Why do dogs leap at the opportunity to stick their heads out of car windows while riding? Megan Schmidt of Discover magazine runs through several possible motives. The first is that dogs' sense of smell is so strong that sniffing all of that passing air is a exhilarating sensation to them:

The canine olfactory system is highly developed and far superior to ours. For starters, a dog’s nose is equipped with a complex maze of 300 million scent receptors, compared to our measly 5 million. The more receptors, the more sensitive the nose is.

And dog noses aren’t just cute — they’re practically designed to savor smells. Dogs have two air passages, one for breathing and one dedicated to smelling. To top things off, the canine olfactory cortex, the part of the brain responsible for processing smells, is 40 times larger than that of a human.

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“When sticking their head out the window, they can smell every person in the street, every trash can they go by, every patch of grass, restaurant and other dogs. It’s like watching TV for us,” says Jennifer Cattet, an animal behavior researcher and owner of Medical Mutts, a service dog training center in Indianapolis.

Additionally, dogs may enjoy the passing sights, the air blowing on their faces, and the opportunity to contemplate escape.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Dane

David Tracy of Jalopnik found this amazing luxury vehicle for sale on Facebook Marketplace. You might not normally think of the Ford Festiva as an example of elite performance automotive design, but this one takes two 1993 Festivas and slams them together to create the ultimate ride for a first date, the prom, or a VIP motorcade. It's only $2,000 and, according to the seller, street legal.

If you go halvsies with me, we can catch a bus to its home in Kearney, Missouri and drive it home together.

If you’re like this one-eyed monster who wants to go to a black hole that bad, then here’s a safety video for you made by NASA. It will tell you what a black hole is, and where to find one.

(Video Credit: NASA/ YouTube)

You may have heard of college students say that “sleep is for the weak,” and you may also have believed that during your college days. After all, papers and exams are piling up and you don’t have the time to slack off.

But a recent study from two MIT professors have seen "a strong relationship between students’ grades and how much sleep they’re getting.”

What time students go to bed and the consistency of their sleep habits also make a big difference. And no, getting a good night’s sleep just before a big test is not good enough — it takes several nights in a row of good sleep to make a difference.

Learn more of the study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: freephotocc/ Pixabay)

The famous fashion retailer is now pulling out of the Japanese market, saying it will close down all 14 stores in the country by the end of October. The Mainichi reports that the company decided to withdraw from the market because of the low sales. In addition, the Los Angeles-based company is preparing for a potential bankruptcy filing. 

image credit: via wikimedia commons

When you look at the sculpture on the wall, you can't help but notice its clean and fluid aesthetic, with points connecting seamlessly from one part of the piece to the other.

Though it may seem like a lot is going on, the way the different elements are arranged and contribute to the whole is a sight to behold. This is Ghost Box which is a playable sound sculpture built by artist and musician Steve Parker.

When touched, the sculpture plays different looped audio clips of coded transmissions, including Morse Code, spirituals of the Underground Railroad, the shofar, the Hebrew Shofar, and the Iron Age Celtic carnyx.

A ghost box is a communication tool used by paranormal investigators to speak to the dead. Typically, a ghost box is a modified portable AM/FM radio that continously scans the band. It is believed to create white noise and audio remnants from broadcast stations that entities are able to manipulate to create words and even entire sentences.

(Image credit: Sarah Frankie Linder, Jose Lozano)

Despite their terrifying demeanor and their depiction in films, sharks aren't something to be afraid of. But we also shouldn't approach them recklessly. Still though, due to the increase in fishing for sharks, especially that of the great white shark, their population has declined since the 1970s.

But over the course of two decades, the numbers of great white sharks in Cape Cod have increased and it is now considered a great white shark hotspot. So in order to learn more about the phenomenon, a team from 60 Minutes went to Cape Cod to get down with the sharks.

“On Cape Cod this summer, shark sightings and beach closings were about as common as lobster rolls,” correspondent Bill Whitaker said.

Whitaker had a front row seat to see how local scientists track every movement of the sharks, from their feeding frenzies on grey seals off the shores of the Cape to their travels up and down the East Coast.

Read more about it at Boston.

(Image credit: Terry Goss/Wikimedia Commons)

What is a coconut? Is it a nut, a fruit, or is it perhaps something entirely different? For user just-shower-thoughts, the coconut is actually a mammal. His reason: since mammals produce milk and have hair, the coconut must be one. The rest of the thread shows humanity's journey and struggle to categorize natural phenomena.

(Image credit: just-shower-thoughts/Tumblr)

Grim Reaper Finger Puppet and Magnet

Is your fridge the final destination for leftovers? Is it a sacred tomb for old food? Do you need a reminder to sever your relationship with the moldy and forgotten? Procure the services of the ever helpful Grim Reaper Finger Puppet and Magnet from the NeatoShop. With his pleasant grin and cutting demeanor, he is always happy to help. Place him on your fridge to remind you to ferry the remains of that which you loved into its next life. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Magnets. New items arriving all the time. 

