Kyaik-htiyo Pagoda on Golden Rock. From the website:

The golden rock is a large boulder of granite, which is supported by an extremely small area of contact with the rock beneath. It seems to be just before falling down, but it has been lying there for hundreds of years already. The pagoda upon it is erected upon one hair of the Lord Buddha.

http://www.haw-hamburg.de/pers/Kaspar-Sickermann/mm/emm005.html (via Jaf Project)

Snakes on a Plane is probably the only movie ever given an award by Wired for "the worst film of 2006", based on just the title and the premise of the movie.

That same title and premise also made SOAP a jolly good internet meme: it sparked tons of fan-made art, parodies, and all-round buzz.

To counter Wired, some people at IMDB are even trying to vote it top 250 movies of all time without seeing the movie.

So good is the buzz that Newline Cinema decided to go back and re-shoot the movie to take the movie from a PG-13 to an R-rating!

http://www.snakesonaplanemovie.com/ | Snakes on a Blog | Snakes on an Elevator

See also: The Ten Evil Reasons Why SOAP Rules (Thanks Norwood Matt!)

Matt Robison, an apprentice piercer at The Pit Studio in Ottawa township, 60 miles from Peoria, Ohio, set a new world record by getting pierced 1,016 times in one sitting!

Robison, a Marseilles resident who graduated from Ottawa Township High School, originally planned to get 1,000 piercings, 400 more than the 600 that Kam Ma of Britain got in one sitting in 2002. But apparently the British record holder heard about what Robison was planning, because last week he broke his own record by getting pierced 1,015 times in one sitting.

That prompted Robison to increase the number of piercings he planned to get up to 1,200. But after experiencing the pain of hours of piercings all over his back and arms, he decided to settle for the world record and not go any further.

Before Saturday, Robison had 26 piercings on his body. After the record was set Saturday, 1,015 of his new piercings were removed, leaving one in his body -- the record breaker.

http://mywebtimes.com/ottnews/archives/ottawa/sections.cgi?prcss=display&id=256797 (via A Welsh View)

Take a look at (what I hope is) the Internet's ultimate list of case mods or computer case modifications. These labors of love are the ultimate display of geek chic, creativity, and hardware prowess!

Please help build the Net's ultimate list of case mods on Neatorama: http://www.neatorama.com/case-mod/

Gregory Dietl of Yale University and colleagues found that snails with left-handed cones are impossible for predators to eat.

They found the crab is unable to open left-handed shells because it only has a tool for peeling them on its right claw; so it discards them.

"The crabs have a special tool on their claw, a tooth that's used like a can-opener," said Gregory Dietl from Yale University.

"So, if you imagine trying to use a right-handed can-opener with your left hand - it's very hard to do," he told the BBC News website.

Despite this evolutionary advantage, however, left-handed forms remain rare.

Link

Mac Weakly caught a 25-pound, 1-ounce bass that would have been a world record.

But Weakley and his crew, longtime buddies Mike “Budda” Winn and Jed Dickerson, knew something was missing from a catch that, if somehow approved by the International Game Fish Association, would shatter the Joe DiMaggio-like “unbreakable” mark of bass fishing, the 22-pound, 4-ounce bass caught by George W. Perry at Montgomery Lake in Georgia in 1932.

“It's a great day, but it's a bad day,” Weakley said at his home in Carlsbad. “It was a valiant effort. We've been trying and trying to catch this fish for years. It's the world-record bass. Unfortunately, it was foul-hooked.”

...

Weakley can be heard on the video saying, “Hurry up, get it back in the water.” And the world's largest bass ever caught was released.

“We figured that was the right thing to do,” Weakley said. “I didn't want to put it on the dock, measure it and then take a chance it would die.”

Link (via Metafilter)

Chinese micro-painter Jing Ying Yin Hua spent 10 days to create an image of a giant panda on a single strand of human hair!

Link (via J-Walk Blog)

This reminds me of another micro-art: micro camels by Mykola Syadristy.

Two hundred and forty people in Switzerland set a world record of making 100 igloos in 12 hours by hand. When lit up at night, the igloos look very beautiful. http://www.igluprojekt.ch/index.php?sid=21 (via Cellar IOTD and Boing Boing)

Mathematical analyses of humpback whale songs reveal complex grammatical rules!

Although the researchers say these songs don't meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language, this is the first evidence that animals other than humans use a hierarchical structure of communication. Whales have also been found to sing in dialects.

During mating season, which lasts six months, all humpback males sing the same song to woo the ladies. Over time, the group's song becomes progressively more complex, although researchers don't know quite why.

Presumably, as one whale finds mating success by tinkering with the song style, the rest of the guys imitate it to better their chances, said study co-author Ryuji Suzuki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow.

Link

Neatorama Reader Lisa Poirier pointed us to Super Tour's website:

Similar to the concepts of Microsoft Virtual Earth, SuperTour.com lets you navigate you want to go. With virtual earth, you drive, but with SuperTour.com, you walk around the streets of Miami and Las Vegas, exploring the beach or some cool hotels and restaurants. The site combines the overview of Google Maps and the cool factor of Virtual Tour to create an ultimate travel guide.

Very cool indeed - right now you can only walk around Miami Beach, Florida and PIsa, Italy in panoramic goodness. Link (Thanks Lisa!)

Vivi (full name Champion Bonhem C'est La Vie) ran away from her airport crate after winning the Westminster dog show last month.

Her tale of life-on-the-lam has captivated New Yorkers, and now psychics have been brought in to help.

Four agreed the dog was inside a building, an insight which Mr Lepiane described as "a huge breakthrough". Beatrice Lydecker, of Portland, Oregon, assisting in the search, said she believed that Vivi could see yellow machinery and was hiding under folded boxes.

"She said Vivi could hear a person calling to her, but she didn't recognise the voice," said Honi Reisman, a friend of the owners. "They are telling us that she is alive and they are telling us she is warm. They are saying she's in a building, but there are hundreds of buildings." The dog's co-owner Jill Walton, 39, from Los Angeles, was distraught, fearing that Vivi might have drowned in the marshes near the runway.

Link | Newsday's Vivi Watch blog

Kaiser Permanente is accused of dumping a 63-year-old patient in hospital gown and slipper onto the streets of skid row! And it's on tape.

The videotape, recorded Monday afternoon, shows a taxicab making a U-turn and then driving out of camera view. A few seconds later, Carol Ann Reyes appears from the direction of the cab, wandering for about three minutes in busy San Pedro Street and then on the sidewalk before a Union Rescue Mission staff member escorts her inside the nearby building.

Reyes' movements were recorded by "dumping cams" — pan-tilt security cameras mounted outside the mission's entrance. They were installed last year after the Los Angeles Police Department accused hospitals and other law enforcement agencies of dumping people on the streets of skid row in downtown Los Angeles.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-dumping23mar23,1,1193808.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

A neat collection of art made from soda and beer cans: Link

Blame the Gold Rush for bringing all those jack asses to California, as seen from this 1849 Gold Rush handbill.

Seriously though, for more vintage images on politics, visit Teaching Politic's great collection of Images of American Political History.

OpenCola has published its 7X Top-Seekrut™ formula, so you can make your own open-source cola!

As it turns out, mixing up a batch of cola's pretty easy. Finding the ingredients is damned hard. Most of this file is about finding and handling ingredients so as to produce a tasty bevvy without blowing up your kitchen, melting your flesh off your bones, or poisoning yourself

Link