Would you like to get away from the stresses of the daily life for the next five to ten years? Then Norway's new Halden prison/spa is for you!

[...]every cell comes with a private bathroom and a flat-screen TV, as well as a view--the windows don't even have bars in them. But what about facilities, you might ask? My college dorm had a foosball table, and a vending machine! This prison can't match that, right? Wrong. Halden has a gym, training room, chapel, library, family visiting unit, football (possibly soccer) field, a school, and, most unbelievably, a sound studio. But it's the design that's most strikingly different from American prisons. Halden doesn't shy away from bright, cheerful colors, and actually spent about $1 million to hire a graffiti artist named Dolk (sort of their version of Banksy) to paint beautiful murals all around the grounds.

Link | Photo Gallery | Photo: NRK

UPDATE: In the comments, Courageous Grace brings up a very good point. The prison opens on April 1. Is this a hoax?

Both the Titanic and the Lusitania sank, and both lacked enough life boats to shelter everyone on board. But even though the Lusitania sank in 18 minutes and the Titanic sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes, Lusitiana passengers and crew had a higher survival rate. In Smithsonian, Sarah Zielenski explains why:

What happened? The researchers say it all comes down to time.

The passengers of the Lusitania had less than 20 minutes before their ship sank, and in such a life-and-death situation, social scientists say, “self-interested reactions predominate.” It didn’t matter what the captain ordered. The ship was going down and people reacted selfishly, and in such a situation, it would be expected that people in their prime (16 to 35) would be the most likely to win a seat on a lifeboat. In addition, because there were difficulties in launching those boats, people in that age group would have had an additional advantage because they were more likely to have had the strength and agility to stay on board a rocking boat or to climb back in after falling into the water.

The Titanic, though, sank slowly enough for social norms to hold sway. The passengers generally held to the rule of “women and children first” even though they could have easily overpowered the crew. And first- and second-class passengers may have benefited from the extra time in which they may have had earlier or better information from the crew or had other advantages.

Link | Image: NOAA

If you were to make a list of everything that you could be afraid of, how much room would it take? Artist Brian Rea created 7 by 3.5 meter mural filled with his fears:

Rea keeps many lists. During his last year in New York (2008) he began taking inventory of the things he and other people around him were worried about. "After being there for 11 years, I discovered like most people I had a lot of fears--after a few months, I began to catalog them: physical fears, natural fears, political fears, random, emotional."

Rea categorized the fears into themes like physical, political, and of course, supernatural.

More pictures at the link.

Link | Artist's Website

(YouTube Link)

Last month, Minnesotastan posted a parody of the classic children's book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, as though it was read by the German film director Werner Herzog. It's one of a series of such videos by YouTube user Ryan Iverson, including a dark take on Curious George.

Iverson's latest in the series presents Madeline, a French children's book first published in 1939:

Their discipline was impeccable. They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad. But being children, their concept of good and evil was not fully formed. And it would shock a grown person how much gray area existed along the moral compass.

via The Presurfer

(Video Link)

Tokyo/Glow is a short film about the lighted figure in a crosswalk sign. He escapes from the confines of his box and walks about the city of Tokyo at night. He moves slowly, taking in the city as it flashes around him at high speed. Written and directed by Jonathan Bensimon.

via Pink Tentacle

CasCity forum user Hedley Lamarr accessorized his black powder revolver with a scope and light for extra coolness and accuracy. I think that the gun is a Colt Single Action Army, which came into use in 1873.

Link via View from the Porch

The Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy is a non-profit organization in San Francisco that encourages people to do nice things for strangers in unusual and innovative ways. The society distributes $100 grants for this purpose. In The San Francisco Chronicle, Steve Rubenstein writes about some of these projects, and how people respond to these random acts of kindness:

"People thought there was something fishy about it," Ibnale said. "There wasn't. It was just free umbrellas."

Ibnale was one of a dozen people in San Francisco who had been given $100 by a startup charity that is trying to get strangers to start doing nice things for other strangers. It's a novel concept. Most folks, it turns out, aren't prepared for it. "What's the catch?" a man asked.

No catch, replied Ibnale. Take an umbrella. You're getting wet.

"No, thanks," the man answered, and kept walking through the rain. Ibnale began keeping count. He asked 27 wet people if they would like to have an umbrella. Seventeen of them said no.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Official Website | Photo: US Department of Commerce

Paris-based designer Laurent Milon makes rings decorated with iron filings shaped by magnetism, then galvanized with silver and nickel. He also made a cool video of the process that makes the emerging product look like a living, dancing animal.

Link via DudeCraft | Artist's Website | Video Link

(YouTube Link)

This video shows a huge Russian transport plane taking off from Canberra International Airport in Australia. It barely makes the takeoff, using every inch of runway available. Warning: NSFW language from the air traffic controllers.

via Ace of Spades HQ | About the Plane

Every year, prosthetic options for amputees get better. One recent improvement is a flexible foot, currently in development at the University of Michigan. It recycles the energy of motion, making it less tiring for users to walk longer distances:

For amputees, what they experience when they're trying to walk normally is what I would experience if I were carrying an extra 30 pounds," said Art Kuo, professor in the Univ. of Michigan departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.

