The perpetrator, a donkey in Waterford, Connecticut, was apprehended by police on Tuesday night. They joke on Facebook:
Could this be an attempt at field sobriety tests, “Sir, walk the line.”
Could it be a new donkey patrol that Chief Mahoney has instituted without us Facebook people knowing?
Maybe, just maybe it’s a large dog?
Officers were merciful to the donkey, a local resident, and escorted him back home.
-via Dave Barry
The public health agency of Ottawa, Canada would like to remind you to get your monthly flu shot. I'm sure that the social media manager could find an appropriate photo in any stock photo collection. But when the agency lost access to its account, it had to improvise.
The result is amateurish, but effective. The artist might even have a second career open.
-via Marilyn Bellamy
I discovered Centered Riding by Sally Swift through Twitter user Alexandria Nenakis. This 1985 equestrian guide uses bizarre illustrations to convey metaphors for the physical activities involved in riding a horse successfully.
Swift had a way with words and her illustrator, Jean MacFarland, could convey those unusual metaphors with an imaginative spirit.
Scientists tracked the movement of this adolescent tiger through two states in India as he hunted for food and, the scientists assume, a mate. This is the longest-ever recorded journey of a tiger. BBC News describes the journey of the male known as C1:
The tiger hid during the day and travelled in the night time, killing wild pigs and cattle for food.
Dr Habib confirmed the one accidental injury to a man who entered the thicket where the tiger was resting, but said there had been no serious conflict with humans.
"People don't even know that this tiger is travelling in the backyard," he said.
With some difficulty, the tiger was able to find food. Tigers need to live in a area with at least 500 prey animals to have a sufficient food bank. But it is unknown whether C1 was successful in his quest.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Tippeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary
Coming soon to a classical orchestra near you is the XPLC Theremin Baby Head. Wave your hand near the appropriately arranged proximity sensors and you'll produce the right sounds to, presumably, calm small children. Bright red LED eyes add a warm, comforting look to the experience. It's the zenith of tasteful decorating for every abode.
Godzilla wishes not only the people of Tokyo, but you and your family, a merry Christmas. You can welcome him into your home with this custom 6-foot tall Christmas tree, complete with legs, claws, and a fog machine. It's currently up for auction at TradeMe until he is purchased or escapes from owner and builder Steven Newland of New Zealand.
Presumably, you'll need to put someone inside to move it around.
-via Geekologie
Because we live in a fallen and sinful world, totally depraved people insist on using the apostrophe incorrectly, usually to form a plural. Sometimes, this evil gets even worse. For example, I recently saw a truck with a rear window vinyl sign that included the gibberish "ALWAY'S".
I considered ramming it.
In 2001, superhero John Richards formed the Apostrophe Protection Society to resist the degradation of the English language with misused apostrophes. But now, at the age of 96, he is hanging up his cape and giving up the fight. BBC News reports:
The 96-year-old said: "We have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won."
His website contains a list of rules on where to place apostrophes, as well as a photo gallery detailing dozens of examples of misuse.
The former newspaper reporter and sub editor from Boston, Lincolnshire, said although he was closing it down, it would remain open for a limited time for "reference and interest".
"When I first set it up I would get about 40 emails or letters a week from people all over the world. Many were saying how it was about time that we had something like this," he said.
"But then two years ago it started to tail off and nowadays I hardly get anything."
"It seems that fewer organisations and individuals care about the correct use," he added.
The website of the Apostrophe Protection Society, however, provides conflicting information on its status. I can only hope that it will hold the line so that we can all remember how to correctly use apostrophe's.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Jeremy Noble
Honey, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of honey in the morning.
We all do, once we begin our final journey up the river. Here is a remastered version of Apocalypse Pooh, a treasure of a film mashup published in 1987, long before the World Wide Web made viral media possible.
In it, our favorite stuffed bear searches for his Christopher Robin at the center of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now.
-via Nag on the Lake
You are serving guests at your black tie-only cocktail party Pop-Tarts, of course, because you are cultured and refined. But which liquors should you offer? That's a complex question, as it is best for you to serve particular liquors with particular Pop-Tart flavors. You can't just mix them up, you philistine. I mean, what would people say about you if you drank Lagavulin with a box of Jolly Rancher Green Cherry Pop-Parts?
