(Photo: unknown)
Who is this kid? I don't know. But he has earned the respect of all humanity for devising the perfect way to use a touchscreen interface. It's the opposite of a treadmill desk. There's no more needless, wasteful expenditure of energy by remaining upright, or holding up your hands. Just like there, flat on your back, as nature intended.
-via Rocket News 24
(Photo: Coan.net)
The gravestone for Leon and Sharon Gossett in Floral Hill Cemetery, Iroquois County, Illinois looks like a pool table. That's resting in both peace and style! All that's necessary is to pocket the last few balls and call the game.
-via The Soul Is Bone
(Photo: Cynthia Jones)
Dolly is a Pit Bull. Sheldon is a Sulcata Tortoise. Cynthia Jones and her husband Ray adopted both of them into their growing family, which includes 2 miniature donkeys, a miniature horse, and another dog.
Dolly and Sheldon are great friends. They love to play chase. Dolly sometimes offers her ball to Sheldon, hoping that he will play with it. But, so far, Sheldon has expressed no interest. Come on, Sheldon, just kick it around a bit.
(Photo: Michelle Rawlins)
Honey-Rae Phillips of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, UK, was born with a string of bright birthmarks stretching from her right foot up her leg and that side of her body. People noticed. Strangers made comments.
Her parents, Adam and Tanya, initially covered up the birthmarks. But then they changed directions. Honey-Rae's birthmarks were not unsightly disfigurements. So they let her wear shorts and other clothes that expose her birthmarks.
And then Adam and Tanya went even further, taking the radical step of having Honey-Rae's birthmark pattern tattooed over their own bodies. The Daily Mail quotes Tanya:
'From the moment she was born, we told Honey-Rae she was beautiful and constantly covered her in kisses.'
She added: 'Some people will says it odd and think what we’ve done is quite extreme, but in our eyes all we have done is ensure Honey-Rae never feels different. Mummy and Daddy now have the same permanent markings as she does.'
The couple already had tattoos on their legs, but none as extreme as the imitation birthmarks.
Now they have had the procedure done, Honey-Rae couldn't be happier - and even points at the tattoos and yells 'match!'.
-via Daily Telegraph
Chikuwa is the cutest guinea pig in Tokyo--and the best cosplayer, too! She dresses like her favorite characters, such as Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon, Chun-Li from Street Fighter, and Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th.
(Photo: Michael Benson)
Devan Dannelly is a student at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. It's cold. There's snow everywhere. So he was in no mood to struggle through the rough winter conditions to get to class. He tweeted accordingly:
Yo @EKUPrez come shovel my driveway/road and I'll come to class tomorrow... deal???
— Devan Dannelly (@DADannelly11) February 17, 2015Dr. Michael Benson, the president of the university, accepted the challenge:
@DADannelly11 it's a deal. What's your address?
— Michael Benson (@EKUPrez) February 17, 2015(Photo: AFP)
AIBOs are robotic dogs with artificial intelligence. They're capable of developing unique personalities. So some owners in Japan think of them as pets, just like dogs. Sony manufactured them from 1999 through 2006 and offered service assistance through 2014. Then, the company decided to discontinue technical support. When an AIBO broke down, the owner would be on his own.
Some AIBOs, sadly, are beyond repair by independent technicians. Their bodies are stripped for parts, then given a proper funeral at a Buddhist temple east of Tokyo. The AFP reports:
The only source of genuine parts are "dead" robots, who become donors for organ transplantation, but only once the proper respects have been paid.
Bungen Oi, a priest at the 450-year-old Kofukuji temple in Isumi, east of Tokyo, says the AIBO service last month was an occasion on which the robots' souls could pass from their bodies.
"I was thrilled over the interesting mismatch of giving cutting-edge technology a memorial service in a very conventional manner," he said.
It is a mismatch that humans will probably become more used to over the coming years and decades, as robots with "personalities" become ever more part of our lives.
-via Marginal Revolution
(Photo: unknown)
Please remain on the line. You clay tablet is very important to us. Tablets will be answered in the order in which they were received.
