We can rebuild it ... we have the technology. Here's the story of Coal, an eight-and-a-half year old dog whose left paw was amputated because of cancer. Instead of putting him down, his owner Reg Walker spent a lot of money to fit him with a bionic leg:

A beloved pet bulldog has been fitted with a £10,000 bionic leg, which will help advance prosthetic techniques used to help bombing victims. [...]

The titanium alloy used mimics animal hide, allowing the skin and the bone from above to seal the metal implant below without it being rejected by the body.

Link - Thanks TwoDragons

Hailstones can damage fruit and trees, so farmer are keen to do whatever they can to avoid hailstorms.

Anti-hail efforts included religious rites and bell ringing, but when those don't work, the farmers use ... the hail cannon! Here's why neighbors are upset:

After a series of hailstorms devastated the orchard's apple crop in 2007, the owner resorted this summer to using a hail cannon, a noisemaking machine whose sound waves supposedly disrupt the formation of hailstones.

Scientists snicker at such devices. But farmers swear by them. As for the neighbors, they just swear.

"It sounds like artillery fire," said Gregory Connors, a 38-year-old software designer whose children have been woken up by the booms. "I'm up for everybody's right to farm. We support local farmers. But the technology and the way it's being utilized is not acceptable."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/22/hail.cannon.ap/index.html - Thanks Tiffany!

I went out of town for a few days and was surprised to come back and find that the blog has caught some comment trolling sniffles. You guys are usually very good, so what happened?

Anyways, it's time for a little housecleaning.

If you find your off-topic comments about McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden gone, then they've either been deleted by me or by the post authors. I'm generally against censorship, so I tried to preserve some of the comments that seem to have genuine point of views. Silly ones, those with name-callings, or those impersonating famous persons have been nuked. Let's hope we won't have to do this again.

Just to get it out of your system, here's the one post that you can have at it.

Off-topic comments removed from Neatorama posts

From Chester A. Arthur:

wowsers

So many parallels to McCain here.

“– he asked Louis Tiffany to redecorate the White House in the style to which he was accustomed, which resulted in previous generations of White House furniture being sold or destroyed. ”

I can see Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin having a girly ball interior decorating (with cindy’s pocketbook). Those McCains are no joke…7 houses, 13 cars, 300,000 dollar outfits…true socialites!…like Paris…

And McCain is so old he’ll probably be the second sitting president to be denied his party’s nomination, if he wins.

Evil Pundit

Wowsers, your fevered imagination doesn’t equal reality.

As for McCain, at least he doesn’t have a close relationship with terrorists who bombed America, like Obama’s friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Nor does he associate with racist preachers such as Jeremiah Wright. John McCain has never received corrupt payments from convicted fraudster Tony Rezko.

If all you can do is whine about the property owned by McCain’s wife, then you’ve got nothing.

neoconartist

John McCain is an idiot who finished dam near last in his graduating class, is friends with a man who killed way more people than Ayers (who killed none) in Bush (100s of thousands) and was involved in a big banking corruption scandal - Not the kind of president we need at this time in our history!!!!

I wonder if Cindy uses Johns painkillers now instead of stealing them from a charity like she used to, it would explain that off-in-a-distance look she always has…

Evil Pundit

Obama is corrupt.

Let’s start with the numbers. Why is a first term Senator pulling down almost $300,000 a year from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Countrywide Financial, and Washington Mutual? He has not even completed his fourth year in the Senate and received a total of $1,093,329.00 from these eight companies and their employees. (all data from OpenSecrets.org). John McCain’s numbers, according to OpenSecrets.org for the period 1990-2008 (i.e., 18 years worth of data) only collected $549,584.00. In other words, Barack is receiving $273,582.25 (and 2008 is not over) per year while McCain raised a paltry $30,532.44.

Want another shocker? Barack Obama has received more from one source – Goldman Sachs $542,252.00 – than McCain has from all of the companies combined. Who the hell is more beholden to lobbyists? And why does a junior Senator from Illinois rate this kind of dough?”

So Obama has been enriching himself off of these very Wall Street firms he now decries…in addition to pocketing money from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers,Countrywide,and WAMU to the tune of $1,093,329.00 from these eight companies!

Paul in Boca

Umm,
Evil. Rick Davis, McCains campaign manager, collected $30,000 per month for over 5 years as the president of an advocacy group set up by Fannie & Freddie to defend F&M against stricter regulations. The majority of McCains campaign staff are former lobbyists. Phil Gramm, McCain’s top economic advisor, was the architect of completing deregulation between the banking, investing, and insurance companies. Look where that has left us. McCain just said he wants to do to the health industry what he did to banking. And I’m not going to get started on that ” a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not” remark made by that dimbulb from Nanook. But you know what, Evil, there are thousands of political web sites you can post your misbegotten beliefs to, why don’t you post them there? We come here for a break from that kind of stuff, OK?

