The would-be robber used a bottle of salad dressing as an improvised weapon. The storekeeper responded by pulling out a gun:

DeLand police said a teenager threatened to shoot a store owner Friday when he robbed a convenience store, but he didn't show a gun.

More than a hour later, the 16-year-old went to another business — and that time there was a gun. But it was in the hand of the store owner, who pulled his weapon after the DeLand High School student grabbed a bottle of salad dressing off the shelf and threatened him with it.[...]

Police said the teen acted boldly when he approached the counter with the bottle of salad dressing over his head. But when the owner pointed his gun at him, the teen said: "OK, I'll get out." As he walked out the door, a responding police officer apprehended and arrested him.

Link via Say Uncle | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user Richard Faulder used under Creative Commons license

Stephanie Ortigue of Syracuse University conducted a study about the neurochemical reactions involved in falling in love. She found that different types of love are addressed by different parts of the brain.

For example, unconditional love, such as that between a mother and a child, is sparked by the common and different brain areas, including the middle of the brain. Passionate love is sparked by the reward part of the brain, and also associative cognitive brain areas that have higher-order cognitive functions, such as body image.

Ortigue also said (or at least the article about her study said) that falling in love takes one fifth of a second. That part of the article didn't make a lot of sense to me, but perhaps Neatoramanauts more literate in biochemistry can explain.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo by Flickr user Garry Knight used under Creative Commons license

Artist Jud Turner of Eugene, Oregon, made this sculpture out welded steel. It's about 44 inches long and is callled "MortalCycle". In his artist's statement, he writes:

Using welded steel and found objects, I create artwork which embraces opposites -- the tension between humans and nature; the perils of balancing biology and technology; or the combination of ancient fossils with modern machinery. I also engage contradictions by the materials I choose -- human forms which appear solid and realistic, but which were made with a delicate surface of thin wire, allowing the viewer to see through the figure; or by mixing the sense of scale in a piece, using large items alongside tiny pieces.

Link via Geekologie | Photo by the artist

Previously: Skeleton Bicycle

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Between Episode III and Episode IV, Obi-Wan Kenobi worked as a private detective. This funny short film by the production company Melk Bottle fills in a lot of the gaps in the Star Wars storyline.

via blastr | Official Website

An eBay seller in Sydney, Australia, offers this wooden engine. Presumably it doesn't function. From the description:

The entire engine, including the manifold is handcrafted out of wood. The engine is based on the Ferrari 365GTB V12 engine. It's about the same size as the original engine and weights about 25kg or 50lbs.

There are ten more pictures at the link.

Link via GearFuse

(Video Link)

Paul Meier and other scholars of the history of the English Language have reconstructed what they believe to be the way in which English words were pronounced during the time of Shakespeare. He's staging a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" next month in that original pronunciation:

“American audiences will hear an accent and style surprisingly like their own in its informality and strong r-colored vowels,” Meier said. “The original pronunciation performance strongly contrasts with the notions of precise and polished delivery created by John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and their colleagues from the 20th century British theater.”

The above video is a sample of the original pronunciation.

Link via Geekosystem

(Video Link)

Gaia Vince of New Scientist compiled a huge list -- with video links -- of popular songs about science. My favorite wasn't mentioned. It's "Put It to the Test" by They Might Be Giants. This song introduces the scientific method.

What's your favorite song about science?

Link via Marginal Revolution

Etsy seller It's a Stitch makes all sorts of crafts, but her embroidered items are special treats, such as the above Futurama-inspired piece. She's also embroidered diagrams for popular chemical compounds, like caffeine.

Link via technabob

The Excalibur is a climbing wall at the Klimcentrum Bjoeks, a climbing center in Groningen, The Netherlands. It's the tallest climbing wall in the world, standing at 121 feet with a 36-foot overhang.

Photographer Eric Kieboom took many excellent pictures of this wall, 14 of which are available in his Flickr photostream. He suspended his camera from a kite line for the overhead shots.

Official Site (in Dutch) and Photos via OhGizmo! | Photo: Eric Kieboom

Over 26 years, Graham Barker of Perth, Australia, collected 22.1 grams of belly button lint. After saving it in three jars, he recently sold his collection to a museum:

"The raw material is worthless but as a unique world record collection and a piece of cultural heritage, of debatable merit, it has some curiosity value," he said.

While most people have a positive reaction to his collection there is "a small minority – usually women" who find it unappealing.

Mr Barker said he had come across a handful of other navel fluff collectors, but none had taken their hobby to such lengths. He explained: "One guy might have persisted, but he got married and his wife ordered him to stop."

Link | Photo: Solent

Update 10/25/10 by Alex - See also: 25 Strangest Collections on the Web

The largest magnet in the world, located at CERN in Switzerland, weighs 12,500 tonnes. Scientists in India plan to build one weighing 50,000 tonnes in order to do neutrino research:

Neutrinos will interact with the iron – which will be layered in sheets – and spew out charged particles, whose paths will be bent by the iron's magnetic field. About 30,000 detectors sandwiched between the sheets of iron will track these charged particles, providing information about the incident neutrinos.

INO will initially study atmospheric neutrinos, which are produced when cosmic rays smash into the upper atmosphere.

Unlike most neutrino detectors, such as the Super-Kamiokande in Japan or the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada, INO will be sensitive to both neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, which interact with matter in different ways.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user sparr0 used under Creative Commons license

This past weekend, Moscow hosted the Millionaire Fair. It's an exhibition of the world's most luxurious products, including a diamond-encrusted saucepan:

Its handle and lid were encrusted with nearly 300 diamonds and was decorated with 18-carat gold. It's made by German cookware brand Fissler. But wealthy cooks might be disappointed: the pan isn't suitable for cooking.

"It is for serving food beautifully," brand manager Natalya Oreshkina said.

Link via Born Rich | Photo: Kostyukov/AP

Jed Stoneham of Urlesque gathered pictures from Google Street View that look like they were taken in wilderness areas. Pictured above is a scene from a road inside Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa.

Link | Addo Elephant National Park

Google Translate isn't doing too well, but I gather that a Japanese professor named Sekine was tired of getting stung by wasps in his laboratory. So he designed and built a mohawk-wearing fembot to climb a ladder and whack the wasps.

Link via GearFuse | Photos: Asahi

In the 12th Century A.D., the rulers of the city of Hama, Syria, built enormous waterwheels -- norias -- to carry water into the city. These were expanded and enhanced for several centuries:

Each of the wheels can be anything up to 20 meters in diameter (close to 70 feet( and the river water is channelled in to a sluice on the wheel. This flow then forces the wheel to turn and wood boxes raise the water upwards. At the top of the wheel there is an artificial channel in to which the water is discharged.

Using gravity, the water then flows through aqueduct channels to either households or farms in the vicinity. Just as math was used in the construction of the waterwheels so it was in working out the times at which people had access to the water. As a precious commodity it was important that it was shared fairly.

Link via The Presurfer | Photo by Flickr user Ai@ce used under Creative Commons license