The British Museum owns a baked clay tablet from the Mesopotamian city of Ur. It is a complaint about a delivery of copper. The response time may be a bit long.
-via Joe Stump
(Photo: Juozas Šalna)
This is the Bimmah Sinkhole, a natural swimming pool in Oman. As the name suggests, it’s formed by the erosion and collapse of a level of limestone in the Hawiyam Najm Park.
Visitors can swim and relax in the cool blue waters that are almost transparent.
This is one of 18 astonishingly lovely natural swimming spots rounded up by When on Earth. Have you visited any of them?
(Wolverine)
It looks like we’re stepping into a comic book world! Lianne Moseley, a self-taught makeup artist in Calgary, Alberta, can paint people so that they look like characters from cartoons and comics. She says that she can do retail makeup work, but she prefers projects that are “big and bold.” Moseley can certainly do that with perfection!
(Sterling Archer from Archer)
(Green Arrow)
(Jean Grey)
(She-Hulk)
-via Fashionably Geek
I love the old fashioned barbershops of my youth—beautiful slices of Americana I like to call Floyds. You can get a sense of the old way by visiting the Salon Le Barber. You’ll may have to go to the Netherlands to experience it, though. That’s where Orla Tiffney of Pop-Up City found it.
The Salon de Barber is a classically outfitted barbershop inside a small trailer. The features and trim are exactly what you’d hope for when searching for a Floyd’s-style shop. When Pop-Up City found it, the Salon Le Barber was at the Food Soul Festival in Amsterdam. Since it’s portable, maybe it will visit my town in America!
Elsa, a yellow Labrador Retriever, is ready for hockey! She walked to the rink in her backyard in Guelph, Ontario, picked up a snow shovel in her mouth, and went to work.
-via Huffington Post
(Photo: Sportex Italia)
Dino and Dario Ferrari caught this 9-foot long, 280 pound catfish in the Po River in northern Italy. It’s a Wels catfish (Silurus glanis). After a fierce, 40-minute battle, the twin brothers reeled in a creature that is being called the “monster of the Po.”
It’s time for a huge serving of fried catfish!
Or perhaps not. After measuring and photographing the fish, which is probably about 30 years old, they let it back into the water. You can see more of those pictures at the Daily Telegraph.
(Photo: Anne Wermiel/New York Post)
This is Noa Mintz, the founder of Nannies by Noa, a successful small business in New York City. If you need a top quality nanny or babysitter, she can set you up.
From a young, er, younger, age, Noa got to know a lot of nannies and babysitters. She developed a knack for knowing if a caregiver's personality was a good fit for a family--or wasn't. When she was 12, she launched a company that paired nannies and babysitters with families who needed them. Noa ran the company while going to school and living an otherwise normal life as a middle schooler.
Now, as a high school freshman, she realizes that she can no longer devote enough time to her company, which serves about 190 clients through about 75 nannies and babysiitters. Noa has hired a CEO to take over of day-to-day operations. The New York Post reports that this is only her latest venture:
Mom Meredith Berkman, a former journalist, isn’t surprised by her daughter’s ambition.
“Noa is a natural-born serial entrepreneur — from 6 or 7, she was always trying to start these mini-companies,” says Berkman.
“She’d reach out to my friend and ask to be a consultant for birthday parties. There are kids whose lives are absorbed by tennis or acting — but this is her baby, her startup. It’s not a hobby for her. This isn’t a lemonade stand.”
-via Oddity Central
In 1985, Rodolfo Neri Vela, a Mexican scientist, served on a mission of the space shuttle Discovery. He brought tortillas. These proved to be an incredibly practical food in zero gravity. NASA astronauts have been using them ever since when attempting to make sandwiches.
That doesn't mean the results are always pretty. Pictured above is a cheeseburger made by astronaut Terry W. Virts, who is currently on board the International Space Station. The burger consists of broken up beef patty, cheese paste, tomato paste, and Russian mustard on a tortilla. He describes it as "VERY TASTY!"
-via First We Feast