From Mystery Ship Found off Alabama Coast:

jesus4U

Neatorama please dont engage in the pointless CENSORSHIP of views that the liberal elite doesnt recognize as valid, it is perfectly reasonable that the reason why they dont know the date for this ship is that all dating methods are WRONG, Gods word tells us the earth is 10000 years old or less if you do the geaneology and evolution is a LIE, Ted you should do your own research, don’t beleive the liberal censors, and please vote for Sarah Palin and McCain who will give Christians a say in the science classroom thanks

From Bambi and Thumper:

godisgood

Sorry LIBERAL “snark”, the good govenor Palin is NOT a sadist just because she hunts, sheesh you soft liberals are so sick in the head, don’t you eat meat too? Surely not all of you are hippie tree hugging vegetarians. Go follow the crack smoking Larry Sinclair loving African homosexual over the cliff sheesh you kids are so gullible, our country is going down the toilet with all these liberals.

godisgood

Snark if you think Sarah Palin is just some basket of fluff then you are just as SEXIST as the rest of your liberl buddies, the fact is she is a very capable Christian woman. For those Christians who worry about her natural role being usurped rest assured I have it on good word that Todd is VERY involved as well, they are a wonderful CHRISTIAN couple with values from the HEARTLAND unlike that certain AFRICAN and his socialist cronies who have been smearing her.

Blue eyes

Palin is UGLY inside and out. Anybody who loves to kill as much as she does can’t be trusted. GO BACK TO ALASKA!

Evil Pundit

It’s the hate-filled liberals like Snark and Blue Eyes, and the lying liberal trolls like Godisgood, who are truly the ugly side of politics.

From Doctor Watson's Phobia Factory:

godisgood

This is a perfect example of why the atheist science cabal needs to be balanced by good christian men and women in office with strong morals.
Sarah palin and john McCain will say no to the global warming science elite and make sure creation is taught in science class where it belongs!
They will also but like minded judges in the Supreme court and conservatives will have a majority there for along time, taking it back from the liberals who destroyed our neighborhoods in the 60s. Palin McCain 08! say no to the atheist liberal science elite and that African with no values

godisgood

Adolf Hitler was a Norse Pagan who fell into the trap of beleiving the atheist LIE of evolution which is brainwashed into our children in federal schools and only Palin and McCain are pledging to fight against this November. They will also support Christian homeschooling which will let us teach our children our own Values.

godisgood

I don’t know what trolling is but yes I am trying to get the word out that Palin and Mccain are the best choice for Christians because they will back creationism in science classrooms and stand up to the gobal warming liars like Al Gore. The future of the country depends in large part on the nominees tot he supreme court and we are very close to having a clear pro-Christian majority but if the atheist muslim sympathizer Barack Hussein Obama the African wins then all will be lost in that regard. I have donated to the campaign but am not employed by it.

Thomas

Do not feed the troll. It is fat and lazy enough as it is.

On the topic of John W. McCain giving “points” to people for spreading the word about him, its only to specific websites (i.e. Daily Kos) on specific topics. Today’s topics are “Partnership” and “Jobs for America.” I don’t even think McCain would tell folks to go out and say the uninformed crap that our lovely troll is spewing.

On the off chance that godisgood is a real person, and believes what they’re saying…. well the bible does say to be kind to the least among us, so bless your uninformed heart.

But under any other circumstances, eat a dick.

Add this to the list of potential harmful effects of cell phones: bad sperm qualities!

Keeping a cell phone on talk mode in a pocket can decrease sperm quality, according to new research from the Cleveland Clinic.

"We believe that these devices are used because we consider them very safe, but it could cause harmful effects due to the proximity of the phones and the exposure that they are causing to the gonads," says lead researcher Ashok Agarwal, the Director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine.

Link - Thanks Tiffany!

Brady Clark and Mykle Hansen created a vest that lets bicycle riders show off how fast they're pedaling:

How does the vest work?
In a nutshell, it uses a sensor on your wheel to send a signal to a microcontroller that then turns the numbers on and off on the vest.

Why did you invent this?
Have you ever outpaced cars and been honked at? Had a car almost wipe you out while making a turn? The Speed Vest was invented because we were curious to know if putting more information in front of drivers might change their awareness of bicyclists. That, and we suspect a lot of people don’t realize that an average person can bike 10-15 mph (15-25 km/h).

Link (with a video clip of the vest in action)

Chinese farmer Fu Haiwen has a strange duck: it has chicken feet and is afraid of the water!

Fu said he bought the duck in June but did not notice its unusual feet for ten days, reports Laibin News.

It was only after he noticed it acting differently to the rest of the ducks that he examined it closely and was surprised to see it did not have webbed feet.

"It never went with the other ducks to swim in the river," he explained.

Link

Forty years ago, Christine Orchard and Chester Locke met at a youth club and fell in love. They had a child out of wedlock and were forced apart by Christine's parents.

Tracey Orchard, the daughter they had together, spent the last 12 years looking for her father after the death of her grandparents. The story has a happy ending: Christine and Chester fell in love all over again and are now set to wed!

