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This horse is playing with a ball; your argument is invalid.

via Geekosystem

Ian Page is conditioning himself to salivate whenever his cell phone buzzes:

For the last 8 years, whenever my cell phone received a call or text it would vibrate in my left pocket. 'Bondage Happens' is a device I wear on my head that is connected to my cell phone. Whenever I receive a call or text the phone will vibrate and the device will inject a little bit of lemon juice into my mouth, thereby conditioning me to salivate when I get a phone call. I will wear the device for 2 weeks, starting Friday October 22nd.

Link via Make | Page's Website | Screenshot: Make

Until recently, people in the Mount Everest area were restricted to satellite phones and a voice-only mobile network. But a Nepalese telecommunications company has now extended 3G wireless service to Mount Everest:

The coverage would reach the summit of the world's highest mountain, company head Pasi Koistinen, said.

He added that this had not been tested yet.

The 3G network will help climbers and trekkers stay in touch with their families and trip organisers, Mr Koistinen said.

It will also enable them to receive weather reports and safety information while they are climbing.

Link via CrunchGear | Photo by Flickr user Rupert Taylor-Price used under Creative Commons license

Avi Steinberg, a former prison librarian, has written a memoir about his experience. In it, he recounted the books that were the most popular among prisoners, and why:

The prisoners' book choices are suggestive: Anne Frank was effectively coping with incarceration in her Amsterdam attic, and Plath is an obvious choice for those less than contented with their lot. Participants in Steinberg's women's writing group insisted on checking out an author's photo before they would read the book, with interesting reactions. Flannery O'Connor's portrait got a positive verdict – "She looks kind of busted up, y'know? She ain't too pretty. I trust her" – but the judgment on Gabriel García Márquez was blunt: "That man is a liar".

Crime fiction was also very popular.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Author's Website | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user jvoss used under Creative Commons license

A retired US Secret Service agent named Gerald Blaine said that on the evening after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he almost accidentally shot President Lyndon Johnson:

Blaine heard footsteps approaching. He picked up his submachine gun and, in the darkness, pointed it at the chest of a man who turned out to be Johnson.

Blaine writes that the enormity of what had almost happened left him chilled. He realized that, 14 hours after losing one president, the nation had almost lost another one by his hand.

Link via Joe Carter | Photo: Cecil Stoughton/US National Archives

Astronauts can lose 1-2% of their skeletal mass for each month that they spend in very low gravity. After a several months, this loss can become a serious health problem. But a new MIT-designed outfit called the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit may help counteract this problem:

With stirrups that loop around the feet, the elastic gravity skinsuit is purposely cut too short for the astronaut so that it stretches when put on—pulling the wearer’s shoulders towards the feet. In normal gravity conditions on Earth, a human’s legs bear more weight than the torso. Because the suit’s legs stretch more than the torso section, the wearer’s legs are subjected to a greater force—replicating gravity effects on Earth.

The prototype suit testing took place on parabolic flights that created brief periods of weightlessness. Results showed that the suit successfully imitated the pull of gravity on the torso and thighs, but it did not exert enough force on the lower legs. Researchers are now refining the suit’s design to address this; they also plan to test the suit to see how it performs when worn overnight.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-10/superhero-style-skin-tight-spacesuit-provides-healthy-compression-astronauts | Photo: MIT/James Waldie

John VandenBrooks of Arizona State University in Tempe examined how changing levels of oxygen in the atmosphere may effect the size that insects grow:

The team raised cockroaches, dragonflies, grasshoppers, meal worms, beetles and other insects in atmospheres containing different amounts of oxygen to see if there were any effects.

One result was that dragonflies grew faster into bigger adults in hyperoxia.

Experimenting with giant insects -- what could possibly go wrong?

Link via DVICE | Image: Warner Bros.

A slab of marble in the Cathedral of St. Ambrose in Vigevano, Italy, appears to contain a cross-section of the skull of a dinosaur:

“The rock contains what appears to be a horizontal section of a dinosaur’s skull. The image looks like a CT scan, and clearly shows the cranium, the nasal cavities, and numerous teeth,” Andrea Tintori, the University of Milan paleontologist who spotted the fossil near the altar, told Discovery News.

Measuring about 30 cm (11.8 inches), the skull was cut in sections as slabs of the marble-like rock were used to build the Cathedral between 1532 and 1660.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: Andrea Tintori, University of Milan

Thomas Kirkwood writes in Scientific American about why women live longer than men. Fellas, the good news is that you might be able to increase your lifespan by fourteen years. The, uh, bad news:

As many dog and cat owners can attest, neutered male animals often live longer than their intact counterparts. Indeed, the evidence supports the notion that male castration might be the ticket to a longer life.

Might the same be true of humans?[...]

The historical record is not good enough to determine if eunuchs tend to outlive normal healthy men, but some sad records suggest that they do. A number of years ago castration of men in institutions for the mentally disturbed was surprisingly commonplace. In one study of several hundred men at an unnamed institution in Kansas, the castrated men were found to live on average 14 years longer than their uncastrated fellows.

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: NIH

Rowan, a German Spitz, was born without eyes. But he's able to navigate by barking and listening to the echo:

Mrs Orchard who breeds dogs at Spilmah Home Boarding in Potton, near Biggleswade, Beds added: "'When he's running around in the open it's just as if he were the same as the rest of my dogs.

''When he first started going out there were no leaves on the trees but when the leaves grew there was the rustling and we noticed the change in his behaviour.

'He would go out and to find his direction he would use his bark. It really does seem to be a form of echolocation.

You can watch a video of the dog at the link.

Link via Urlesque | Photo: Express.co.uk

Bruno Kurth and Tobias Reichling. Vanessa Graf, Tanja Kusserow-Kurth, and Torsten Scheer built an enormous relief map of Europe topped with models of famous monuments. They used 53,500 pieces to create a structure that measures 12.5 feet on a side. 44 monuments lie on the surface of the map.

Link via Make | Photo: Tobias Reichling

Luxury furniture maker Dedon sells Nestrest. This chair designed by Daniel Pouzet and Fred Frety can sit on the floor or be suspended from an overhead hook.

Link via Born Rich | Photo: Dedon

Note to cheating students: teachers aren't as naive or as technologically illiterate as you think they are.

Link via Geekologie

The fear of being buried alive is an old one, and is even the origin of the phrase "saved by the bell". Annalee Newitz of io9 has a roundup of technologies developed over the years, right up to the present day, to prevent a person from meeting this fate. Pictured above is Thomas Pursell's 1930s-era tomb that featured doors that could be opened from the inside.

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Todd from Cleveland, Ohio submitted this picture of his latest tattoo to Geeky Tattoos. The only thing that could improve it is a cursor hovering over a right-click menu.

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