The Amélie Company, a Denver-based ad agency, made this billboard for the State of Colorado to promote safe driving. The text at the bottom reads "Tailgating Isn't Worth It. Give Trucks Room. It's The Law." The agency wrote:

The Colorado State Patrol wanted to call attention to the dangers of driving aggressively around commercial motor vehicles. Our target audience was the typical mid-twenties male commuter who considers himself a good driver, but is actually a menace. We stayed away from scare tactics and instead created a graphic, bold campaign that used language familiar to our target and that would be very memorable to the audience as a whole.

Link via Super Punch | Photo: Ads of the World

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Assuming that I've been given correction information about this Chinese-language video, Liu Wei lost his arms in an electrical accident when he was 10 years old. But he can still play the piano very well using his toes, as demonstrated on an episode of China's Got Talent. The music starts at 2:15.

via reddit

We've previously featured a cat surgery-themed valentine by Hine Mizushima. One of her more recent works is called "Sea Cuties", and consists of dolls with pirate hooks for hands. They'll be on display at the Plush You LA crafting festival during August and September of this year.

Link via Super Punch

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A pillow fight broke out on a recent Lufthansa flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt:

In video captured on a passenger's cell phone, the woman is seen tossing pillows around the cabin after being bombarded by playful French tourists.

The German airline even paid tribute to the attendant for making the flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt more enjoyable.

A Lufthansa spokeswoman told AOL Travel News: "It's an example of passengers enjoying themselves in economy class. And it shows we still offer pillows to our passengers in economy class."

Link via Ace of Spades HQ

Four men from West Bromwich, UK got bored with their local pub and decided to check out the competition. 24 years later, they're still going:

The four men have just visited their 14,000th pub across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

They have spent 24 years travelling to every corner of the country and have downed and estimated 84,000 pints of real ale, working out at 21,000 pints each.[...]

They started out determined to conquer the 250 pubs in Worcestershire and Herefordshire, but quickly revised their plans to a grander scale.

This week they called in at the Stags Leap, Rugeley, Staffs, their 14,000th pub. It also means they have now drunk in every pub across 11 English counties.

They entered the Guinness Book of Records for drinking in every English county, but remain determined to have a pint in every pub in every pub in the UK and Ireland.

Link via The Corner | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user ell brown used under Creative Commons license

Google Street View snapped several pictures of a young girl apparently lying dead in the road in Worcester, UK. When discovered, they induced a local panic. But it turns out that 10-year old Azura Beebeejaun is alive and well and was just having fun:

Her innocent game just happened to coincide with the arrival of a Google Street View car to record the images of the road.

Azura said: ‘I didn’t know anything about the Google Street View car (recording me). I fell over while I was playing with my friend and thought it would be funny to play dead.

Link via Geekologie | Photo: Daily Mail/Google | Previously: Mother Finds Her Son Naked on Google Street View

Yes, this is an image from an actual patent filed by Edward L. Van Halen on 30 July, 1985. Here's what it's for:

A supporting device for stringed musical instruments, for example, guitars, banjos, mandolins and the like, is disclosed. The supporting device is constructed and arranged for supporting the musical instrument on the player to permit total freedom of the player's hands to play the instrument in a completely new way, thus allowing the player to create new techniques and sounds previously unknown to any player. The device, when in its operational position, has a plate which rests upon the player's leg leaving both hands free to explore the musical instrument as never before. Because the musical instrument is arranged perpendicular to the player's body, the player has maximum visibility of the instrument's entire playing surface.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/4656917 via Lowering the Bar | Image: US Patent Office

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Guinness World Records has declared that more than 10,000 people who gathered in northern China have set a new record for human dominoes:

Arranged in lines, they slowly collapsed backward onto each other in sequence from a sitting position like a line of toppling dominoes.

The 10,267 people who took part wore color-coordinated clothes that spelled out in English and Chinese the name of the city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia where the record attempt was made Thursday.

Link via Geekosystem

Wild chinchillas tend to excrete their body wastes in personal piles called "middens". In the dry climate of the Atacama Desert in South America, these piles can be preserved for thousands of years. Scientists have discovered that they can use these preserved middens to gather information about rainfall in the distant past:

By measuring pellet size in middens deposited in modern times when rainfall records exist, the team determined the relationship between chinchilla pellet size and amount of rain.

