Sam Pointon, 6, loves trains. So when the director of the National Railway Museum in York, UK, retired, he applied for the job. And he got one:

In his application Sam wrote: "I have an electric train track. I am good on my train track. I can control two trains at once."

Bosses were so taken with his enthusiasm they offered him a role as director of fun.

Sam said: "It is the best job in the world. I love it. It is good fun.

"My favourite is the steam engine, I like it when the wheels go round."

Asked what qualified him for the role at the railways museum, he answered: "I've been on loads of trains, including the Eurostar.

You can watch a video of Sam at work at the link.

Link via Urlesque | Photo: BBC

Today, being April Fools' Day, is the most difficult day on which to be a NeatoBambino author. It is quite difficult to distinguish between real oddities and fake oddities, especially since April Fool's Day pranks have become very mainstream. So this Crayola product might not be real. It should not surprise us either way that the company might produce markers that reflect a variety of skin tones, although they should be more properly identified as multiethnic instead of multicultural.

Link via Volokh Conspiracy

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I'm not sure what to think of this product by Berjuan. The doll comes with an apron which the child puts on. The apron has two flowers that represent nipples. When the crying doll touches her lips to the nipples, she makes suckling sounds.

What do you think? Creepy or healthy?

Link | Product Site

Studio Gorm, a German design firm, developed the Construction Quilt. It:

[...]was designed as simple multifunctional interior piece that can be transformed into a toy by children. It works as a carpet, a couch cover and can be converted into a landscape for toy cars or fort to play in. it works off of a simple grid of triangles made of dense foam covered with wool felt.

http://www.studiogorm.com/construction_quilt.html via NotCot

Here's a crafting project that's accessible to even non-crafty people like me. Kevin Kelly and his young son made a wreath out of plastic toys from a dollar store:

First we cut a torus from a piece of scrap plywood. Then we hot glued on to it several bags of plastic toys from the dollar store. It was fun building up patterns. Time flowed quickly. It made us giggle at times. The thing is completely useless. But it evoked something vague when we hung it outside my studio door. It's pleasing in a strange way. Looks like art to me.

Link via Boing Boing

The Jedi Temple, a Star Wars-themed martial arts academy, has just opened in Quilpué, Chile. Students learn Jedi values along with yoga and taekwondo:

In the classes, the children are given a chance to breathe life into a Star Wars' fandom (sometimes inherited from obsessed parents), by wielding light sabers made popular by Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Vanguardia.com reported.

A genuine Star Wars experience is provided by "an exact replica light-saber, that has the sounds and the light reminiscent of the movies," William Berrueta, the creator of the school, told BBC Mundo.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2011/03/11/star-wars-school-opens-chile-teach-children-martial-arts/#ixzz1GKIxn1uc?test=faces via Geekologie | Photo: Getty

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Emerson, at the age of five and a half months, isn't sure what to make of nose blowing. It's both freakish and hilarious. My guess is that he'll grow up a fan of horror movies.

via Urlesque

This is quite funny. Matthew Archbold notes that mommyblogging is a far more prolific field than daddyblogging, and that this is unfair. After all, it's harder to be a dad than a mom:

1) When we gain weight we can’t blame the pregnancies.

2) When one of your daughters gets in a fight at school and your other daughter yells, “Sweep the leg Johnny” everyone blames you.[...]

5) “Wait until your Mommy gets home” just doesn’t sound as scary. It just doesn’t.[...]

10) When women see Dads out with kids they assume we’re sensitive people who like to chit chat. We’re guys. We don’t chit or chat. When we see people we know we say “hey” but we don’t stop moving. We never stop moving. We’re like sharks in that way.

Link via Brian J. Noggle | Photo by Flickr user JeffS used under Creative Commons license

Yesterday would have been the 107th birthday of Dr. Seuss. Chris Menning of BuzzFeed commemorated the event by writing more explicit titles for several classic works by the good doctor including The Sneetches and Other Stories.

Link via GeekDad

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This kid, who may henceforth be referred to as the most fortunate child in America, has his own high-tech backyard make-believe spaceship. Jon Howell and Jeremy Elson built the Ravenna Ultra-Low Altitude Vehicle. It has many lights, switches, and an audio countdown. The assembly even shakes on liftoff.

Link via Make

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Did Dr. Seuss' Oh, The Places You'll Go! ever strike you as a bit optimistic? Maybe the right approach is to prepare your children for the lives of tedious mediocrity that will surely mark their insignificance.

Redditor gljo took his/her kids on a surprise trip to Disney World. To hide their true destination, s/he created this fake flyer for their supposed destination.

Link via Boing Boing

Britain is getting ready for the next generation of aircraft carriers and accompanying fighter jets, and so is selling off those assets. These include Harrier Jump Jets, at least one of which was on sale on eBay. An overly-enthusiastic young boy, while signed into his father's account, saw the fighter jet and his opportunity to own it. So he hit "Buy It Now" to immediately acquire the plane. Which, by the way, cost £69,999. That's about $113,000 (US):

A youngster hit the "buy it now" button to purchase the restored fighter jet, causing his father to quickly apologize to the sellers and tell them his son was not able to buy the aircraft out of his pocket money.

"His dad rang up and profusely apologized to us, so it's still for sale. We've put it on as an auction now so that won't happen again," said a spokeswoman for Jet Art Aviation, of Bradford, central England, which is selling the Harrier.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo by Flickr user ell brown used under Creative Commons license

So much of parenting is watching your kids destroy your stuff. The other part is making the kids take responsibility for having done so. eBay seller daney21 is selling his sons' collection of Beyblades -- that's a type of manga-inspired spinning toy -- to pay for the bathtub that the boys destroyed while playing with them:

We are selling 8 Beyblades, 2 of them light up. As you can tell they are not happy about this! They have been using their bathtub as a "battle arena" and Beyblades + Bathtub = Destruction!!! With the metal ones they managed to scrape the enamel off the tub, take a chunk of tub out and break off the soap holder. SO if you "win" this auction DON'T play with in a bathtub!!! We have recieved a quote of $500.00 to replace the tub, some tiles, and soap holder + labor of course! They had approxamently $125.67 in their piggy banks that will be going to toward the cost. We will use the profit from this auction towards the balance and then it is onto other toys!

So far, the bidding is over $9,000.

Link via Kotaku

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Comedian Weird Al Yankovic has written a children's book! It's called When I Grow Up and is about a boy pondering his future career options, including giraffe milker and circus snail trainer. Yankovic, as you can imagine, is a great narrator for this type of story.

Amazon Link via Geekosystem