How will the world end in the immediate future? Slate has a both serious and fun look at this question, allowing users to suggest up to five of one hundred forty-four possible problems that could bring about the end of America and/or the world. These include alien invasion, a swine flu epidemic, and Vermont achieving independence, among many other options.

The application focuses primarily on the United States and its demise, but many problems you could throw into your chosen apocalypse would impact the entire world (e.g. asteroid collision).

What nightmare scenario do you choose?

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Christopher M. Danforth and Peter Sheridan Dodds, statisticians at the University of Vermont, analyzed song lyrics, blog posts, and speeches for certain emotional keywords in order to discern the collective moods of the American people over time:

Still, the University of Vermont study presents what could be a complementary measure, and it provides a few decent cocktail-party nuggets along the way. Dr. Dodds and Dr. Danforth downloaded the lyrics to 232,574 songs by 20,025 artists released between 1960 and 2007, from the Web site hotlyrics.net. From another site, wefeelfine.org, they pulled more than nine million sentences that used some form of the verb feel — as in “I feel relieved” — from 2.3 million blogs from 2005 to 2009. They also analyzed State of the Union speeches going back to George Washington’s. They then rated the psychological charge, or “valence,” of a significant subset of the words on a 10-point scale: from triumphant (8.82) and love (8.72) down to disgusted (2.45) and suicide (1.25).

Some of the findings were expected. Sept. 11, 2001, was rock bottom, for instance. Others were less so: the day that Michael Jackson died also lowered people’s mood significantly. The high-water mark was the day President Obama was elected, when the word “proud” was predominant.

Christmas and Valentine’s Day regularly popped as positive times, although words like “guilty” were associated with Christmas and “waste” and “lonely” with Valentine’s Day.

Link via Hit & Run

Dodds and Danforth's Peer-Reviewed Article

(YouTube Link)

Forty-one people gathered at a Bensons for Beds furniture warehouse in Tewkesbury, UK to break the mattress dominoes record. That means leaning on an upright mattress and then falling over backwards, causing someone behind you on a mattress to fall over backwards, and so on.

Link via The Corner

The Toy Zone has pictures and descriptions of fifteen weapons or defensive systems that historians have found sketched in the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. These include a tank, cluster munitions, and mobile walls. The picture above is of a pivoting radial barrage canon found in the Codex Atlanticus.

Link via Ace

From the people who brought you There, I Fixed It, Don't Judge My Hair is a photoblog of disasterous hairstyles, cuts, and colors.

Link via Double Plus Undead

For years, medical supplies have been sent into remote areas of Kenya on the backs of camels for the needs of the rural population. But seeing this system as inefficient, the Nomadic Communities Trust of Kenya is partnering with an American university and an art school to develop a modern medical laboratory and dispensary that can be mounted on a camel:

A multifunctional system was developed made from bamboo to provide a lightweight, durable ergonomic saddle along with a saddleback structure that holds a compartmented refrigerated unit and solar power generator. The saddles improve the efficiency of the loads carried over rugged terrain. The crystalline solar panels can also be deployed by the mobile clinics for lighting and refrigeration in the field.

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This spectrum (I take it) is supposed to classify Internet memes by whether they provoke OMG or WTF reactions by netizens -- and all gradations in between. Bacon vodka, for example would be OMG, whereas human-eating robots would be WTF.

Link via Urlesque

Weighing in at 30,000 pounds, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator of the US Air Force will become the largest air-dropped non-nuclear bomb ever built:

The MOP is 20 feet long and can penetrate bunkers up to 200 feet before exploding. At 15 tons, the MOP is a third heavier than the previous "mother of all bombs", the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, which was only 10.5 tons. The MOP also packs a whopping 5,300 lbs of explosives, which is 10 times the amount its predecessor bunker-buster, the BLU-109, carried. Basically, it's massive.

The push for accelerated deployment is due to the increased perceived nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea. It's believed that many of their nuclear programs could be in development underground, below levels of current bunker-busting bombs' range. The Pentagon intends the rapid deployment to send a message that the United States is tweaking strategies to address new threats. And nothing is more American than advertising the sheer size and tonnage of the bombs hanging below our jets.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-08/pentagon-wants-deploy-largest-non-nuclear-bomb-next-year

Having trouble keeping the Ten Plagues of Passover straight? These finger puppets for Blood, Frogs, Gnats, Wild Animals, Pestilence, Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness, and the Angel of Death are a fun way of remembering divine wrath in its many colorful and felt-like manifestations.

Link via Ironic Catholic

The Mind Trainer Loo Roll is packed with puzzles, brain teasers, and Sudoku on every sheet. Create a game for yourself: you don't get to use a sheet until you've solved the puzzle on it.

Link via The Presurfer

Previously on Neatorama: The Puzzle Game Toilet Dispenser

(YouTube Link)

Way back when, I linked to a satirical political attack ad allegedly by Friedrich Nietzsche against fellow philosopher Immanuel Kant. Apparently, Søren Kierkegaard's supporters jumped into the fray and offered this vicious attack ad against both Kant and Nietzsche.

Via The Corner

Previously on Neatorama: 9 Bad Boys of Philosophy

Dutch architect Koen Olthuis responded to the rising sea level by designing a floating apartment building:

The Dutch are uniquely accustomed to dealing with fluctuating water levels; much of the Netherlands is below sea level, and vast swaths of land, known as polders, are continually pumped free of the accumulating rainwater that threatens nearby homes and buildings. The Citadel will simply rise and fall with the changing water levels, making it impervious to flooding, tides, and sea waters inching upward as a result of global warming.

Built atop a floating heavy concrete foundation, The Citadel will house 60 luxury apartments, a parking garage, a floating roadway, and boat docks. Each apartment will naturally have waterfront views via a garden terrace, and greenhouses will be interspersed throughout. But the greenest feature of the Citadel is its cooling system: submerged pipes will pump water throughout the structure to cool it, reducing its energy use by 25 percent compared to a conventional building.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/citadel-floating-apartment-complex-takes-worry-out-rising-seas

Medical researchers are developing an innovative way of delivering malaria vaccine:

In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.

Link via Instapundit

Or perhaps this toy is inspired by Voltron, rather than the Transformers. Either way, when the island's railways are threatened, Thomas and his friends unite to form a devastating weapon. I don't know who makes this toy, but it's on sale at eBay in Singaporean currency.

Link via Oh Gizmo!

Have you ever wanted to brush your teeth with cat vomit?  Well then, good news!  Slip these dog and cat head caps on top of your toothpaste tubes to simulate the experience.

Link via Nerd Approved