Frozen human eggs at a fertility center. Photo: Mark Boster / LA Times

After successfully conceiving a daughter through in vitro fertilization, Gina Rathan and her husband Cheddi was faced with a moral dilemma they didn't expect to encounter: what to do with the "leftover" preserved frozen embryos they created, but hadn't used?

"I don't see them as not being life yet," says Gina Rathan, 42, a pharmaceutical sales representative. "I thought, 'How can I discard them when I have a beautiful child from that IVF cycle?' "

Many other former infertility patients also appear to be grappling over the fate of embryos they have no plans to use: An estimated 500,000 embryos are in cryopreservation in the United States.

As with the Rathans, this unexpected conundrum often arises well after the infertility crisis has passed, triggering impassioned and highly personal debates about the science and ethics of human life. The discussion boils down to a fundamental question: What is this icy clump of cells smaller than a grain of sand?

Link

When Eve the chicken got cancer, her owner didn't warm up the oven and prepare her for dinner. Instead, they spent £1,400 on radiation therapy to cure her!

The couple, who are self-employed accountants, took her to the vets who told them that Eve had developed the disease in her remaining leg and the Denneys faced the heartbreaking prospect of having her put down.

So they decided to save her life - by paying for surgery to remove the growth, followed by a course of radiotherapy, at a total cost of £1,400.

Mrs Denney, 43, said: "Eve is a pet to us. It doesn't matter if she has four legs, two, or, in this case, one. She jumps around the garden and responds to her name just like a cat or dog.

"If we hadn't done anything, she would have had maybe two or three months to live and one of our options was to put her to sleep. But after a lot of soul-searching we decided to do what we could for her.

Link

In these tough times, it's easy to forget that the economic crisis isn't limited to the United States. In England, many property owners were frustrated with tenants who do not pay their rent, so one real estate agency decided to get a little creative:

Merseyside-based Sutton Estates has placed placards reading 'Rent dodger lives here' outside two of its properties.

The agency hopes the signs will embarrass tenants who avoid rent collection into meeting their payments.

Neil Heffey, a partner in the company, said he was tired of being avoided by those who refused to pay for their living accommodation, provided by or through his company.

'They can avoid us, but not their neighbours. Now, every time they walk in and out of their door, the neighbours will be laughing at them' said Mr Heffey, who also insisted that genuine cases of hardship would not be targeted.

Link

(Photo: Liverpool Echo)

So you think you know pop culture (or more exactly, YouTube pop culture). Quick, what's the most popular fan-made music video on YouTube? It's Canon Rock, a rendition of Pachebel's classical music played by Jeong-Hyun Lim (better known as his online handle funtwo). The video clip has been viewed nearly 50 million times.

So what happened to Jeong-Hyun? David Farrier of TV3 in New Zealand went in search of funtwo, and found him not in South Korea, but in Auckland, New Zealand, studying computer science!

Here's David's interview with the YouTube sensation:

[YouTube Link]

Thanks David!

Photo: Erwan Fichou

Photographer Erwan Fichou has a really neat gallery of photos he took of people wearing sweaters and coats made from ... their pet dogs' fur!

Link (click on Dogwool) - via If It's Hip, It's Here, thanks Marilyn!

Previously on Neatorama: Couple's Beloved Dogs Made Into Sweaters

Photo: monkeybar73 [Flickr]

When Terri Irving got married, her friend suggested that she make a cake topper based on one of her favorite video games, Katamari Damacy, with the bride and groom stuck to the Katamari. Later, Terri said that the whole thing was sort of like a metaphor of the marriage process.

Link - via Super Punch

Miss Cellania has an oldie but goodie list of literary rules (the sort of thing that circulated on Usenet). Here are a few:

* Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
* And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
* Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
* Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
*One should NEVER generalize.

Link

There are a lot of fun USB flash drives, but most of them don't look quite fashionable enough for that black tie event. What's a fashion conscious geek (is that an oxymoron?) to do?

GeekAlerts blog has compiled 13 of the most fashionable USB Flash Drives that will fit in just fine with the rest of your bling-blings: Link

Kansas City-based artist Dylan Mortimer combined a telephone booth and a prayer station into this art piece titled Public Prayer Booth. If you ever came across one, you can pull down the kneeler and pray on the spot. Link - via Locust & Honey

The good folks and our pals over at mental_floss are coming out with a new book: The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits.

The book is coming out October 28th, but if you pre-order one at Amazon, mental_floss will throw in a 6-month subscription to their magazine free!

I have all of the mental_floss books (and magazines, actually) and I can tell you that they're awesome. It's like Neatorama. Except in book form. Oh, and better:

Links: Pre-order the book at Amazon | Post at mental_floss blog about the offer - Thanks Will!

Tech Cult blog has lovingly compiled 150 of the best Flash games available on the Web. If you have, oh, say a week off, then you can probably play all of the games listed here:

Link - Thanks Daniel Scocco!

The game on the left is insanely addictive Desktop Tower Defense, which is probably the most popular Flash game ever (previously discussed on Neatorama here, before it got famous, of course! | Desktop Defense Strategy)

Lately, the stock market feels a lot like a roller coaster ride. So if you're jittery about the market, this is the shirt for you at Neatorama's Online Store: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?stock-market-the-ride-pid106.html (Plus, at only $9.95, it won't break the bank!)

In the midst of the global banking crisis, a small Japanese city has a secret weapon to boost its economy: Tama the cat!

Tortoiseshell Tama is the "stationmaster" of the unmanned Kishi train station where she was born and raised on the provincial Kishigawa Line.

But it is not her labours on the platform which have seen the cash rolling in.

It is rather Tama's irresistible charm which has brought tourists flocking in their thousands to the western city of Kinokawa to see the feline worker patrolling in the uniform of her office - a Wakayama Electric Railway cap.

With 55,000 more people having used the Kishigawa Line than would normally be expected, Tama's contribution to the local economy is calculated to have reached as much as Y1.1 billion ($A13.5 million) [US10.9 - Ed.] in 2007 alone, according to a study announced last week.

Link

When Jean Kelly's cat Cadbury stopped meowing, the vet diagnozed a paralysed larynx which was blocking its throat. So what did the pet lover do?

After a stint in intensive care, six days in an oxygen tent, four months nursing care and regular check-ups, the 13-year-old Moggy had run up a bill of £10,000. [...]

Cadbury is back at home and on the road to recovery in Olney, Buckinghamshire - sitting in his favourite spot in the conservatory and miaowing in delight. “It was never about me – it was about Cadbury and his quality of life. I know he’s not a young cat but I wanted to give him a fighting chance,” she told a Sunday newspaper.

Link

(Photo: Steve Nicholson)

Ted Hunter of Roarockit Skateboard Co. made this flower sculpture with skateboards as petals titled "Reach for Light":

It’s a good example of free hand vacuum veneer bending. The flower petal designs are actually printed using photo’s of real tulip petals. The inside is printed griptape (sticky back sandpaper) and the outside is printed styrene. The internal core is Canadian maple veneer. The shape of the decks are our Roarockit classic pintail skateboard shape that is included in our longboard deck kits.

Link - via Make

Previously on Neatorama: The Skateboard Stairs