via imgur and reddit

Everything's bigger in Texas, including sandals! All that's missing from these cowboy boot sandals (cowboy sandal boots?) are a pair of socks!

Photo: Arthur Brutter/Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

When an earthquake strikes, they say that you should duck and cover underneath a desk. But what makes you think that desk would save you? If it's not sturdy enough, it'll just be another thing that'll fall on your head.

After seeing the devastation of a local school in Haiti after the catastrophic earthquake in 2010, industrial designer Arthur Brutter got the idea to create the world's first earthquake-proof desk - one that is light enough to move around, cheap enough for schools to afford, large enough to fit two students and, of course, strong enough to withstand falling debris.

"A steel cage made of three or four inch steel would withstand any crash for sure," Brutter told Anne Carnick of Larcobaleno,"But nobody could afford it." So, guided by professor Ido Bruno of Bezalel Academy in Israel, Brutter decided to base his table on the structure of the automobile.

"Your car isn't a tank," Brutter explained," It's made of thin metal. When it crashes, you can still get out alive most times because the car was built to collapse in certain points and stay strong in others - and where it collapses, it absorbs the energy of the impact. That's exactly what I wanted to do with a table. We tried to build the lightest, simplest table that was strong in some parts, and designed to break in others and absorb the energy of the falling debris."

The result is the Earthquake-Proof Table or EPT - and the test results were impressive: the table could withstand a ton (literally! That's 1,000 kg or 2,200 lb).

In contrast, a regular desk is completely destroyed by half the weight:

Take a look at the video of the EPT during its test below, then head on over to Larcobaleno for the full story - via NPR's goats and soda.

After her father passed away and her mother got ill, Mary Smith's older cousin Muriel Clayton took her in and raised her like her own. Smith grew up with Clayton's children - and they all thought of her as nothing less than their sister.

Clayton always had a secret dream to adopt Smith and make her a legal part of the family, but she never did out of respect for Smith's biological mother.

But love has no expiration date. This year, sixty years after Clayton took Smith in, the two made it official: At the age of 92, Clayton formally adopted the 76-year-old Smith.

"I have worked jigsaw puzzles, and my life had been a beautiful picture. But one piece was missing, and that was Mary," Clayton said to WFAA, "And now I've got that piece in place. Officially!"

(Photo: Marie Saavedra/WFAA)

Can you touch your belly button? No, not that way! Touch your belly button by first wrapping your hand around your back and then reaching around your side to the front of your stomach.

That's the "Belly Button Challenge," which is all the rage on the Chinese social network Weibo. According to the BBC, the Belly Button Challenge has sparked over 104,000 discussion threads with over 130 million mentions.

As you can imagine, the topic is popular amongst the young female users on Weibo (the Chinese name of the trend translates to "reaching your belly button from behind to show your good figure.")

But in case you think that only skinny girls can beat the Belly Button Challenge, a rather plump young man rose to the occasion and posted this photo, with the comment "Is this trend really that difficult? I don't think so."

One commenter said it all. "You go Buddha! Show the skinny girls how it's done," replied a Weibo user.

When realtor Andrea Madison Romero of Phoenix, Arizona, was stuck at the office one day dealing with a loan problem and a buyer who was backing out, she did what any real estate agent would do. She called upon the power of Taylor Swift!

Romero wrote her own lyrics to Swift's mega-hit single "Shake It Off" into a real estate-themed song called "One Day Off" that any realtor, home buyers and home sellers worldwide could relate with!

If you love LEGO and The Big Bang Theory, then you'll love this: LEGO has announced that they're going to release a new set based on the hit comedy TV show. The 479-piece set features the main characters from The Big Bang Theory - Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, Penny, Raj, Amy and Bernadette - as minifigs in Leonard and Sheldon's living room (complete with details that'll make the show's fans drool).

The Big Bang Theory set was proposed by fan builders Alatariel and GlenBricker to LEGO Ideas. Then, LEGO's professional model designer Steen Sig Andersen and graphic designer Mathew Boyle worked to perfect the piece. According to LEGO Ideas, Mathew "had a lot of fun bringing elements like Sheldon's 'smile', Howard's trademark smirk, and Bernadette's scary side to life" in the minifigs.

How many references from the TV show can you spot below?

The Big Bang Theory Lego set is priced at $60 and is scheduled to be released in stores on August 1st.

Sure you love your girlfriend. But do you love her enough to dress up as a girl to take her exam?