Mrs Orchard told BBC Points West she was delighted to be marrying her childhood sweetheart after social stigma kept them apart for so long.

The former shop assistant said: "Being an unmarried mother back in the 1960s was still frowned upon. My parents decided they would bring the baby up but I had to sever all contact with Chester."

Tracey Orchard said her first motivation for the search was to dispel rumours that her father was a "waste of space". She was amazed when the romance rekindled so quickly.

She said: "My intention was to get him to meet his grandchildren and great-grandchild. I'm shocked but it is lovely. It's wonderful to see them where they should have been 40 years ago."

Mr Locke, who works in a saw mill, joked: "I'm a bit angry at her for making me wait!"

Link

Yumiko Matsui is a Japanese artist specializing in fantastic dioramas made out of paper. This one is of the Dotonbori Street in Osaka:

Dotonbori is one of Osaka's main shopping areas and entertainment districts, and is also known as a food destination. It is a popular tourist destination. It is famous for big cheesy neon signs on the street. Those signs become part of the culture of Osaka. Dotonbori street gets busier at night because of the lights.

Check out the gallery here: http://web.mac.com/incolingo/iWeb/amayadori/osaka.html - Thanks Yumiko!

If Tino Schaedler of NAU has his ways, then we will soon use this Star-Trek-holodeck-meets-Minority Report "immersive cocoon" for all of our computing:

The Cocoon is a digital experience that is both intuitive and holistic. Basically, it is a circular human-sized dome that puts users in a new digital dimension. View anything with a 360 degree screen, and control it with gestures. Equipped with motion sensing software inspired by Minority Report, it enables your body to be the interface. Like Minority Report, you can reach out and grab information, move it around, blow it up, or move it behind you. But the application is limitless.

http://butteryblend.com/technology/the-future-ofeverything/ | Official website [Flash] - Thanks Jesse!

An Einstein Ring is what you get when light is "bent" around a massive object (in a process called gravitational lensing).

Albert Einstein predicted this in his general theory of relativity and was proven right when the Hubble Telescope spotted the first complete Einstein ring in 1998.

Astronomy Picture of the Day has a really neat photo of the SDSSJ1430, a Galaxy Einstein Ring: Link

Can someone stop you from linking to their website? That's what the Sheboygan city attorney did. The city ordered Jennifer Reisinger to remove a link to the city's police department website - and now, she is suing:

Can a city stop people from posting a link to its Web site?

That’s the question at the center of a federal lawsuit brought by a Sheboygan woman against the mayor and other officials there, in what appears to be a first-of-its-kind case, according to an Internet law expert.

Jennifer Reisinger says the Sheboygan city attorney ordered her to remove from her Web site a link to the city’s police department, in what she believes was retaliation for her support of recalling Mayor Juan Perez, according to the suit filed last week.

The city went further, the lawsuit claims, launching a criminal investigation of Reisinger for linking to the department on one of her sites.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=786584 - via The Raw Feed

Scientists have discovered the reason behind the phenomenon of "shimmering" in giant honeybees: it's a defense mechanism against predatory hornets!

In the PLoS ONE study, Gerald Kastberger and colleagues focused on the shimmering behavior in giant honeybees, the intriguing, docile, nest-based trait reminiscent of the Mexican waves seen in football stadiums. It was previously known that shimmering was evoked by visual stimuli of predators—particularly hovering wasps. This highly coordinated response aligns hundreds of colony members and displays a remarkable capacity of fast communication within a society, unique in the animal kingdom.

When a giant honeybee colony shimmers, it has two potential addressees: firstly, its nest mates, which coordinate themselves to participate in the shimmering, and which possibly become aroused or alarmed. The authors posit that the members of the group, which are assembled in the dense networks of a "bee curtain" on both sides of the comb, continuously produce and receive information about the state of the colony, reflecting its day-to-day business of foraging, reproduction, reorganization and defensive actions (such as shimmering). Secondly, the potential predators such as wasps and mammals are targeted—these are thought to be influenced by the dynamic visual cues of shimmering.

Link

Let's pause and take a breather from the meltdown on Wall Street. Here's the racoon dance party to take your mind off of The Mothers of All Mondays.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Davey!

"One of Satan's soldiers." That's what a Saudi muslim cleric called Mickey Mouse, saying that the cartoon character must die:

Sheikh Muhammad Munajid claimed the mouse is "one of Satan's soldiers" and makes everything it touches impure.

But he warned that depictions of the creature in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, and Disney's Mickey Mouse, had taught children that it was in fact loveable.

The cleric, a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, said that under Sharia, both household mice and their cartoon counterparts must be killed.

Mr Munajid was asked to give Islam's teaching on mice during a religious affairs programme broadcast on al-Majd TV, an Arab television network.

According to a translation prepared by the Middle East Media Research Institute, an American press monitoring service, he said: "The mouse is one of Satan's soldiers and is steered by him.

Link