After her father Tim was diagnosed with colon cancer, Georgia Browne went on the Internet to research ways to help save him. That's where she got a brilliant though a bit unconventional idea to feed her dad breastmilk:

Georgia recalls. ‘I started researching on the internet immediately and found separate studies in America and Scandinavia both supporting the health benefits of breastmilk to cancer sufferers.

‘I watched the documentary and thought it was a really mad idea, if it was true,’ she says. 'I started looking on the net and found research suggesting breastmilk helps kill cancer cells.

‘Finding out I could help was amazing. I could play my small part in helping my dad do something positive for his illness. 'When I talked to him about it, he thought it was a great idea. He thought: “Why not?”’ [...]

With the family’s blessing, Georgia started expressing her milk for Tim straight away. She dropped the first batch round to her parents’ home in a freezer bag, which her mum popped in the freezer.

‘I thought he’d mix it into a milkshake like the man in the documentary, but when Mum defrosted it the next day, he simply poured it on his cornflakes with a splash of normal cow’s milk. He said it didn’t taste that different to cow’s milk, maybe just a bit sweeter if he didn’t get the mix right,’ Georgia says.

New Idea magazine has more: Link

Most of us can ride bikes, but I bet you not like Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill. Here's a video tape of a collection of what can only be described as parkour on two wheels: Link

Kids, don't try this at home. Or on the streets, either.

Slumdog Millionaire may have won the Oscars a few weeks ago, but the drama didn't end when the curtains came down.

Reporter Mazher Mahmood of The News of the World set off a firestorm of controversy when he went undercover in India to buy Slumdog actress Rubina Ali from her poverty-stricken father:

In a bid to escape India's real-life slums, Rafiq Qureshi put angel-faced darling of the Oscars Rubina up for adoption, demanding millions of rupees worth £200,000.

As he offered the shocking deal to the News of the World's undercover fake sheik this week, Rafiq declared: "I have to consider what's best for me, my family and Rubina's future."

Rafiq tried to blame Hollywood bosses for forcing him to put his daughter up for SALE. As he tried to fix the illegal adoption deal, real-life slum dweller Rafiq declared: "We've got nothing out of this film."

Then, almost embarrassed to speak it out loud, he whispered to an accomplice the price tag he has put on his innocent young daughter: "It's £200,000!"

That was an astonishing FOURFOLD increase on his opening demand. But Rafiq's equally demanding brother Mohiuddin insisted: "The child is special now. This is NOT an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child!"

Link

Photo: Bree Bailey [Flickr]

We've had our share of typsos here on Neatorama, so we understand how misspellings can happen even to the best of us. But misspelling the name of this lake in Webster, Massachusetts? Why, it's inconceivable how anyone couldn't spell it correctly:

In an embarrassing mistake, officials in Massachusetts have been forced to admit that some road signs pointing to Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg have spelling mistakes in them.

The typos, which are completely baffling considering how easy it is to spell Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, were revealed by a local newspaper, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, which has been covering the misspelling scandal since 2003.

Link

Gregory Cochran, physicist and professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, was puzzled at the unusually high prevalence of deadly genetic disorders in European Jews. Shouldn't natural selection flush these dangerous genes from the gene pool or at least not make 'em appear in such high frequency in that population?

Then one morning, Cochran came upon his solution - and with the help of population geneticist Henry Harpending, he immediately touched off a charged debate in the scientific community: some genes make Jews smarter.

Cochran, 55, and Harpending, 65, say there's no question that as a whole, Ashkenazi Jews -- those of European descent -- have an abundance of brain power. (Neither man is Jewish.)

Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at 107.5 to 115. That's only modestly higher than the overall European average of 100, but the gap is large enough to produce a huge difference in the proportion of geniuses. When a group's average IQ is 100, the percentage of people above 140 is 0.4%; when the average is 110, the genius rate is 2.3%.

Though Jews make up less than 3% of the U.S. population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950, account for 20% of this country's chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students, the pair write.

"People are perfectly willing to admit that some people are taller or some people are shorter," Cochran said. "But no one wants to say 'This group is smarter.' "

That, said another scientist, is the rub:

"What are their theories about those on the opposite end of the spectrum?" asked Neil Risch, director of the Institute for Human Genetics at UC San Francisco, who finds the matter so offensive he can barely discuss it without raising his voice. "Do they have genetic theories about why Latinos and African Americans perform worse academically?"

Karen Kaplan of the Los Angeles Times has the rest of the story: Link

Yay! It's time for our collaboration with the always awesome What is it? Blog. Can you guess what this strange object is for?

Place your guess in the comment section. Please post no URL or web links - let others play. No prize this week - you're playing for fame and glory only.

For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!

Well, whadaya know. Tomorrow is Earth Day (shouldn't every day be Earth Day?). Our very own Jill Harness wrote a neat post over at Inventor Spot about 8 weird but Earth-friendly products you can buy to celebrate.

