Catherine Price's new book 101 Places Not to See Before You Die is something like a reverse bucket list. It's about the world's most pointless or disgusting tourist traps that you should desperately avoid. One is the Karostas Cietums Prison Hotel in Lativa. It's a prison that has been minimally converted into a hotel:

"It's not like they took the prison and tried to like spice it up and turn it into a luxury resort," Price explains — it really looks like a prison.

The hotel boasts that 150 people were shot there. "Ever since the first years of its existence it has been a place to break people's lives and suppress their free will," the hotel's website explains.

"Guests" of the prison sleep on iron beds or prison bunks. For an extra-special occasion, you can arrange to be abducted at your workplace and delivered to the hotel.

What place would add to such a list?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128692710 | Image: Catherine Price

Mark Zable figured out a way to deep fry beer in batter pockets and will debut the results at the next Texas State Fair:

"Someone needs to figure out a way to fry beer," he thought.

Zable started experimenting. But the beer-and-dough concoction kept exploding once it hit the fryer. He kept getting burned.

So he consulted with a food scientist – still, no luck.

Then, earlier this year, he finally found the recipe for success. Now Zable keeps the process shrouded in secrecy and has applied for a Fried Beer patent and trademark.

Link via Geekologie | Photo: ABC News

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A new coffee shop in Chicago called The Wormhole is dedicated to 1980s pop culture. The centerpiece of the shop is a DeLorean that the owner modified to look like the time traveling car in the Back to the Future movie franchise. Other displays pay homage to Top Gun, Ghostbusters, and Star Wars.

Link via Geekosystem

Since 1980, paleontologists have suggested that a terrible meteorite impact millions of years ago radically altered the Earth's climate and killed off the dinosaur population. Now a study led by David Jolley of Aberdeen University proposes that there was a second major impact a few thousand years after the first:

In the current study, scientists examined the "pollen and spores" of fossil plants in the layers of mud that infilled the crater. They found that immediately after the impact, ferns quickly colonised the devastated landscape.

Ferns have an amazing ability to bounce back after catastrophe. Layers full of fern spores - dubbed "fern spikes" - are considered to be a good "markers" of past impact events.

However, there was an unexpected discovery in store for the scientists.

They located a second "fern spike" in a layer one metre above the first, suggesting another later impact event.

Link via reddit | Photo by Flickr user moonlightbulb used under Creative Commons license

Etsy seller ArtAkimbo created a sculpture that looks like a tentacle entering the room through a porthole. It's made from wood, styrofoam, newsprint, and sawdust. At the link, you can see pictures of what it would look like in a well-furnished office or bedroom.

Link via technabob | Artist's Blog

Ferm Living offers decals that look like papercraft instructions to cut along the dotted lines. You can put them on your walls, cars, or family members as needed.

Link via DudeCraft

On the left, you can see the destruction of Praxis, the moon of the Klingon homeworld. It blows up in the beginning of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. On the right, you can see the end Death Star from the 1997 re-release Star Wars: A New Hope. One astronomer, Phil Plait, argues that the rings appearing in both explosions show a poor understanding of physics, but the one appearing in Star Wars is somewhat more plausible.

In his 2002 book Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions And Misuses Revealed, From Astrology To The Moon Landing 'Hoax', Plait casts doubt on the verisimilitude of (Lucasfilm effects house) Industrial Light And Magic's seminal CGI effect depicting the explosion of the Klingon moon Praxis in Undiscovered Country. Since explosions in space tend toward spherical shape unless impeded, Plait concludes that the blast pattern resulting from the explosion of the Klingon mining operation has no credible reason to resolve into a ring form, even if everyone thinks the effect is far cooler here than in 1997's revised New Hope.

Conversely, the surface integrity of the Death Star hull is interrupted by a perfect ring in the form of the gargantuan maintenance trench which encircles it, meaning that at this point of interrupted stress, a growing explosion would find the least resistance. This makes the highly criticised 'ring effect' far more plausible in New Hope [V.2.0] than its predecessor in Star Trek VI.

Link via slashdot | Images: Paramount and Lucasfilm, respectively, modified by Shadowlocked

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This time-lapse video by YouTube user szyzyg shows asteroids in our solar system as they have been discovered since 1980:

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Astronomers have so far found about half a million minor planets in our solar system.

via Popular Science

Comic book artists Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo honored the great cartoon Calvin & Hobbes with a comic showing Lex Luthor as Calvin and the Joker as Hobbes plotting to kill Superman. Click on the link to see the rest.

Link via Popped Culture

Perhaps, like flight attendant Steven Slater, you need to escape from a bad job or social situation. Slater had an inflatable emergency slide handy, but until now, few of us had this option. Pictured above is an advertisement for a fake product called Slip Quit -- a portable slide for those desperate situations.

http://www.dialhouse.org/ via Ace of Spades HQ

Previously:
8 Creative Tributes to Steven Slater
Flight Attendant Steven Slater Song

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This video shows a man stripping of his clothes and jumping into a hay baler. A few seconds later, the baler spits him out in the middle of a bale of hay.

This is either footage of an idiot, a viral advertising stunt, or both. What do you think?

Content warning: as I said, the guy gets naked. The video doesn't show anything -- at least not up close. But, you know: fat, middle-aged naked man warning.

via Urlesque

The excellent humor site Bite made an eye chart using the typography from many different science fiction movies and television shows. Pictured above is a small selection from a total of 36. How many can you guess correctly?

Link via blastr | Previously: I337 Eye Chart

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Remember the woman who found a cat on a sidewalk, stroked it, and then tossed it in a garbage bin? One cat recently retaliated against an innocent woman, as you can see from the above security camera footage.

via Geekosystem

Michael Wiles of Melbourne, Australia was riding his motorcycle when he found a grill by the side of the road. He decided to take it home and so placed it over his body and started riding. Police investigated the incident after the above photo of him began circulating the Internet:

Paul McClure, his defence lawyer, said Mr Wiles's excuse was "lack of thought processes" at the time and poverty.

"It turned out the barbecue was a dud and did not work, and that's probably why it was at the side of the road," Mr McClure said.

"This is stupid behaviour and nobody should do it."

Link | Photo: unknown, via Daily Telegraph

A new road near Pontypridd, UK obstructs the travels of dormice -- a mouse species that lives in the area. So to accommodate the dormice, the local government built wire mesh bridges that the rodents can use over the road:

The bridges consist of wire mesh tubes suspended between trees and tall poles.[...]

When completed, the tubes will be solid mesh to stop the dormice falling out.

As dormice live in trees as opposed to on the ground, their routes have to stretch between trees instead of along underpasses used by, for example, hedgehogs and badgers.

Link via DVICE | Photo: Wales Online