A twenty-year-old student in Kazakhstan named Ayan Zhademov was caught impersonating his seventeen-year-old girlfriend when he impersonated her to take her university entrance exam.

According to Yahoo News, Zhademov wore a black wig, put on make up and her dress and went to the exam hall. He was foiled when an eagle-eyed exam administrator spotted and questioned him. The boyfriend's cover was blown when he tried to speak in a high voice, but "We suspected it might be another woman that had taken the candidate's place, but we never suspected it was a man that had taken her place. At least not until he started speaking."

Zhademov was fined, but the news went viral in Kazakhstan and he was named "romantic-of-the-year" for trying to help out his girlfriend. A local businessman has stepped in and paid the fine.

Cartoonist extraordinaire Sarah Andersen of Sarah's Scribbles (previously on Neatorama many, many times) pointed out the truth between what we think we would do when the wifi is down versus what we would actually do.

Mom always said to think ahead! The owner of this boat certainly did when not only did they name it "Uh-oh!" but also wrote it upside down on the stern!

Whatever is your stand on genetically modified food (GMO food) debate, one thing is clear: if you're in the United States, you ARE eating it.

As shown in this chart above, courtesy of the USDA Economic Research Service, over 90 percent of soybeans, cotton, and corn crops planted in the United States are genetically modified:

Plantings of Herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybean 17% in 1997 to 68% in 2001 and a whopping 94% in 2014. Planting of HT corn, which started much more slowly in the early 2000s, has skyrocketed to 89% in 2014.

Similarly, plantings of insect-resistant crops (containing the gene of the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt, which produces a protein that is toxic to certain pests) have accelerated as well. Bt corn grew from 8% in 1997 to 29% in 2003 and 80% in 2014.

Think that you can avoid eating GMO food simply by not eating corn or tofu (which comes from soybean)? Think again: corn meal and soybean meal end up as livestock feed and their oils end up as cooking oils and as ingredients of a wide variety of processed food.

How far would you go to avoid jury duty?

James Lowe of Barnet, Vermont, went so far as to show up to court for jury selection wearing a black-and-white striped prisoner costume with matching hat.

According to The Caledonian Record, Lowe pointed out that there's no mention of clothing restrictions in the juror instructions. Even though a lot of people in the courtroom was amused at his outfit, the judge wasn't one of them:

"He [the judge] said he'd needed to think about what he might do," Lowe said. According to Lowe, Judge Bent said he had never seen anyone do what Lowe did to get out of jury duty.

James Lowe said Judge Robert Bent told him to leave because of his outfit and said he could be found in contempt of court.

(Photo: Dana Gray/The Caledonian Record)

Photo: Jae C. Hong

Crazy cat lady ain't got nothing on this! Photographer Jae C. Hong snapped this photo of Laura Mart roaming around CatConLA (yes, a convention for cat lovers whose motto is "It's like Comic-Con ... but for cat people") in a cat dress.

And what a cat dress it was. As explained by Sue Manning of AP over in this article at SF Gate: the dress is "a ballgown she crafted from a patchwork of 300 fabric cat photos, its skirt several feet wide." And as if that's not enough, Mart also wore a furry hat and a long tail. Purrfect!

That dress just screams "check meowt" now, doesn't it?

Photo: Pietro Boselli/Instagram

Who says math isn't sexy?

Ladies, meet Pietro Boselli, 27, a math teacher at the University College London and a male supermodel. Talk about "mathematical model"!

Boselli, who's studying for his PhD in mechanical engineering while teaching math to engineering students, gained international fame as the "world's sexiest math teacher" after his students Googled him and found that he's also a professional underwear model with a passion for computational fluid dynamics. Now that's brains and brawn in one complete package!

Congratulations to the winner of our latest NeatoMail T-shirt giveaway! Karl G, Bob T, and phunky won their selection of T-shirts.

Check out all of the neat T-shirts you can get from the NeatoShop (including some awesome T-shirts perfect for Father's Day).

What? You didn't even know there's a giveaway? Well, it was exclusive to NeatoMail subscribers. So why not join in on the fun: subscribe to NeatoMail and get access to exclusive giveaways and contests (don't worry - we hate spam ourselves and won't share your email address).

With the nickname of "Land of Fire and Ice," you can imagine that life in the Kamchatka Peninsula can make one really tough.

How tough? Just take a look at this rabbit, who comes across an avalanche, said to itself "snow biggie!" and hopped across.