The little tortoise isn't waiting. He wants to swallow the whole strawberry in one gulp!

Link -via The Mary Sue | Photo: Haley L.

Sebastian Bergne's calendar consists of a metal roller marked with the days of the week. It rests on a serrated wooden beam. Each day, roll it forward one slot to know what day of the month and day of the week it is.

Link -via Colossal | Designer's Website | Photo: Moco

A woman in Indiana stands accused of altering her payroll documents so that she could qualify for welfare payments. When confronted with the charges, she claimed that she was innocent. It was her evil twin who had committed the crime!

When officials with the Indiana Office of Inspector General interviewed Athalone-Afrika about the allegations, she claimed her evil twin sister had stolen her identity.

"It's pretty clear we didn't find any truth in the evil twin sister defense," said Deputy Prosecutor Barb Trathen. "When you have a person who not only has a higher income than reported, but who has a husband's income and actually an additional outside business that they are running, that seems unfair."

Link -via Dave Barry

Previously: Evil Twins from 60s Television

Matt Richardson has developed a deep loathing for certain celebrities and hates to hear them speak in any context. So he's hacked his TV remote to automatically mute the volume whenever certain words appear in the closed captioning system:

Richardson combined a couple of Arduino circuit boards with an infrared LED light -- that little red bubble on the front of your TV remote -- and programmed the whole thing to interact with a TV's closed-captioning system.

The DIY gadget reads the closed-captioning transcript as it's aired and then automatically mutes the television for 30 seconds when it picks up certain words.[...]

As long as that person's name keeps coming up, the remote keeps muting the TV. The first time he got it to work, Richardson said he "was in silent bliss for that 30 seconds I didn't have to hear about Kim Kardashian."

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo by Flickr user university_unions used under Creative Commons license

Some bloggers are lucky enough to get occasional frozen dinners. For those of us not so fortunate, Mark Reigelman has provided this alternative.

Link -via That's Nerdalicious!

I'm a librarian, and I can't tell you how many times I've heard people provide wildly inaccurate descriptions of what we do. This is a common experience in many professions, so Derek Thompson of The Atlantic asked people in twenty-six professions, one for each letter of the alphabet, what laypeople don't understand about their jobs. Thompson's interviews included opera singers, graphic designers, and quiz masters. Here's what a soldier in the US Army had to say:

The thing that surprises people is that some of the most free-thinking people in the United States are in the US Army. The problems that we have to contend with require innovative solutions and given the breadth of educational backgrounds of Army Officers, you find some incredibly adaptive people. Deployments and combat result in an environment where evolution is sped up by a million and those that cannot adapt fail. As long as basic forms are obeyed, you find that most leaders actively encourage free thinking within their ranks. To be sure, we have our share of intellectual dullards and buffoons but the reality is that the more time you spend with Soldiers, the more you begin to realize how vibrant, adaptive and broad they are in their thoughts.

Link -via First Things | Photo: US Army

Thaeger attended Dragon*Con and took some excellent cosplay pictures, including this very cool stormtrooper. I would love to hear a hip hop version of the Imperial March.

http://blog.thaeger.com/2011/09/08/cosplay-costume-parade/ (Google Translate) -via Technabob

George Chamoun, an art student from Sweden, smoothly blended iconic stars of a previous generation with current popular actors. Pictured above is Marilyn Monroe and Scarlett Johansson.

http://georgechamoun.tumblr.com/post/5674409987 -via Nerdcore

We've already learned that Grimace has a dark, criminal past. But the 1970s specification manual at How to Be a Retronaut also reveals that, at some point, Mayor McCheese lost his seat. Or he stopped holding his sham elections. It's a bit ambiguous.

http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/09/mcdonaldland-specification-manual-1970s/

What is it? I have no idea. Something made out of Roma Plastalina clay by Evan Campbell. It tastes like chicken. Just ignore the head. Especially if it starts twitching.

Link

Shane Martin, a scrap metal artist from the UK, made this awesome four-foot long snake sculpture. The delicate scrap metal hummingbirds in his gallery are also gorgeous.

Link | Gallery

Wait, have you been using it for personal computing? BWAHAHAHA! You rube. It's actually made for cooking, as Mochrom from Japan demonstrates. It slices and dices your vegetables cleanly and perfectly. And if you find it a bit too cumbersome, you can use an iPhone for many of those functions. Also, you look cool doing it because it's an Apple product.

Link (Google Translate) -via Technabob

This fist-sized beetle by Shuki Kato is ten inches across and kind of scary. Once you're done changing your pants, check out this photo from his Flickr photostream which gives us a hint of the preparation and planning necessary to make a piece of origami this complex.

Flickr photostream -via Colossal

In 1983, when he as fifteen years old, Craig Smith broke his father's soldering iron. He fixed it (above) using parts of a toy made to resemble Han Solo's blaster (below). It still works! And, of course, it has a scope. You need a scope if you're soldering from a great distance.

Link | Photos: Craig Smith, Wookieepedia

(Video Link)

Marquita Arguello and her boyfriend Tyrel Hartman are frequent users of StumbleUpon, so when Hartman decided to pop the question, he wanted to do so using that web utility. He contacted the StumbleUpon Support Team, who agreed to rig Arguello's account to recommend a certain site at a certain time. When she logged in, she saw a Tumblr blog with eleven photos showing Hartman's proposal written on a whiteboard.

Link and News Story -via Urlesque