Surfers in Australia found a 10-foot great white shark stranded on a beach. They carefully dragged it back into the ocean. Photographer Ruth Fahey reported:

“As it was threshing about, they tried first to dig the sand away beneath it to refloat it but ended up man-handling it back into the water. It was still very sluggish when they got to knee deep water so the surfer waded it out until he was waist deep.”

“The shark slowly swam away... much slower than the surfer exited the vicinity.”

Link via Super Punch | Photo: Ruth Fahey

Edward Mike Davis, CEO of the defunct Tiger Oil Company, was known for his blunt and direct communications. He often sent out memos to his employees expressing his feelings in no uncertain terms. The blog Letters of Note has a selection of these missives.

Link via The Presurfer

Japanese chef Shoichi Uchiyama has developed a line of sushi recipes that use insects, rather than fish, as the primary source of protein. He believes that carefully-selected insects are not only healthy and tasty, but can help feed a growing world population. From a 2008 article in The Daily Telegraph:

"In order to get 1 kg of beef, we have to raise cows on huge areas of land and give them many more kilos of fodder before they are ready to be slaughtered," he said. "Insects eat the things that humans don't and can be kept in much smaller spaces.

"Most importantly, insects are very nutritionally balanced, have little fat and are the perfect food source."

Article Link and Photo Gallery via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Damn Cool Pics

(YouTube Link)

We've previously featured T. Shamir's tiny cannon. Since that time, he's added a peep sight for precise aiming. Again, he's smashing household items, including vodka bottles and computer monitors. The Orff music in the background adds to the dramatic tension.

Question: how long will it take Hollywood to turn this into a feature-length film?

via CrunchGear

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed what they call "Life Beans". These are fluorescent beads that are implanted inside the human body. They glow with varying intensity subject to the glucose level of the patient:

Researchers tested it in the ears of a mouse, and watched as the ear fluoresced at different intensities depending on the mouse's blood sugar.

The researchers think it would be possible to develop devices that manage diabetics' blood sugar without them noticing it.

One difficulty with the current design is that the patient's immune system attacks the beads and dims the lights.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-08/life-beans-could-be-made-implantable-glucose-monitor | Video | Image: DigInfo

Previously:
Contact Lenses That Change Color to Alert Diabetics of Glucose Levels
Diabetes-Monitoring Nanoparticle Tattoos

(YouTube Link)

Evan Sellers has a talent: he can sink basketball shots from enormous distances. In this video, Sellers is standing on top of the 134-foot platform in the statue of the Roman god Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama. The goal is about 150-180 feet from the base of the sculpture, making this possibly the farthest basketball shot ever recorded.

via Urlesque

Graphic designer Ellie Koning made a large infographic filled with facts about eBay. Did you know that the first item to sell on eBay was a broken laser pointer? The final price was $14.83.

http://www.onlineuniversity.org/ebay-the-giant-marketplace via GearFuse

(YouTube Link)

This commercial for a British fruit juice brand shows a man rearranging the pieces of his head like they're parts of a Rubik's Cube puzzle. It was made by the ad agency CHI & Partners and directed by Ulf Johansson.

Link via Gizmodo

Slovak artist Matej Krén once made a tower out of books. He's expanded that concept to a full-sized building, using mirrors to create the illusion of a large interior space. It's currently on display at the Museo d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy.

Link via Geekosystem | Artist's Website | Photo: Istituzione Galleria d'Arte Moderna

Google, which is engaging in extensive book digitization projects, recently set out to determine the number of distinct print books currently in existence:

After some intensive analysis, we've come up with a number. Standing on the shoulders of giants—libraries and cataloging organizations—and based on our computational resources and experience of organizing millions of books through our Books Library Project and Books Partner Program since 2004, we’ve determined that number.

As of today, we estimate that there are 129,864,880 different books in the world. That's a lot of knowledge captured in the written word! This calculation used an algorithm that combines books information from multiple sources including libraries, WorldCat, national union catalogs and commercial providers. And the actual number of books is always increasing.

Link via Cool-O-Rama | Photo by Flickr user Nrbelex used under Creative Commons license

The Brazilian advertising agency Moma made a set of advertisements for websites as though they were designed in the 1950s-60s. At the link, you can view ads for YouTube and Skype.

Link via Urlesque | Company Website (in Portuguese)

Densha otaku are people in Japan who are fascinated with trains. To appeal to their tastes, the Washington Hotel in Akihabara has built an elaborate model train set in a hotel room:

Of course the guest can play with model trains along the thirty-meter track (there are apparently two authentic controllers, so friends can drive the trains together) and even the real thing — the Shinkansen line and Akiba station — is visible from the room’s window.

Though it is possible to rent from the hotel, the Nikkei Marketing Journal reports that many guests bring their own trains to use on the four-line track. The first to stay over was a 23 year-old company employee, followed by a man in his eighties. But there have also been mothers with their kids, so it’s not just strange guys with train obsessions!

The train room opened in June and costs from 23,000 JPY ($265) per night. If you want to make a reservation you will have to wait up to a month!

Video at the link.

http://www.japantrends.com/train-room-in-akiba-hotel-for-railway-fans/ via OhGizmo! | Photo: Japan Trends

China is trying to find a way to increase urban transportation without slowing down traffic. One proposal is an elevated bus that allows cars to pass beneath it:

Basically, it's a huge bus that operates like a train on wheels, and is so tall that cars can drive right under it. Each bus is about two street lanes wide and 18 feet tall, according to Song Youzhou, the chairman of Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Company, which is building these enormous buses.

Video at the link.

Link via CrunchGear | Image: StapleNews

Artist Tom Sale, who goes by the pseudonym "Pinky Diablo", shapes skulls out of vintage silverplate spoons. From a 2009 article in The Dallas Morning News:

But his signature – perhaps his legacy – is the skull spoon, a vintage sterling or silver-plated sipper transformed via Dremel tool, buffing wheel, jewelers rouge and twisted imagination into a symbol of our own impermanence.

"I think of them as memento mori ," says Sale, whose workshop is the Ennis, Texas, farm he shares with wife, Dotty, and storefront is a booth at East Dallas vintage emporium Dolly Python. "We should be reminded of death, not be afraid of it. Maybe even laugh at it every now and then."

News Article and Artist's Website via Make | Photo: Make

The Japanese toymaker Tamiya makes model kits. So the Bangkok advertising agency CreativeJuice made a business card that can be used to build a toy car, plane, or boat:

Apparently Tamiya realized that people didn’t fully appreciate the skill and design that goes into their plastic models, and conceived the card as a promotional tool to raise respect for their brand and business.

http://www.japantrends.com/model-kit-business-card-from-tamiya/ via Make | Ad Agency Website (self-starting sound) | Image: Japan Trends