Don't forget to stop by the store to see our large selection of customizable apparel. We speciliaze in Curvy and Big and Tall sizes. We know that fun, fabulous, and Halloween loving people come in every size. 

The further we advance our technology, the better we are able to understand the things in our universe. And that's why engineers and scientists have built the world's largest optical lens which will be used on the world's largest digital camera that would power the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

Th[e] 3.2-gigapixel camera being built for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) was thought up over a decade ago. But after getting the green light in 2011, and securing funding in 2015, it was off to the races as engineers and scientists began to turn this idea into a functioning reality.

The camera features the largest CCD image sensor mosaic in the world, combining 189 individual sensors into a single 3.2-gigapixel imaging area that—once it’s operational and perched atop Cherro Pachon mountain in Chile—will snap a 15-second exposure of the night sky every 20 seconds or so.

-via Book of Joe

(Image credit: Farrin Abbott/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Flickr)

Kim Kelly went to Coney Island this past summer to attend sideshow school, a four-day course in fire-eating, sword-swallowing, and other sideshow acts run by Adam Realman of Sideshow by the Seashores. She tells us about the classes and what she learned about sideshows.

A few days after graduation, once my fire-eating burns had healed, I called Realman to talk about the history of disabled performers and the sideshow. There are three traditional categories of sideshow performers, he said, explaining their place in the hierarchy. First, there are the working acts, such as fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, glass-walkers, and everything in between. These performers were considered the lowest rung because, as Realman explained, “anybody can do that!” The next level up are the self-made or “self-inflicted” performers, people who’d made the conscious decision to modify their bodies in various ways, like the famous “tattooed ladies,” Captain Costentenus the Illustrated Man, and the modern-day Lizard Man, with his full-body green scale tattoos and sharpened teeth.

Finally, at the top of the ladder are the “natural borns,” who made up acts such as early 1900s British conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and Johnny “The Half Man” Eck, whose fame followed the sisters’ by a few years. “In a traditional sideshow, the natural borns were considered the royalty ... the creme de la creme of the sideshow; they were people who were born different,” Realman explained. “These were the people that were the highest-paid performers, because you can’t manufacture this.”

Kelly is a "natural born," and could have been a full-time sideshow "lobster girl" in another age. She has a rare congenital disorder called ectrodactyly, or lobster claw syndrome. Kelly tells how the old-style "freak shows" gave way to disability rights, leaving sideshows full of mostly working acts in the modern era. Read Kelly's experiences and what she's learned about sideshows at Vox.  -via Damn Interesting

After the cancelation of the TV series Batman, every idea they had left over made it into a theatrical film. It was just like the TV show, except it had slightly better production values. Batman: The Movie was non-stop silliness, but Screen Junkies managed to highlight the very silliest parts for this Honest Trailer.

Minecraft lovers, get your cash ready as a new Minecraft-based board game is now ready for purchase! The board game is called Minecraft: Builders & Biomes, where players can explore the Overworld, build structures, and mine resources. The game is designed for two to four players, and according to IGN, take 30-60 minutes to play. Well, that beats the number of hours some spend building a city in the original game! 

image credit: via Amazon

What will we do with radioactive waste? The stuff is dangerous, so we bury it. But mere burial is not enough, since the earth moves, and someday, someone may actually dig that stuff up. In Finland, an island is being prepared to bury nuclear waste very, very deep, to keep it safely away from us. Tom Scott visited Onkalo, on the isle of Olkiluoto, to show us.

Tom refers to a 1993 report about marking nuclear waste sites. You can read some of the ideas generated here.

'My Mom Is Going To Yell At Me!': Kade Lovell, 9, Wins Sartell 10K Race By Accident https://t.co/g7W0vIBUcg pic.twitter.com/IyVIkud92G

— WCCO - CBS Minnesota (@WCCO) October 1, 2019

Heather Lovell was starting to panic. She has seen her nine-year-old son Kade start off in the St. Francis Franny Flyer 5K race in Sartell, Minnesota, but he was not among the runners at the finish line. She drove the route, and asked others to help look for Kade. Then she heard he may have been running the 10K route by mistake.

Kade said he realized his mistake when he saw the sign for the 10K turnaround.

"I thought, 'Mom is going to yell at me,'" he said.

So when Kade finally appeared near the end of the route, he was by himself. Lovell thought he was in last place. But she didn't care; he was safe.

Then a race coordinator told Lovell that Kade finished first.

Yes, Kade won the race overall, not just for his age group. He was a minute ahead of the second place finisher. That's how fast you can run when you think your mom is going to yell at you. Read the whole story at the St. Cloud Times.