Now I've got a great business idea: hair salon services for people who are really in a hurry.
Rocket News 24 tells us that a viral video from Gaoshu, Pingtung County, Taiwan shows two men riding a scooter. The one in the back is shampooing the hair of the driver. Why? No one is sure. Perhaps it was a stunt or perhaps the driver was in a hurry to get to work.
The result of the spread of the video is that the two men got into trouble with the police. No, it wasn't because of the hair washing. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet is illegal.
There are snakes that can kill you with a single bite and scorpions that can take you out with just one sting. But none of them have venom with the killing power of a snail. The geography cone snail (Conus geographus) has a toxin so powerful that a lethal dose for a human is just 0.029-0.038 milligrams.
There have been only 36 recorded human fatalities from it since 1670. That's because the geography cone snail lives in the ocean. But its unique venom delivery system is capable of penetrating the wetsuits of any humans foolish enough to get too close. BBC Earth reports:
To take down their targets, cone snails have modified teeth called "radulae". They are sharp, hooked and hollow, like a cross between a harpoon and a hypodermic needle. The snail launches one at an unsuspecting fish, whereupon it delivers a cocktail of toxins that target the nervous system. Once the fish is paralysed, the cone snail can devour it.
The Shabbos Project was a plan to conduct a single, simultaneously celebrated Sabbath meal on Friday, October 23. Jews from around the world participated. To create a symbol for this massive event, project leaders conceived of baking the longest challah in the world.
After locating a 20-foot long oven in Brooklyn, volunteers prepared a six-stranded loaf, which has earned a Guinness World Record as the longest braided bread in the world. Tess Cutler writes for Tablet magazine:
Before the official unveiling, the massive challah (the belle of the ball) was covered with a sheet like a veiled bride. At the end of the night, the challah was officially presented, accompanied by a room full of “oohs” and “aahs.”
It took two bakeries, two attempts (the first challah broke), 40 pounds of flour, five gallons of water, and a year of planning to get this baby baking, which was no easy feat. Supplying the dough was Eli Berman of Brooklyn’s Strauss Kosher Bakery while Edward Mafoud of Damascus Bakery generously offered his kosher oven (since apparently no heimishe bakery had an oven big enough).
Lord Vader replaced the head and added decorative flourishes to the original, as well as a titanium cover to strengthen the structure. It's invulnerable, except for an insignificantly small exhaust port. The head is a WiFi hotspot, which Lord Vader hopes will attract visitors to his statue and his cause.
Freddy Fabris, a photographer, has long wanted to pay homage to the Renaissance masters. But until recently, he was unable to find the right way to do it. When he visited an old auto repair shop in the Midwest, inspiration suddenly hit him: he would cast mechanics in their workspace as the figures in great works of Renaissance art, such as Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam.
In the Simpsons episode "Bart vs. Australia," we briefly see a scene (embedded below) in which an Australian father berates his son for accruing a long distance phone charge of 900 dollarydoos. This is not the actual currency of Australia, which is crocodile teeth of different sizes.
But there is now a petition of concerned citizens who wish to rename that nation's currency the dollarydoo in order to stimulate the Australian economy. That's a smart monetary policy. So far, more than 60,000 Australians, which is roughly half the population, has signed the petition. If it reaches the goal of 75,000 signers, then a letter that effect will be sent to the Prime Minister.
This is Estella, a guinea pig that lives at the Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary in French Camp, California. She's lived there since she and her mate Pip were found abandoned by the side of a road.
Estella can't move the back end of her body. So after a successful fundraiser for the project, the staff built a custom wheelchair that permits her to walk around. You can see more photos of her and Pip at the Huffington Post.
I'll bet that if these tourists ever go out on the water again, it'll be in a steel-hulled ship!
They were just offshore at Mossel Bay, South Africa, looking at seals that live in the area. A 12-foot Great White Shark approached their boat--then bit into it! His teeth easily punctured the rubber pontoon, deflating it. The boat operator prudently headed to shore immediately.
Ukranian artist Nikita Drachuk uses the lampworking glass technique, which involves only colored glass rods, a torch, and hand tools, to shape images of animals. They have the same vibrant colors that nature provides and remarkable precision, considering the fragility of the material.
When Rich McCor travels, he cuts paper silhouettes and holds them up in front of famous landmarks. He then takes photos at just the right angles to show the landmarks doing unusual things, such as the Eiffel Tower launching into space or Big Ben becoming a wristwatch. He tells the Daily Mail:
I would love to somehow make this hobby into a career, and if it involves travelling to places to shoot these images then that would be a dream come true.
NASA's Kepler 2 telescope orbits the sun. It has the largest telescopic mirror outside of Earth orbit, which permits it to acquire detailed images of solar systems far, far away. Recently, astronomers used it to observe an asteroid 570 light years away. That asteroid is being torn apart by the dying star that it orbits. This is the first time that astronomers have ever observed the destruction of a solar system. The Guardian reports:
Scientists spotted chunks of shredded planet swinging around the white dwarf every 4.5 to five hours, placing them in an orbit about 520,000 miles from the star, about twice the distance between the Earth and the moon.
“This is something no human has seen before,” said Andrew Vanderburg at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “We’re watching a solar system get destroyed.”
This event could reveal what the ultimate end of our solar system would be like:
A similar fate may well await our own solar system. When the sun dies in five billion years, it will expand and engulf the inner planets, toasting Mercury and Venus, and potentially Earth too. But if Earth survives that cosmic trauma, it may find itself being shredded as it spirals into the white dwarf that the sun becomes. “We might be seeing how our own solar system could be disassembled in the future,” said Vanderburg.
In the Pixar movie Up, Carl and Ellie Fredricksen have a touching and heartfelt love story from their youth into their old age. It inspired pianist Jason Lyle Black to make this video to honor the sixtieth anniversary of his grandparents' marriage.
In real life, the couple has always played piano duets. So Black remixed theme music from Up and had his grandparents play it. The video is filled with references to Up, including a tennis ball-footed cane and a dog who gets distracted by squirrels. Black himself appears at the end of the video, dressed in Russell's Wilderness Explorer uniform.
The Bagel Store is a bakery in Brooklyn. Can you guess what you can eat there? Yes, bagels! Lots and lots of them in a vast variety of breads and spreads. It has 30 types of bagel, including cotton candy and candy corn flavors, and cream cheese spreads that include funfetti and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
This shop is the brainchild of Scot Rossillo, a man who bills himself as the "Worlds Premier Bagel Artist." You can see more photos of the marvels that he prepares on his Instagram feed.
Robbie Driscoll isn't just a children's entertainer who can bend balloons into vague animal shapes. He's a true artist who can apparently make anything with balloons.
Back in 2013, he decided to make a balloon sculpture every day of the year. He's still doing it. Driscoll's latest theme is movie scenes in a series that he calls Twisted Cinema. You can follow his progress on his Facebook page.
