A sheitel is a specific type of wig worn by Orthodox Jewish women. Helen Rosen of Baltimore took up an apprenticeship with a master craftsman of sheitels. She eventually moved to Peru to set up her own shop. Peruvian women, she found, have the best hair for this type of wigmaking:

Helene says that the ample selection of hair colors and textures in South America -- the result of more than twenty-five generations of intermarriage between Europeans and indigenous people -- make it the ideal source region. The hair of indigenous Peruvian women is thick, straight, and black-perfect for the lace-front wigs sought by black women, who have come to represent the majority of Helene's business -- and is worn in two braids that often stretch all the way down their backs and are plaited with tassels made from Alpaca wool.

You can read her story at the link. The site design is unusual. It scrolls from left to right, and the scrolling buttons appear plus and minus signs on the sides of the page.

Link via Kottke | Photo by Flickr user The Gifted Photographer used under Creative Commons license

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You can pop popcorn by firing a laser at a single kernel. That's what YouTube user WorldScott did using two laser emitters that look like lightsabers. A spinning turntable ensured even cooking throughout the kernel.

via CrunchGear

If you're willing to publicly identify yourself as a Twilight fan, then you've no reason to eschew these mittens made by Etsy seller ChickenBetty. When held together, they look like the hands and apple featured on the cover of the first novel.

Link via Great White Snark

Previously: Twilight Hand Model Wants Fame | Image: Little, Brown, and Co.

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"The Scrollwheel" is a short film about the frustration that one experiences while watching someone who doesn't understand computers try to surf the Internet. You know, like people who type a URL into a search bar. Just keep in mind that long ago, you didn't know anything about the Internet, either.

This cartoon was made by Neon Noodle, Guy Collins, and Kevin MacLeod.

via Urlesque

Artist Sean Harttner has created dozens of movie posters from a different, awesomer universe than the one in which we dwell. Max von Sydow as Ozymandias? Yes, absolutely.

Link via Nerd Bastards

Cruisin' Caskets, a company based in Winchester, California, makes customized caskets that look like stylish hot rods. When the lid is closed, it looks just like car...with a dead body inside.

Should you choose to purchase a casket before you use it permanently, you can also purchase an optional liner that lets it be used as an ice chest.

Link via The Presurfer

deviantART user ~viridis-somnio created a lipstick arrangement that makes a mouth look like the Pokémon Pikachu. She writes:

This is a bonus Animal-ipstick I did for a photo assignment. It's Pikachu! Everyone in class loooved this one. My final project was a total of 20 photos of anything I wanted. Mine is sort of a typology, but the only consistent element are my lips.

Link via Kotaku

Kevin van Aelst, among other themes, makes representations of human fingerprints. This one made of cheetos is appropriately accented by a Nintendo controller.

Link via Dude Craft

Previously by Kevn van Aelst:
Donut Mitosis
The Earth's Delicious Core
Gummy Worm Chromosomes

So you're looking for just the right chair to accent your demon skin rug. Perhaps something tasteful and subtle that conveys your cosmopolitan demeanor. Well, Spanish artist Maximo Riera has just the chair for you. It's the first of a series of fifteen works designed to resemble walruses, beetles, rhinoceroses, and other animals.

Link via Born Rich

Foxes often jump high into the air in order to pounce on prey from above. They have an unusual ability to not only judge the correct direction of attack, but the proper distance to leap in a parabolic arc. How do they do it? Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany speculates that a magnetic spot on their retinas gives them the ability to measure distance:

Burda's team found that when the foxes could see their prey they jumped from any direction but when prey were hidden, they almost always jumped north-east. Such attacks were successful 72 per cent of the time, compared with 18 per cent of attacks in other directions.

All observers saw the same thing, but Burda remained baffled, until he spoke to John Phillips at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Phillips has suggested that animals might use Earth's magnetic field to measure distance.

The pair think a fox hunts best if it can jump the same distance every time. Burda suggests that it sees a ring of "shadow" on its retina that is darkest towards magnetic north, and just like a normal shadow, always appears to be the same distance ahead. The fox moves forward until the shadow lines up with where the prey's sounds are coming from, at which point it is a set distance away.

Link via Popular Science | Photo by Flickr user mikebaird used under Creative Commons license

Inspired by a t-shirt design, Flickr user Kohl? made a cake that looks like a column of rock layers. There appears to be a deposit of chocolate within easy drilling range.

Link via Make

Buy this and brag to your hunting buddies about it. deviantART user Melita Curphy made this rug that looks like a skinned supernatural creature.

Link via Geekologie

Previously by Melita Curphy: Demonic Stormtrooper Helmet

American artist Cayetano Ferrer (previously featured here) creates seemingly translucent images by placing realistic photographs of backgrounds on solid objects. So what you're looking at above is actually a box covered with pictures of the areas behind and under it.

Link via Gizmodo | Artist's Website

It's possible to use the just the components of a cigarette lighter to make a rather realistic model of a motorcycle. YouTube user Tysteriskians has a nicely-detailed instructional video on the craft.

Link (NSFW url) and Video via Geekologie

The Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, was a temporary structure. It was supposed to last only 20 years before being demolished. But Paris kept it, long, long past its design life. Why has it been so durable? Scientists are creating a detailed computer model of all of its components to try to answer that question:

But creating the model for the Eiffel Tower presented a technical challenge of a completely new kind.

One thing was that the realisation that its materials -- puddle iron (iron that is super-heated, beaten by hand and then folded over) and rivets -- perform quite differently from modern-day steel, concrete and bolts.

"We had to start from scratch," said Roussin.

Materials scientists carried out mechanical and chemical tests on samples of puddle iron to assess its resilience, and stress engineers revisited Eiffel's own drawings to calculate how the tower would perform under load from the natural elements.

Outwardly simple, the geometry of the tower itself posed some mighty number-crunching problems.

The programme had to take into account a range of weather conditions on a latticework of 18,000 metal pieces and the tower's additions, calculating the load vertically, horizontally and in 3D: in all, the model has an astonishing million variables.

They've already learned that the tower has shrunk five and a half inches due to settling.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jNYkE-s1Q0Uh9cDYKlYl106OE-nw?docId=CNG.7e25f7c5d89565fea10627f109f43804.311 via Popular Science | Photo by Flickr user Terrazzo used under Creative Commons license