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AIST's new HRP-4C robot does a fairly good impersonation of human body movements. This 5'2" fembot was unveiled at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo. The only thing that it needs is a steady energy supply.

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Artist Tim Doyle imagined the Milton-Bradley game Battleship in real life. He created this print for the "Toys in the Attic" 2010 fundraiser.

Link via Super Punch | Toys in the Attic Website

blastr has pictures and descriptions of six toys and collectibles that should never have made. I don't know why the above Spider-Man toilet seat was included. It's totally stylin'.

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The Turner's Cube is a classic machinists' training exercise for the lathe milling machine. Students are handed one and told to reproduce it. At the link, you can see many examples as well as instructions on how to make your own.

Link via Make | Photo: Bob Warfield

People in Iztapalapa, a borough of Mexico City, assembled the longest enchilada in the world. It measured 70 meters long and weighed 1,416 kg:

Guinness record official Ralph Hannah announced that it was the world's biggest.

The colossal concoction was made of corn tortillas, white onions, serrano chilis, green tomatoes, avocado, cheese, cream and a sea of salsas, among other ingredients.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130632987 via Daily Telegraph | Photo: Associated Press

Jeweler Sidney Mobell spent a year crafting a Monopoly game set made out of gold:

An 18-karat gold version of the famous Parker Brothers board game will be on display beginning Friday at the Museum of American Finance. The gold and jewel-encrusted Monopoly is estimated to be worth roughly $2 million.

The set of dice alone is valued at $10,000, with 42 full-cut diamonds for the number dots. All of the properties that make up the game board are also set in gems, with some 165 gemstones in total. The “Chance” and “Community Chest” cards are photo-etched.

The set has only been used once when Mobell competed against former British Prime Minister Edward Heath.

Link via Born Rich (where there's a video) | Photo: Alan Barnett

Rasmus Hans Johan Malling-Hansen, the director of Denmark's institute for the hearing impaired in Copenhagen, patented this typewriter in 1870. Here's how it worked:

The writing ball consists of a semi-sphere with radial pistons, which can be severally pushed down to the center of the sphere, where the type is printed on a paper surface (by means of carbonized paper or a ribbon).

The whole apparatus (the writing ball included) is mounted on a stationary foundation plate in such a way that it can be moved down against a spring, when the writing ball or one of its pistons are forced down by the finger. The foundation plate has an upright anvil under the centre of the ball and directly under the paper frame. When a knob of a type piston is depressed, the paper resting on the anvil, below the same receives an impression. When the finger pressure on the type piston knob is removed, the instrument swings into its normal position. The escapement mechanism moved the paper frame that held the paper on space until the end of the line was reached. By pushing the button on the left in front of the ball all the way down, the carriage was turned concentrically back to the beginning of the line and moved one line to the left.

Link via GearFuse | Photo: Auction Team | More Unusual Typewriters at Dark Roasted Blend

Do you remember the formerly trapped Chilean miner whose wife and mistress learned about each other while he was underground? It turns out that Yonni Barrios has been cheating on his mistress:

Yonni Barrios, who was the 21st miner out of 33 to be rescued last week, was welcomed on the surface by his mistress, Susana Valenzuela, after his wife of 28 years, Marta Salinas, refused to greet him.

But Ms Valenzuela claimed her 50-year-old boyfriend was also seeing a 25-year-old woman, Rosa Esther, who tried to visit him at the hospital. He was taken there for treatment after spending 69 days trapped underground.

Ms Valenzuela stopped the young woman from seeing him, telling a Colombia radio station La FM that "he is my Yonny Barrios, mine and no one else's," the New York Daily News reported.

"How on earth is another woman going to take your man away from you if you're in love with him? I hit her, I hit her a lot."

Link | Photo: AFP

Andy, who lives in Zurich, is a big fan of electronic music. As an expression of his individual musical taste, he created a colorful wall hanging charting his listening activities over the course of a year. Here's his description, run through Google Translate:

Last graph now takes up precisely these statistics, that is your taste in music and creates a graph in the form of a timeline (x-axis). The different amplitudes (y-axis) represent the frequency of the artists who came to this particular time through your speakers. The service offers several options to customize the finished graph to your needs so you can even change the period and select the color display. You can then save the graph as a PDF file with the very great advantage that load graph created a vector graphic. Thus, the image can be stored up to infinity, enlarge without any loss and therefore print. That's what I did. In a calibrated perfectly ordinary photo service I've printed the poster in 3m width and about 80cm high. To make the effect of the picture come out better, I can drag the image onto a wooden frame to make it as a little plastic wegzuholen from the wall. Additionally, I have removed the gray wall to once again increase the effect of the poster.

http://www.waximalplanet.de/?p=3813 (Google Translate) via Nerdcore

Granny Grimm's Ghoulish Book of Grammar is an ongoing series by artist Nik Holmes. It's a great way to educate young children about the letters of the alphabet and the monsters that come out at night. New entries are published on Thursdays.

Link via Popped Culture

Molly, a shar pei, had a medical condition that caused her skin to rub against her eyes. She underwent surgery to correct this problem:

Richard Marks, the vet who carried out the surgery last week, said the dog was suffering from the worst case of entropion he had ever seen.

He said: "What I essentially did was give her an extreme facelift. I removed a large piece of skin and stitched the remaining skin to the back of her head."

"It may sound extreme but if it had been left much longer she would have been totally blinded."

Link via Buzzfeed | Photo: Archant

Hundreds of people in Spain are participating in championship matches in the grueling sport of competitive napping. The National Association of Friends of the Siesta is hosting the event in order to promote the practice of the siesta. Here's how the event is judged:

Ruz then went to the competition area. A doctor attached a pulse meter to her chest so the judge, sitting in a lifeguard-type chair overlooking the five sofas, could tell whether she's really asleep.

In this competition, the siesta is limited to 20 minutes, a duration which the organizers and some doctors say is optimal; a quick nap after lunch to get refreshed, without entering a deep sleep cycle.[...]

The intricate rules award points to contestants depending on how long they sleep during the 20-minute competition time, any unusual positions they sleep in, eye-catching pajamas they might be wearing, and yes, a lot of extra points for snoring.

Link via Althouse | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user das911s used under Creative Commons license

This amusing diagram is floating through the Internet this weekend. Do you think that you could complete the assembly process? Which tools will you need?

via Joe Carter

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Allegedly, this video was taken from security camera footage from a highway in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. A police officer pulls over a motorist. As he talks to the driver, a pack of wolves or wild dogs attack him. The officer jumps into the backseat of the car to escape them.

Some people on the Internet think that this video is fake. What do you think?

via Urlesque, where there's another video of the same event

An anonymous contributor to Post Secret sent the above image to Frank Warren, the artist responsible for the ongoing secret-sharing project. But since he didn't want people in his life to know about his shameful history with the Denver Broncos, he used another man's photo. Specially, one named Luke Pebler, who uploaded the photo into his Flickr photostream. Pebler was promptly flooded with responses from people who knew him:

Over the next couple days I received many messages from friends and family, all ZOMGing over my appearance. The reactions broke cleanly into two camps — about half thought it was hilarious and assumed that I or someone close to me had submitted it as a goof; the other half were convinced that a stranger had used the photo, and found that bizarre and slightly creepy. My wife, a media scholar, immediately pointed out that I was a “creator” whose work has been “poached and reinterpreted.”

Link | Previously: Frank Warren's Neatorama Interview