What would the Bible look like if it had been written like a blog? Here's an entry from Noah's Blog, chronicling the Deluge:

Day 1
Rain.

Day 2
Rain.

Day 3
Rain.

Day 4
Rain.

Day 5
Rain.

Day 6
So I was loading up the last of the animals last week when I walk past my neighbor Roger, the Molech-worshipper. He looks up and says "Hey, looks like rain."

True story.

Link - via Locusts & Honey

Think that your job is bad? Well, unless yours is listed below, be thankful that at least working doesn't come with the additional risk of on-the-job fatality. Forbes looks at the 10 most dangerous jobs in the United States:

Topping the most-dangerous list: fishers and their staff. Thirty-eight fishermen--112 out of 100,000--died on the job last year, mainly off the frigid coasts of Alaska and Maine. There's a reason that Discovery show is called "Deadliest Catch."

Larry Simns--co-founder of Commercial Fishermen of America, a San Francisco-based nonprofit representing U.S. commercial fishermen--knows the pain. Last year Simms' friend Captain Philip Ruhle Jr. went down with his 80-foot squid ship in a storm roughly 40 miles off the coast of New Jersey.

"They all know the risks," says Simms. "There's a chance of getting killed, but you don't put a lot of emphasis on that. You're just extra cautious because you know you can't just get off the boat and walk home if something goes wrong."

http://www.forbes.com/leadership/2008/08/25/dangerous-jobs-fishing-lead-careers-cx_mk_0825danger.html - via mental_floss and I Met a Possum

This is fantastic: a series of vintage "brain maps" as created by one Dr. Alesha Sivartha in the late 1800s (published in his metaphysical book The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man).

You don't have to believe or understand all the New Age-y stuff to appreciate the weirdness of the lithographs: Link - via Quiddity

Inspired by the ubiquitous Sorry We're Closed sign, Aesthetic Asparagus designed a series of 9 signs that cut the crap and say what the closed shop owners truly meant: Link - via Quipsologies

MIT researchers led by chemical engineer Robert Cohen and mechanical engineer Gareth McKinley have created the world's first superoleophobic and superhydrophobic surface (let me translate for you: the "super surface" repels both water and oil):

A group of MIT researchers have created an improved set of design rules for making any surface impervious to any liquid, be it water or gasoline. Such materials could eventually have promise as fingerprint-repelling coatings, fuel filters, self-washing car paints, and stain-resistant clothing. [...]

They started with a polymer developed by the Air Force that contains large numbers of oil-repelling fluorine groups. The MIT researchers made the material even more oil resistant by using lithography to pattern it with overhanging microstructures. These tiny structures create air pockets that help suspend liquids and prevent them from penetrating to the surface. The MIT researchers found that the surfaces are both superoleophobic and also superhydrophobic, or water repelling. Because they repel everything, they're called omniphobic.

Link - via Blue's News

Photo: Anish Tuteja/Wonjae Choi

Spotted at Brass Goggles, the blog of everything steampunk, is this fantastic (and wearable) Steampunk Space Helmet by Herr Döktor: Link | Build progress (long forum thread!)

If you didn't know, yesterday was Domino Day 2008 ("Celebrating 10 Years of Domino Day"). The goal of Domino Day is simple: to set a new world record of highest number of falling dominoes.

Robin Paul Weijers (AKA Mr. Domino) and his team set up 4.5 million dominoes in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, and ended up setting a new world record by toppling more than 4.3 million dominoes. From Wikipedia:

... the record was broken with 4,345,027 dominoes toppled. Also, 9 additional world record were attempted and successfully broken. These additional world records were:

1. Longest domino spiral (200 m)
2. Highest domino climb (12 m)
3. Smallest domino stone (7 mm)
4. Largest domino stone (4.8 m)
5. Longest domino wall (16 m)
6. Largest domino structure (25,000 stone)
7. Fastest topple of 30 metres of domino stone (4.21 sec, time by Churandy Martina: 3.81 sec)
8. Largest number of domino stone resting on a single domino (727 stones)
9. Largest rectangular level domino field (1 million stones)

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Bits & Pieces

"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end - I wouldn't be surprised."

- Dorothy Parker, writer and poet

Dutch artist Anneke Jacobs collected discarded Chiquita banana cartons and stitched them together into a fabulous chandelier with regular office staples: Link

Haruo Suekichi is a Japanese artist who specializes in making wonderful steampunk watches. In the past 12 years, Haruo has made some 7,000 watches - he started out selling them in the flea market, but now his watches are very collectible.

Chief Mag has an interview with the master watchmaker, who recounted an interesting tale of how he got the whole idea because he wanted to design a watch for a one-armed man:

at the flea market, a one-armed man came up to me. And he said to me, well, with only my left arm, I can't put on a watch. Wow, I thought, he's right...I wonder if I could make a watch like that? So I made - and you can see one upstairs in the showcase - I made a watch that you put your wrist in it and it shuts around your wrist.

http://www.chiefmag.com/issues/4/profiles/Haruo-Suekichi/ | Gallery of Haruo's watches [in Japanese]

Photo: Job Koelewijn - via KNAW Pressphoto

Dutch artist Job Koelewijn sure knows how to make an awesome bookcase. Behold his lemniscate (look it up) bookshelf that represents the infinite power of books and learnin' - via Book Patrol

Our pal Dark Roasted Blend dug up these photos of a hydraulic excavator climbing a tower. Supposedly, it's a publicity stunt by Lebherr hydraulics, to show off the strength of their machines.

Previously on Neatorama: How To Unload an Excavator

That's the Sylmar fire that's raging in Southern California. I took that photo just an hour or so ago from my backyard (I live just one city away). So far, it has destroyed 600 mobile homes and caused 10,000 residents to be evacuated. This fire comes right after the Montecito Tea Fire that destroyed more than 100 houses.

Fire is a constant worry here, and fire season is one big reason I don't like living in SoCal. Last year, there were big fires closer to where I live, so I hope we don't have a repeat of that this year. My condolences to those who lost their homes to the fires.

If you think about it, treadmills are kind of weird: you walk or run but never go anywhere ... So Alex Astilean of SpeedFit decided that he'll remedy that paradox.

Behold the first human-powered mobile treadmill ... and boy does it boogie down the road!: Link (embedded YouTube clip) - Thanks Marilyn!

Remember our post about the newspaper front pages about the Obama victory? Well, here's a collage of over 600 headlines made into a poster: Link (with a zoomable version, too!)