Courtesy of Reuters, which has other ancient jokes as well:

It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

image via flickr user rosemanios

Link

Invented by Matty Sallin, Daniel Bartolini, and Hsiao-huh Hsu, this alarm clock gently wakes you with the aroma of freshly-cooked bacon.  Here's how it works:

A frozen strip of bacon is placed in Wake n' Bacon the night before. Because there is a 10 minute cooking time, the clock is set to go off 10 minutes before the desired waking time. Once the alarm goes off, the clock it sends a signal to a small speaker to generate the alarm sound. We hacked the clock so that the signal is re-routed by a microchip that in responds by sending a signal to a relay that throws the switch to power two halogen lamps that slow-cook the bacon in about 10 minutes.

Link via Double Plus Undead

Tired of chasing and feeding on the living alone?  Need someone to share the apocalypse with?  Sign up for a free account with ZombieHarmony.

Link via Double Plus Undead

Dutch researchers are trying to channel the energy of people in dance clubs into electricity to power said clubs.  Here's a one-minute video from the BBC and National Geographic:




http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK2N008M1UF3JRB via Glenn Reynolds

Spanno at Al Dente lists his five favorite foods from movies and TV that he'd like to try someday.  I agree that Futurama's Bachelor Chow always seemed like a good idea.

The sheer simplicity of Bachelor Chow has had me curious for a bite since Futurama started. What bachelor wouldn't want a meal in a can? It's like dog food for people. It's genius! Sure you could get the same thing from a microwave dinner, but who has four minutes to heat that up?

http://www.aldenteblog.com/2008/07/my-five-favorit.html via Instapundit

Add some fright to your flower garden with this resin sculpture by Alan Dickenson.  Link -- Thanks, Tom Jackson!

He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat.

The Nietzsche Family Circus is a randomized combination of Friedrich Nietzsche quotations and Family Circus cartoons -- usually with appropriate results. Link

A CT scan of a Stradivarius suggests that its critical difference from other violins is the density of its wood:

Using an adaptation of a computer program developed to calculate lung densities in people with emphysema, they were able to analyze the physical properties of violins without risking damage to instruments worth millions of dollars.

They found no significant differences between the median densities of the modern and the antique violins but did discover far less variation between wood grains of early and late growth in the old ones.

Link (Photo: Brendan McDermid of Reuters)

Here's a list of twelve curious facts about the Nobel Prizes.  For example, however well-deserving, Mohandas Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize, but the prize was once withheld for a year in his honor:

Amazingly, the person probably most likely to have deserved the Nobel Peace Prize was never awarded one. Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, Indian leader who advocated non-violence in the struggle for Indian independence from colonial rule, never won the award. He was nominated five times, but failed each time. He was assassinated just two days before the nominations for the 1948 prize were due, which, since he was deceased, disqualified him from the nomination and, therefore, the prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee considered selecting Gandhi for the award in spite of the rules, but because he left no legal heirs, they were not sure of who to award the prize to. Instead, the committee elected to withhold the award that year, stating that "there was no suitable living candidate" for the award, a clear reference to the recently-deceased Gandhi.

Image by Flickr user niznoz

Link via Evangelical Outpost

On May 3, 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketer with the Digital Equipment Corporation, sent the very first spam e-mail to 393 Arpanet users. You can read the actual e-mail and its consequences at the link.

Image via Flickr user eurleif (R)

Link

Photo: raingirllori

Flickr user raingirllori made a Cthulhu-themed cake:

Here is Cthulhu rising from the oceans, using a convenient little island with a tower on it to climb up. The base was cherry-chip cake, the island and tower a mix of cherry chip and yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Also used small chocolate 'pearls' as rocks. Cthulhu himself is all fondant, with two chocolate pearls that I seeped in red dye for eyes.

Link Corrected Link

(YouTube Link)

The first 30 seconds of this video is a clip from one of the X-Men movies, and the rest is footage of an explanation and demonstration of this marvelous gadget.

Link via Ace

Those of us who have watched The Planet of the Apes are probably concerned about where this is going: a male orangutang was photographed on Borneo using a pole to try to spear fish in a river.

Image by Gerd Schuster et al and found at The Daily Mail.

Link via Ace

In 1994, New York University physics professor Alan Sokal made headlines when he published his article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." in the sociological quarterly Social Text.  He then revealed that he had submitted the article as a hoax and that the text was a parody of postmodernist philosophy.  Sokal completely fooled the "scholarly" editors of Social Text into printing his parody of their intellectual presuppositions.

In this vein, you, too, can enjoy instant pomo goodness with the Postmodern Essay Generator, courtesy of the blog Communications From Elsewhere.  Just click on "refresh" for instant, angst-filled, tenure-track gratification.

Link via Jim Morrow

[Video Link] Dr. McCoy's classic line, plus a few contributions from Spock and Uhura. 41 seconds long.

http://www.glumbert.com/media/deadjim via Ace