The picNYC Table, designed by the Dutch firm Haiko Cornelissen Architecten, lets people in densely-packed urban areas experience nature without leaving home. That's real grass, so owners have to tend to it like a garden. Ants are not included.
This story has all the makings of a wonderful ad campaign for the pen manufacturer. A woman accidentally swallowed a pen. Her husband and doctor thought that she was making the whole thing up, so nothing was done about it. Twenty-five years later, a surgeon removed it from her and found the pen in full working order.
Link -via DVICE | Photo: British Medical Journal/Oliver Richard Waters, Tawfique Daneshmend, Tarek Shirazi
In that case, I'll just take the Tube. Let us thank Google's programmers for offering this prudent warning.
The map is of northern London, but you can overlay a map in your own city by choosing "The Shire" as your starting point and "Mordor" as the destination when searching for directions.
This Constitution-class starship comes equipped extra running lights. According to several redditors, it's on display in East Peoria, Illinois. That city is apparently famous for its grand Christmas light displays.
As I watched the beginning of this video, I thought, "Why doesn't anyone just get a gun?" Then, at the 2:20 mark, everything suddenly made sense. I never saw that one coming.
Although it looks convincingly like a pair of melting picture frames, it is actually a wooden sculpture. This is one of three in a series by artists Rémy Clémente and Morgan Maccari dribbling on a gallery floor.
A homeless man once approached me in a grocery store parking lot and asked me to buy maxi pads for his wife. I understood the importance and did so right away. If a woman can't afford maxi pads, then she's going to have a bad time. That's why Arunachalam Muruganantham decided to invent a maxi pad that was affordable and accessible for India's rural poor who used rags, leaves, and newspapers as substitutes.
He devised a prototype and set about trying to find female test subjects. His failed efforts cost him greatly:
He tried to get female medical students to wear them and fill out feedback sheets, but no woman wanted to talk to a man about such a taboo topic. His wife, thinking his project was all an excuse to meet younger women, left him. After repeated unsuccessful research attempts, including wearing panties with his do-it-yourself uterus, he eventually hit upon the idea of distributing free napkins to the students and collecting the used ones for study. That was the last straw for his mother. When she encountered a storeroom full of bloody sanitary napkins, she left too.
Muruganantham discovered that turning pine wood into a maxi pad is actually a complex and expensive process, so he spent years trying to simplify and cheapen it. He was successful:
Powered by electricity and foot pedals, the machine de-fibers the cellulose, compresses it into napkin form, seals it with non-woven fabrics, and finally sterilizes it with ultraviolet light. He can now make 1,000 napkins a day, which retail for about $.25 for a package of eight.
Though he’s won numerous awards (and won his wife back) he doesn’t sell his product commercially. "It’s a service," he says. His company, Jayaashree Industries, helps rural women buy one of the $2,500 machines through NGOs, government loans, and rural self-help groups. "My vision is to make India a 100% napkin-using country," said Muruganantham at the INK conference in Jaipur. "We can create 1 million employment opportunities for rural women and expand the model to other developing nations." Today, there are about 600 machines deployed in 23 states across India and in a few countries abroad.
One critical difference: the umpire has a halberd and is willing to use it. The Ghistelles Hours, a Fourteenth Century Flemish devotional manuscript, contains illustrations of people playing something that scholar Carl Pyrdum describes as baseball. But I think that it sounds like cricket:
Though there’s no base in sight, various historians of sport have identified this game as a version of “stool ball” or “stump ball”, which was baseball played with only one base, where the object was for the pitcher to hit a stump or a stool or other handy protrusion with the ball while the batter protected it by batting away the pitcher’s balls. Each player stood on or near what was essentially a “base” If the batter made contact, he was expected to run around the pitcher’s base and back to his own. Various fielders could catch the batted ball and throw the ball at the stool while the batter is occupied running.
Sure, we have buds, and we love them. But no matter what they do for us, we cannot help but pine for the relationship that should have been: a trio of you, your best friend, and Optimus Prime. Especially after Wheeljack left for college and dropped out of contact. In this sweet song, James Struthers contemplates that perfect match.
Finally! If you're like me, you wake up most days and wonder how to best communicate with people details about your nostrils. Noda Akira has now made this process a lot easier, thanks to his new breath-sensing LED gadget. Watch a video at the link.
Although they lack Chewbacca's vocal range, the dogs in this Purina ad can impressively bark out a tune. Be sure to take them caroling with you this year.
The Eisriesenwelt is an enormous cave system south of Salzburg, Austria. It's forty-two kilometers long, the first kilometer of which is covered in wondrous ice formations. The cave is open to visitors during the summer, so visit if you're in the area. Check out more pictures at the link.
You can't trust anyone these days. You can just innocently go about your business when suddenly some crook will rob your blind. That's what a couple in Ogden, Utah discovered. According to police, they went into a store to engage in a bit of shoplifting. They were caught, cited by police, and then let go. The couple went back to their car and got a shock:
But as the officer started to leave, “He sees the two suspects trying to flag him down in the parking lot,” Young said, “and he goes over to their location and realizes that their vehicle has actually been burglarized.”
From a distance, surveillance video caught what appears to be a man in a red sweater scoping out Alexander's truck and he eventually gets inside.
"They ended up having their stereo and amplifier, a drum machine and some cigarettes stolen from their vehicle," Young said.
