Maximo Riera, the man who created the Octopus Chair, has created more pieces in the shapes of animals, including this walrus. Perfect location in my view: front reception room for a major corporation. Give people the right impression as soon as they walk in.

Link -via NotCot

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This Japanese-language video appears to show a man making room for himself on busy sidewalks with a bicycle bell. He doesn't have a bicycle with him -- just the bell. But when he rings it, pedestrians stand aside anyway.

-via The Presurfer

Two years ago, I posted about the Apache, an unusual weapon consisting of a folding knife, handgun, and knuckleduster made in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. This weapon appears to be an earlier -- or at least more primitive -- version of that concept. It's a knife with a single-shot percussion pistol. There's a crown marked into the steel, but otherwise, its origin is a mystery.

http://www.tortugatrading.com/engine/inspect.asp?Item=2664&Filter=Arms,+Armor -via The Firearms Blog | Photo: Tortuga Trading

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In the new Blu-ray version of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader cries out "No!" as he kills the Emperor. CineWeekly thinks this is the new Wilhelm scream, and therefore added it to many classic movies, from Casablanca to Dumb and Dumber.

-via The Mary Sue

That's not bark, but coins driven into the surface of a tree! In several locations in the UK, people have stuck coins into "wishing trees". Colossal has a picture roundup of these oddly lovely trees and The Guardian provides some historical information about the practice, which apparently dates back to at least the Eighteenth Century.

Image Gallery and News Article | Photo by Flickr user lens buddy

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It's Monday. Get up and go to work. This would normally be a tedious and regrettable exercise, but not if you live inside Freddie Wong's head. So get going and hit the first save point before your boss notices that you're late.

-via Geekosystem

René Voorburg, an archivist at the National Library of the Netherlands, digitized a Roman road map from about 300 AD. OmnesViae displays a route between two towns of your choice and provides driving directions. Pictured above is one that I created from Ostia to Brundisium.

Link -via The Presurfer

Is it a creek, a run, a stream, or a brook? Or something else entirely? Across the contiguous United States, people use different names to describe small bodies of running water. Derek Watkins made this map showing the toponyms used in different regions. Click on the first link to view a larger version.

Larger Image and Blog Post -via Obsidian Wings

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41-year old Gregory Kloehn lives in a dumpster. But it's not that bad! This artist in Berkeley, California, has modified his dumpster with running water, electrical power, a stove, an oven, and a toilet. Kloehn's home will be on display at San Francisco's Fringe Festival through September 18.

Link -via Doobybrain | Festival Website

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