I particularly love this one: the thermoscope earrings by LeeAnn Herreid. Like a thermometer, the earrings register temperature changes with red alcohol that rises and falls (but without numerical values). So while you don't know exactly how warm the Earth has gotten with global warming and all, you can still look pretty hot wearin' em.

Check out the whole list here: http://inventorspot.com/articles/8_weird_earthfriendly_products_26475

Barreleye Fish T-shirt modeled by Katie;
Great Vocab Didn't Save the Thesaurus by Zac

Remember the barreleye fish (Macropinna Microstoma) post on Neatorama? Y'know, the one with the transparent head and internal eyes that rotate to see through the dome of its head? (Does this mean you can see what it's thinking?)

Well, we LOVE the barreleye fish so much that we have to have a T-shirt about it! This fantastic design is by Wendy Barsotti (a very talented artist who also happens to have excellent collages for sale on her Etsy shop, Barsotti Designs).

http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?barreleye-fish-tshirt-pid310.html | Other Fun Science T-Shirts on Neatorama's Online Shop

Love it or hate it, there's no denying that Comic Sans is an iconic (and very, very popular) font. Emily Steel of The Wall Stree Journal wrote a fascinating history of the creation of the font (by designer Vincent Connare) and the movement to ban it:

The proliferation of Comic Sans is something of a fluke. In 1994, Mr. Connare was working on a team at Microsoft creating software that consumers eventually would use on home PCs. His designer's sensibilities were shocked, he says, when, one afternoon, he opened a test version of a program called Microsoft Bob for children and new computer users. The welcome screen showed a cartoon dog named Rover speaking in a text bubble. The message appeared in the ever-so-sedate Times New Roman font.

Mr. Connare says he pulled out the two comic books he had in his office, "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen," and got to work, inspired by the lettering and using his mouse to draw on a computer screen. Within a week, he had designed his legacy.

A product manager recognized the font's appeal and included it as a standard typeface in the operating system for Microsoft Windows. As home computers became widespread, Comic Sans took on a goofy life of its own.

Link

Ah, Australians. First they introduced cane toads to hunt the greyback cane beetle pests - but the toads turned out to be a much bigger pest and their toxic kill many native predators and farm animals.

Now, there's a proposal to control the cane toad population by introducing yet another species to battle it: meat-eating ants.

Omnivorous meat ants are native to Australia and reportedly nests in groups of more than 60,000. Professor Rick Shine said that meat ants attack and eat toads. "The ants are moving through these open areas, scavenging for dead insects and so on. If they encounter a baby toads it obviously seems like an appropriate lunch and jump on it. "

What could go wrong? Link [National Geographic Video]

Miss Cellania has a long running (and very popular) series of articles on our pal mental_floss where she chronicles the various local characters that became famous one way or the other.

As you'd expect, there are quite a bit of eccentric and downright crazy characters, but this one really struck me:

The Blind Broom Man

The Rev. Livingston Wills began going door to door selling brooms in Omaha, Nebraska in the 50s even though he couldn’t see well enough to distinguish cash from notebook paper. He had to trust that people paid for his brooms, and for the most part, they did. Wills was also pastor at the Tabernacle Church of Christ Holiness for decades, although many of his broom customers weren’t aware of his other job for many years. People appreciated Wills’ kind words and cheerfulness, as well as his unrelenting work ethic. When word got around that Rev. Wills was sick and in financial straits, the people of Nebraska came through with donations for his care. He was 91 years old when he died in 2008. See a 2004 multimedia presentation on Wills’ life here.

The entire series is fascinating:

- How to Be a Local Character
- 7 Fascinating Local Characters
- 9 Wonderful Local Characters
- 7 More Unforgettable Local Characters

- and the final post in the series, 6 of Your Favorite Local Characters

This seals it: Steve Martin has got the best business card EVAR! This even beats out the previous titleholder of best business card that I found on Matt Cutt's blog a while ago.

http://www.thelaughtrack.com/2009/04/steve-martin-has-greatest-business-card.html - via Rue The Day!

Columnist George Will is mad. Hopping mad about denim and how America's fashion sense is going to hell in a hand basket.

He and Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Akst have joined forces in declaring jeans (and American obsession with blue pants) as "destructive" in an entertaininglylyrical prose that I imagine was quite popular when Will was a young man, i.e. back in the days of President Taft:

Long ago, when James Dean and Marlon Brando wore it, denim was, Akst says, "a symbol of youthful defiance." Today, Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products. Akst's summa contra denim is grand as far as it goes, but it only scratches the surface of this blight on Americans' surfaces. Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six -- so far -- "Batman" adventures and "Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps," coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy's catechism of leveling -- thou shalt not dress better than society's most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism -- of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

Link - via The Zeray Gazette

Now this is a manly man's ad. Here's an advertisement for Makita power tool by Bennie Du Plessis of Saatchi & Saatchi in South Africa - if you look closely, the "pixels" are 20,081 carefully drilled holes!

Link

What can I say. It's Sunday, so here's a cute video clip of a slow loris who loves getting tickled (see how sad it gets when the tickling stops?) Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Arbroath