queen.  

The watch ultimately took 44 years to complete. In the interim, the French Revolution and the resulting European upheaval led to the death of both the man who likely commissioned the watch and its intended owner. (Marie Antoinette, of course, fell under the guillotine. Seventeen years after her death, an incensed crowd, convinced that von Fersen had conspired to assassinate Sweden’s would-be king, beat him to death in a Stockholm square.) Breguet died in September 1823. His son, a talented horologer in his own right, finished the masterpiece in 1827. It traveled in the coat pockets of a French nobleman and later ended up in the collection of Sir David Lionel Salomons, a British polymath who brought the first car shows to England and patented an idea for buoyant soap. Salomons left his watch collection to his daughter Vera, a globe-trotting nurse who settled in Jerusalem after World War I and later used her father’s money to build the museum—and to house his collection of watches.

What made Breguet’s work so significant was his skill as both a watchmaker and a designer. His creations have pristine faces, delicate hands that end in apple-shaped tips, and movements that appear as complex as a computer circuit. The Queen was at once immensely complicated—it had all the features of a cathedral clock in the space of a pocket watch—and beguilingly elegant. Breguet even made a clear crystal face that allowed the owner to see the movement of the gears underneath.

Skip ahead to 1983, and the watch is stolen from the museum, along with other valuable watches. The investigation led nowhere for 23 years. But then, it gets really interesting again. Read the saga of the watch Wired. Link

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When his favorite song, "Make You Feel My Love" comes on, Rev wakes up and has to sing along with Adele! This dog may not pronounce all the words correctly, but he sure has an emotive voice. -via Viral Viral Videos

The following is an article from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

(Image credit: Flickr user Ed Schipul)

What would Porter the Wonder Dog have eaten 200 years ago, before there was Alpo or Dog Chow? Here's the history of the multi-billion-dollar dog food industry.

CHOW DOWN

* More than 2,000 years ago, Roman poet and philosopher Marcus Terentius Varro wrote the first farming manual. In it he advised giving farm dogs barley bread soaked in milk, and bones from dead sheep.

* During the Middle Ages, it was common for European royalty to have kennels for their hounds. Kennel cooks would make huge stews, mostly grains and vegetables with some meat or meat byproducts -the hearts, livers, and lungs of various livestock.

* Dogs in common households had meager diets. They were fed only what their owners could spare. A normal domesticated dog's diet consisted of crusts of bread, bare bones, potatoes, cabbage, or whatever else they could scrounge on their own.

* In the 18th century, farm dogs, which had to be fairly healthy to do their jobs, were regularly fed mixes of grains and lard. In cities, you could make a living by searching the streets for dead horses, cutting them up, and selling the meat to wealthy dog owners.

* There were exceptions: The very wealthy, throughout history, have fed their pet dogs fare that was much better than what most humans ate. In the 1800s Empress Tzu Hsi of China was known to feed her Pekingese shark fins, quail breasts, and antelope milk. European nobility fed their dogs roast duck, cakes, candies, and even liquor.

LUXURY FOOD

The in the mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution created a growing middle class with more luxury and more leisure time, pets began to be regarded as "luxury items" by everyday folk. Result: pet food became more closely scrutinized.

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I put this new Windows 8 advertisement on my own site because, although it's funny, I didn't think it was quite "neat" enough for Neatorama. Then later, I found out something strange about it. No one seems to know what language the actors are speaking!

Native speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean declare that it is not any of those languages.  The first time I listened to them, the ads sounded as though they contained elements of some Wu topolect, a bit like mangled Shanghainese, but I could also definitely hear bits of Mandarin, albeit with unusual tonal contours and slurring.  What was most perplexing of all to me was that, although I was certain that the ads contained Chinese phrases and sentences, every Chinese person to whom I showed them emphatically maintained that they could not understand a single word!  In contrast, several non-native speakers of Mandarin said they could pick out a word of Chinese here and there.

Victor Mair of Language Log asked other people who speak different languages if they recognized the language, but still haven't found anyone who understands it. Link -via Metafilter

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A child's personal project turned into a documentary Yuck: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch. The film is 19 minutes long and has won several film festival awards. The trailers here are just short clips, but you can find a schedule of screenings at the film site.

In the fall of 2011, fourth grader Zachary Maxwell began asking his parents if he could start packing and bringing his own lunch to school.  Unfortunately, they kept insisting that he take advantage of the hot lunch being served at the school.  After all, the online menu sounded delicious and the NYC Department of Education (DOE) website assured parents that the meals were nutritious.  Zachary wanted to convince his parents that the online menu did not accurately represent what was really being served at his school.

In an effort to prove his point, Zachary started sneaking a small HD camera into the lunchroom to show his parents the truth.  Over the next six months, Zachary would continue to gather "inside" footage and research the claims being made by the DOE and the media about the City's public school lunch program.

To the surprise of no one besides his parents, the published menus differed quite a bit from the actual lunches served in schools. To be fair, all the lunches at his elementary school are free, and I've seen much worse. But Zachary Maxwell has a wonderful career ahead of him in filmmaking, journalism, or whatever he decides to do.   

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The film has a website. Link -via Boing Boing

By the way, Zachary now gets to bring lunch from home. Read more about his experience at the New York Times. Link