They then used this relationship to estimate how much rain fell at points throughout the past 14,000 years, by measuring and radiocarbon dating the animals' poop.

The results show increases in rainfall at 11- to 13.8-thousand years ago, and again about one- to two-thousand years ago.

Link via Digg | Photo by Flickr user Arkangel used under Creative Commons license

Los Angeles-based sculptor Robert Therrien, among other projects, makes giant versions of ordinary household furniture. In a 2004 interview, in response to a question about his use of scale, Therrien wrote:

The artist’s point of view - from the small world - could be viewed as a large ges­ture pub­li­cally. The prac­tice is cre­at­ing some­thing both large and small.

Pub­li­cally, Table and Chairs is per­ceived as a big object, where it actu­ally orig­i­nated from a small detail-a corner bracket sup­port­ing the table leg. Instead of crawl­ing under­neath and pho­tograph­ing an actual table in order to see it, why not shrink your­self and take a normal snapshot?

Link via DudeCraft | Interview | Photo: Toxel

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Researchers at the Human-Robot Interaction Center of Saitama University in Japan have developed a wheelchair that tracks and follows ambulatory companions. Sensors gauge the distance and direction of a walking person's shoulders and moves the chair so that it keeps close. When sensors detect a crowded area, it moves behind the walking companion to avoid blocking the paths of other pedestrians. It's hoped that this design will help ease the workload of people providing care for wheelchair users.

via GearFuse | University Website

Researchers at MIT developed the Copenhagen Wheel -- an electric motor that they say can attach to almost any bicycle. The team says:

There is no external wiring or bulky battery packs, making it retrofittable into any bike. Inside the hub, we have arranged a motor, 3-speed internal hub gear, batteries, a torque sensor, GPRS and a sensor kit that monitors CO, NOx, noise (db), relative humidity and temperature. In the future, you will be able to spec out your wheel according to your riding habits and needs.

Users can also dock a smartphone to the Copenhagen Wheel to control how much assistance the electric motor provides.

Link via DVICE | Photo: MIT

Archaeologists working in Ethiopia have discovered grooves in animal bones indicating that they had been subjected to work with stone tools. If this conclusion is accurate, the earliest tool use by hominids dates back to 3.4 million years -- almost a million years before previous estimates:

Primordial butchers using sharp stones to fillet a carcass in ancient East Africa made the marks, the researchers said.

"It pushes back tool use almost a million years," said archaeologist Shannon McPherron at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who discovered the bones last year at Dikika, Ethiopia, about 300 miles from Addis Ababa.[...]

Until now, the oldest known stone tools dated to about 2.5 million years ago. Those implements, of which thousands were found in East Africa, are thought to be the work of an early human species. The older find announced Wednesday, however, would predate the evolution of the human family, known as the genus Homo, and raises new questions about the role of tools in spurring human evolution. They may have initiated a shift in pre-humans' diet, which in turn may have aided the development of larger brains.

Link via Discover | Photo: Dikika Research Project/PA

On Wednesday, the largest clock in the world began operating. It is mounted 400 meters into the sky on a skyscraper dominating the skyline of the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca. Measuring 43 meters across, it's hoped that the enormous clock will draw additional Muslim pilgrims to visit the city:

Over 90 million pieces of coloured glass mosaic embellish the sides of the clock, which has four faces each bearing a large inscription of the name "Allah." It is visible from all corners of the city, the state news agency said.

The clock tower is the landmark feature of the seven-tower King Abdulaziz Endowment hotel complex, being built by the private Saudi Binladen Group, which will have the largest floor area of any building in the world when it is complete. Local media have said the clock tower project cost US$3 billion (NZ$4.2 billion).

The clock is positioned on a 601-metre tower, which will become the second tallest inhabited building in the world when it is completed in three months' time.

"Because it based in front of the holy mosque the whole Islamic world will refer to Mecca time instead of Greenwich. The Mecca clock will become a symbol to all Muslims," said Hashim Adnan, a resident of nearby Jeddah who frequently visits Mecca.

Link | Photo: AP

Harvard University graduate student Bill Rankin owns the site Radical Cartography. It's filled with unique and imaginative maps, such as the above world map plotting relative population by lines of longitude. Other maps include displays of an actual cartographic "axis of evil", US counties named after Presidents, and youth skater culture.

Link via Geekosystem | Rankin's Professional Website