Imgur member acetech09 has you covered with his pairing guide. For example, you need a gentle brandy that goes well with the lively chocolate chip Pop-Tart:
The chocolate chip pop tart is unique, it's not overwhelmingly sweet or bursting with artificial flavor. It's toasty, bready, with a background of chocolate and caramel. It won't mask the flavor of a delicate spirit. St George apple brandy is smooth and light, and the light floral apple and cinnamon notes pair well with the chocolate and caramel of the pastry.
-via Nag on the Lake
Florence Teeters of Phillips, Wisconsin had always wanted to go hunting. It's part of the culture that she has lived in her whole life. But there was never an opportunity for her to do so until recently. NBC 15 reports:
“I took mom out to the blind this year. I had a nice chair for her and it was nice and warm. A little after 4 p.m., a buck shows up about 30 yards away. I tapped her on the knee and I pointed. She nodded and smiled and was real quiet. Then she took the shot!” said Bill.
Bill says she was elated when she realized she made the kill screaming “I got a buck! I got a buck!” Bill says the buck was small and a “spike” buck which means it has unbranched antlers.
“She wanted to go hunting because she wanted to experience the part of being out in the stand with the boys,” Bill said. “She likes the idea of being out in the woods.”
You're never too old to try something new.
-via Instapundit | Photo: Ball Petroleum
Farmers in the Malnad region in Shivamogga, Karnataka, India, have been plagued by monkey raids on their crops. One of them, Srikant Gowda, decided to combat the monkey threat by making his dog more menacing. News 18 reports that he painted his dog to look like a tiger:
He found a farmer in Bhatkal who was using a fake tiger doll to scare away monkeys. Gowda triedthe same tactic in his areca field and realised it worked.
However, Gowda told Deccan Herald that the endeavour would not last much longer so he instead he painted his dog. The paint is made of hair dye and lasts up to a month before fading.
The farmer has also put up posters of his dog and and that of tigers in the grass to scare away rogue monkeys.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Naresh Shenoy
Thanksgiving and Christmas often means visiting relatives, which means breaking out extra bedding. How do those fitted sheets work? Cartoonist Matthew Gallman has a step-by-step guide.
Honestly, I usually skip steps 1 and 2 and proceed directly to 3.
-via Pleated Jeans
Well, actually, it's not that mysterious. I can think of two big reasons why she's popular:
Sora News 24 brings to our attention Kuma Cooking, a YouTube channel that teaches you how to cook Japanese food on a griddle. It's a practical experience that will give you an expansive appreciation for another culture.
Kuma wears t-shirts for her sponsors, so be sure to support content creators by watching her advertisements.
Yes, they are one-line drawings, but they are also much more. Dr. Bob Bosch, a mathematician who teaches at Oberlin, created this image of Botticelli's Birth of Venus using the shortest possible line while still rendering the image. It's an illustration of the Travelling Salesman Problem.
What's that? The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines it as:
The problem of finding the shortest path that passes through a set of given points once and only once, as when a travelling salesman needs to visit a number of specified cities exactly once, using the shortest possible route. The problem is notoriously difficult to solve, because the number of possible tours rises rapidly with the number of cities.
You can see five other examples here, including images of the Mona Lisa and a Van Gogh self-portrait.
-via Flowing Data
Mike Clifford made this amazing guitar out of, obviously, LEGO bricks. He used a Les Paul design in vector file format in Fusion 360, a 3D design program, to develop the shape. Then, after building a mold, he poured epoxy over the bricks. Clifford describes the process at Core77:
The most challenging part of this guitar build was creating a solid guitar blank from the Legos and epoxy. I put the Lego bricks on a backplate in a pixelated elliptical pattern. I then put the Legos face down into a partially cured layer of epoxy, then poured more epoxy to halfway cover the Legos. After this epoxy cured, I could remove the backplate that was holding the Legos together, pour more epoxy resin over them to fill in the backs of the Legos. While the epoxy was still fluid, I added a second layer of Legos, and finally came back to fill in the entire form with resin. After I had the epoxy Lego guitar blank, I could just use standard woodworking processes for guitar building, to shape the guitar from the epoxy Lego blank.
