Yet another reason why you should stay away from drugs:

An Oregon man who went to a hospital complaining of a headache was found to have 12 nails embedded in his skull from a suicide attempt with a nail gun, doctors say.

Surgeons removed the nails with needle-nosed pliers and a drill, and the man survived with no serious lasting effects, according to a report on the medical oddity in the current issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery.

The unidentified 33-year-old man was suicidal and high on methamphetamine last year when he fired the nails — up to 2 inches in length — into his head one by one.

Link

Kurt Steiner of Emporium, PA is the world record holder for stone skipping. From the website:

Not only did he outskip all other competitors, but no one had previously seen a skip in competition with such an amazingly high count. The rapid-fire pitty-pats resulting from the cast made counting very difficult, but the judges settled on an official count for the day's competition of 34, which sealed a first-place finish for Steiner for the 2002 competition.* With video cameras present that day, officials felt it might be worthwhile to review the video footage, since the skip very well may have set a new world record. Upon review, it was determined that the skip had far exceeded 34, and was worthy of submission to the Guinness World Record committee for authentication. It has taken over a year, but the Guinness officials have declared Kurt's skip a new world record, with a count of 40!

Link

Apparently, in the great state of Florida, hogs are a real problem:

Hogs are anything but endangered. In Florida, they are something like the computer virus of the mammal world, known for a voracious appetite for fragile native plants, birds, snakes and small animals. A couple of hungry hogs, rooting for vittles during the wee hours, can turn a lush field into a moonscape by sunrise. The state hires folks such as Whidden to get rid of them.

He has steady work catching hogs because Hernando de Soto brought them to Florida when he came calling in 1539. Now hogs are found in 31 states. Hunters shoot about 100,000 hogs a year in Florida. Hog removal specialists eliminate an additional 3,300 wild hogs from state property. The hogs are gaining ground anyway.

Spook catches hogs the hard way: by hand. He has nothing against guns but finds it more exciting to grab one while it is otherwise engaged by his dogs. Even so, the outcome is in doubt, since the hog is often a good deal larger than Spook, boasts bigger teeth and fears for its life.

Read more: Link

This one above is a Mandarin duck - amazing color, isn't it? See more of Juza's photos: http://www.juzaphoto.com/eng/photo_galleries.htm (via Ursi's Blog)

From the website:

A dust cloud of silicon micro-spheres that was illuminated by laser light scattering from the cloud is suspended in a plasma. The dust cloud is approximately 0.5” high and floats in a conical shape between the dust tray and an electrode as long as the plasma is maintained. Fundamental dust cloud properties and dynamics have applications from plasma processing to space plasmas.

This work by Elle Starkman and Andrew Post-Zwicker of the Priceton Plasma Physics Lab won the 2005 Princeton Art of Science competition - can't wait till the 2006 winners are chosen!

Link: 2005 Gallery of Art of Science Competition

In this 4 minutes and 40 seconds movie released in January 2005 by ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, you can see the Huygens probe plunging through Titan's thick orange-brown atmosphere to a soft sandy, dry riverbed.

If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look-see.

At first, the Huygens camera just saw fog over the distant surface. The fog started to clear only at about 60 kilometers (37 miles) altitude, making it possible to resolve surface features as large as 100 meters (328 feet). Only after landing could the probe's camera resolve the little grains of sand. The movie provides a glimpse of such a huge change of scale.

The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.

Link to Press Release | YouTube

Andy Warhol's "Small Torn Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot)", a hand-painted work from 1962 showing a large soup can with torn label (duh!) was sold for $11.7 million at auction.

For the price tag, you can buy about 7,800,000 cans of Campbell's Condensed Soup.

Link

A rare mirage of a city appeared off the shore of Penglai City, Shandong Provice, China:

Thousands of tourists and local residents witnessed a mirage of high clarity lasting for four hours off the shore of Penglai City in east China's Shandong Province on Sunday.

Mists rising on the shore created an image of a city, with modern high-rise buildings, broad city streets and bustling cars as well as crowds of people all clearly visible.

Experts said that many mirages have been recorded in Penglai, on the tip of Shandong Peninsula, throughout history, which made it known as a dwelling place of the gods.

They explained that a mirage is formed when moisture in the air becomes warmer than the temperature of sea water, which refracts rays of sunlight to create reflections of the landscape in the sky.

http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/811/2006/05/07/421@85556.htm

From the website:

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Balaklava was one of the most secret towns in Russia. 10km south eas of Sevastopol on the Black Sea Coast, this small town was the home to a Nuclear Submarine Base.

Almost the entire population of Balaklava at the time worked at the Base, even family members could not visit the town of Balaklava without good reason and identification. The base remained operational after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until 1993 when the decommissioning process started and the warheads and low yield torpedos were removed. Then in 1996 the last Russian Submarine left the Base, and now you can go on Guided tours round the Cannel System, Base and small Museum, which is now housed in the old weapons stowage hangers deep inside the hillside.

More photos: Link (via Look at This ...)

Short on space in your kitchen? You need Compact Concepts' Circular Kitchen:

The inner core rotates 180 degrees and is equipped with all the conveniences of a conventional kitchen, including a stainless steel sink with chrome single lever mixer, a waste bin and drawers. The upper circular shelf rotates through 360 degrees to house crockery, glasses, etc. Inside it has its own lighting, electrical sockets, electronics, water and waste disposal.

By utilising the volume of the circular kitchen fully, it has been possible to offer a storage capacity equivalent to that of a large conventional kitchen. "It contains the equivalent of 12 cupboards from a conventional kitchen", says designer Alfred Averbeck.

There's also the facility to specify the Circular Kitchen with all the appliances necessary - refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, fully integrated coffee machine, ceramic cook top with 2 or 4 cook zones, a built-in microwave/oven-combination and a Range hood.

Link | Company's website (via Cynical-C)

Found at Ueba (via Fosfor and Unique Daily)

See more of Doris' cool photos: http://www.dorism.com/dmitsch_home.html (via Stuff on Fire)

If you like Virgin's "Flex Your Music Muscle" viral ad (blogged here before), you'll probably like Lonely Planet's "Cities". There are 45 cities represented in this picture, can you find them? Link (via Ursi's Blog)

Found at Bit & Pieces.

Hod Lipson of Cornell University and colleagues invented a robot that can (somewhat) self-replicate:

Their robots are made up of a series of modular cubes -- called "molecubes" -- each containing identical machinery and the complete computer program for replication. The cubes have electromagnets on their faces that allow them to selectively attach to and detach from one another, and a complete robot consists of several cubes linked together. Each cube is divided in half along a long diagonal, which allows a robot composed of many cubes to bend, reconfigure and manipulate other cubes. For example, a tower of cubes can bend itself over at a right angle to pick up another cube.

You just have to see the video clip: Link (Thanks D. Meloney!)