With more than a fifth of the country submerged, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters. The water took so long to recede, the trees became covered in a cocoon of spiderwebs. The result is an eerie, alien panorama, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of webbing. (You can see images from the region in the gallery linked below.)
However, the unusual phenomenon may be a blessing in disguise. Britain’s department for international development reports that areas where the spiders have scaled the trees have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitos than might be expected, given the prevalence of stagnant, standing water.
Wiener Schnitzel with Fries Plush - $16.95
Is your spring time diet preventing you from eating your favorite Austrian dish? You need the Wiener Schnitzel with Fries Plush from the NeatoShop! You may not be able to eat your favorite meal, but at least you can play with it!
The Wiener Schnitzel with Fries Plush comes complete with faux lemon slice and ketchup. I don't know who comes up with this stuff, but I am just so happy that they do!Forget the water hose! Firefighters of the future may simply "zap" fire out of existence with an electric wand:
Currently, firefighters use water, foam, powder, and other substances to tame flames. But a team from Harvard University's Whitesides Research Group has shown that electric fields can snuff out fires too—potentially reducing water damage as well as environmental threats posed by fire retardants.
The scientists connected a thin wire to a 600-watt amplifier—roughly as powerful as a high-end car stereo and about as big as a file cabinet—plugged into the wall.
The "wand" system generated an electric field with the strength of a million volts per meter, "approximately the field necessary to generate a spark in dry air," said chemist Ludovico Cademartiri, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.
Whenever the researchers brought the electric wand close a burner emanating thin jets of fire up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) tall, the flames almost instantly went out.
Bonus: if they say "Aguamenti" when extinguishing the fire: Link
In the 2011 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at Purdue, 11 teams compete to water a plant in 20 or more steps. Here's the winning entry:
The winning entry was based on a time machine that followed the history of the world from the big bang to the present. It took 212 steps to finally reach a symbol of hope for the future, a mystery box that, when opened by the machine, produced a plant and a watering can.
Captain Zach Umperovitch said the 17 team members spent 2,500 man hours building the machine.
Paul Di Filippo of Weird Universe has another video clip: Link
When regular ol' pill organizer just won't do, here's the Padauk Blood Vials pill organizer by Sara Huston and John Paananen of The Last Attempt At Great: Link
Photo by Noah Kalina
What makes wiffle ball so, well, wiffly? Putting an advanced degree in physics to benefit all of humanity, mechanical engineer Jenn Rossmann of Lafayette College decided to do a little fluid mechanics analysis on whiffle balls:
So over the past eight years, she and her students have built the world’s most advanced Wiffle-ology lab, using wind tunnels and computer models to measure aerodynamics. The key to the ball’s unpredictability? Air flowing over the perforated side of the ball is more turbulent, as you’d expect, which pulls it in the direction the holes are facing. But two vortices of air trapped inside push it in the opposite direction. Assuming the ball isn’t spinning, external airflow wins at low speeds; the internal vortices dominate at high speeds. At 40 to 60 mph—the speed at which most casual players throw—the two forces are about equal, making it hard to predict which way the ball will break.
Photo: Kirs10 (Wikipedia)
You're looking at the Center of the World Pyramid, which is officially located at the center of the world. No, really. Center of the whole wide world:
According to the French government and California’s Imperial County, the official center of the world lies in the town of Felicia in California’s Sonora Desert. There is no scientific or political reason for the designation, but only the effort of Jacques-André Istel and his wife Felicia Lee (the town's namesake), who founded the town in 1986.
Jacques-André made his name and fortune as a famous French-American parachutist and co-founded of Parachutes, Inc., which produced parachuting equipment and opened the first parachuting school in the United States. He is credited as a key figure in popularizing parachuting in America and has been referred to as the “father of American skydiving.” In 1985 he wrote the children’s book "Coe: The Good Dragon at the Center of the World" about a dragon that lived at the center of the world, which served as the inspiration behind the town’s creation.
After Istel was unanimously voted mayor, in a 2-0 vote, he erected a pyramid to mark the exact spot of the world's “center.” Over the last 25-years, Istel added many sights to his town, including a beautiful traditional-style church overlooking a man-made hillside (modeled after a church in Brittany), a lone outdoor 25-foot staircase that was formerly part of the Eiffel Tower, a checkered field of flowers, and a 15-foot bronze sundial that incorporates Michelangelo's Arm of God. The most ambitious of his additions is the World Commemorative Center®, which currently consists of 18 one-hundred foot triangle-shaped granite walls, meant to “engrave in granite highlights of the collective memory of humanity."
Atlas Obscura has more photos: Link
Americans spend over $40 billion in tips every year, but are we getting better service for it? Not necessarily, according to this article at Smart Money:
What's more, our tips don't actually vary that much with the level of service we've received. While people claim in surveys that they tip almost exclusively based on the level of service, field studies in actual restaurants, such as those conducted by Michael Lynn of Cornell, find that better service is only partially correlated with bigger tips. A step up on a 1-to-5 rating scale of customer satisfaction translates into just a small increase (say, from 15 to 16 or 17 percent of the check).
So, what's the secret of getting bigger tips?
A 2009 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that larger self-reported breast size among waitresses correlated with bigger tips. Similarly, a 2010 study in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that waitresses' use of makeup significantly increased their tips. Female servers can also increase their tips by drawing a smiley face on the back of customers' checks (male servers, it turns out, can't achieve the same with this tactic).
Do you give a tip regardless of the level of service? Do you feel guilty for not tipping due to poor service? Link
Are you good at cryptography? Then the FBI wants to hear from you - they've just released a code that may just solve a 12-year-old murder case:
On June 30, 1999, police in St. Louis found the body of Rick McCormick, 41, who had been murdered and dumped in a field. The only clues the FBI found about the time leading up to his death came in the form of two pieces of paper in his pants pocket: Handwritten on the scraps were 30 lines of numbers and letters grouped into several sections.
After 12 years of trying to untangle the cryptographic mess, investigators from the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit and the American Cryptogram Association are throwing up their hands.
This is where you come in.
Link (self-starting video)
(YouTube link)
The Vlog Brothers demonstrate once again that there are only a four chords in pop music, and they are used over and over.
See also: Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel Rant and The Axis of Awesome.