Compared with conventional prosthetic feet, the new prototype device significantly cuts the energy spent per step.[...]

Based on metabolic rate measurements, the test subjects spent 14 percent more energy walking in energy-recycling artificial foot than they did walking naturally. That's a significant decrease from the 23 percent more energy they used in the conventional prosthetic foot, Kuo says.

"We know there's an energy penalty in using an artificial foot," Kuo said. "We're almost cutting that penalty in half."

Link via Make (which has information about other advanced prosthetic feet) | Image: Steve Collins, University of Michigan

Anthropologist Michael Rakowitz has an upcoming exhibit at the Tate Museum in London. In it, he proposes that Saddam Hussein may have consciously or unconsciously been influenced by Western science fiction, particularly Star Wars. In New Scientist, Jessica Griggs writes:

You may have heard that when US troops stormed one of Saddam's palaces they stumbled across lurid posters by fantasy artist Rowena Morrill. But did you know that she's a close friend of Boris Vallejo, the artist who drew the iconic poster for The Empire Strikes Back depicting Darth Vader with two lightsabres crossed over his head?

Does the poster's image sound familiar? It is remarkably similar to Saddam's Hands of Victory monument commemorating Iraq's victory over Iran. The arch in central Baghdad consists of two bronze casts of Saddam's forearms holding two 43-metre-long crossed steel swords melted down from the weapons of slain Iraqis; the helmets of vanquished Iranians litter the base of the hands.

On inauguration day in 1989, Saddam rode through the arches on a white horse, declaring "The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own or to be forced down a path which is not willed by him".

Could this all be coincidence? Perhaps, but you'll be convinced otherwise once you've read about Saddam's private militia's uniform. Before his son, Uday, handed over control of the Fedayeen Sadaam (translation: "Saddam's Men of Sacrifice") to his younger brother he wanted to give his father something to remember his work by. So he presented Saddam with their new uniform: black shirt, black trousers and a ski-mask over which a strikingly Darth Vader-esque helmet was placed.

Link via Technabob | Exhibition Information | Images: New Scientist

Popular Mechanics has assembled a list of five popular toys that were eventually banned in the US. Among the toys on the list is the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, marketed between 1950-51, which contained actual radioactive materials:

Called "the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced" by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, this sophisticated science kit contained four types of uranium ore, its very own Geiger counter and a comic book called Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom. A form on the back of the instruction manual allowed a burgeoning Ernest Rutherford to send a note to New Haven, Conn., bearing the message, "Gentlemen: I need replacements for the following radioactive sources, (check which): ALPHA____, BETA _____, GAMMA ______ or CLOUD CHAMBER SOURCE____."

Mechanical engineer and inveterate tinkerer Bill Gurstelle fondly recalls the Atomic Energy Lab, saying, "everybody wanted that kit." Nowadays, he adds, "science kits are just sugar and salt." This kit appeared 21 years too soon—the as-yet-nonexistent CPSC never got a chance to ban it. In the meantime, here are the results of our recent experiments with eight new, and decidedly less radioactive, science kits.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4347051.html via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: Oak Ridge Associated Universities

In 1964, British PM Alec Douglas-Home was staying overnight at the home of Lord Hailsham in Scotland. In an astonishing security lapse, his bodyguards did not guard the door to the house. Left-wing college students, on a whim, decided to kidnap him and met the PM, alone, at the door. That's when our hero, beer, stepped in to save the day:

Faced with a determined group of militants, the resourceful prime minister decided that there was only one option.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the liquid refreshment did the trick and defused any of the group's lingering desire to kidnap their genial host, along with assurances they would guarantee his party a landslide victory if they went through with their plan.

This otherwise unverified incident was discovered in the recently-discovered diaries of the late Lord Hailsham, which included this passage:

"He asked and received permission to pack a few things and was given 10 minutes' grace.

"After that they were offered and accepted beer. John and Priscilla returned and the kidnap project abandoned.

Link via Hell in a Handbasket | Photo: The Daily Mail

(Video Link)

The Sandpit is a video composed of 35,000 tilt-shift photographs taken in New York City. Director Sam O'Hare wrote about this project:

I have always loved time-lapse footage, and films like Koyaanisqatsi especially, which allow you to look at human spaces in different ways, and draw comparisons between patterns at differing scales. I also really liked the tilt-shift look of making large scenes feel small, and wanted to make a film using this technique with New York as its subject.

via Bits & Pieces | About the Film

A Los Angeles shooting victim's breast implant may have saved her life by slowing the bullet before it reached her heart:

She survived a gunshot to the chest, but the the bullet left a scar and deflated the implant.

"She's just one lucky woman," Dr. Ashkan Ghavami told the LA Times. "I saw the CT scan. The bullet fragments were millimeters from her heart and her vital organs. Had she not had the implant, she might not be alive today."[...]

An LAPD firearms instructor told the Times it's possible the implant interrupted the velocity of the bullet.

"I don't want to say a boob job is the equivalent of a bulletproof vest," Scott Reitz told the Times. "So don't go getting breast enhancements as a means to deflect a possible incoming bullet."

Link via Say Uncle | Photo: NBC Los Angeles