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If there were any doubt that Judy Garland had the greatest movie line of all time in The Wizard of Oz, take a look at how many other movies have used it! See a list of films used in this supercut at fourfour. Link -via Buzzfeed

Q: Does rubbing a boo-boo really make it better?

A: Yes! Pain signals are sent to the brain by special receptors, called nociceptors, which are sensitive enough to distinguish between a bruise and a scratch. If you rub or caress a wound, receptors for other types of sensations will start sending out their own signals -drowning out the pain signals of the nociceptors, like one voice getting lost in the crowd. The result? The pain lessens, and maybe even goes away. So let Mommy kiss that boo-boo!

Q: Can swearing help?

Yes again. There's good scientific evidence to suggest that cursing like a sailor can numb your pain. In a recent study, participants were asked to hold their hand in icy water for as long as they could. They could either say the same neutral word over and over while their hand was in the water, or they could repeat a swear word of their choice. The people who cursed reportedly felt less pain, and they were able to keep their hand in the water longer. Scientists aren't exactly sure what causes the phenomenon, but they'd swear by it.

Q: Why do you stub the same toe twice?

A: There's more at work here than just bad luck. To understand why you stub the same toe twice, we need to look at the thalamus, the part of the brain that interprets pain signals. If the signals last for a while, the thalamus eventually starts to ignore them. This is called habituation. Unfortunately, when the thalamus starts to ignore pain, it also ends up ignoring other things, like where exactly a body part is in space. Not knowing exactly where your stubbed toe is can make you clumsy, and you can wind up hurting yourself again.

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The above article by Peter Hildebrand is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the November-December 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

The New York Times has a series of interactive maps of the US with which you can study population distribution by race and ethnicity, income, housing (such as mortgage, home value, and rent), and by education. I found that the average household income in my county in 2009 was $21,195, which is 10% less than in the year 2000. The data comes from the US Census Bureau. Link -via Metafilter

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Sid Ceaser proposed to Sara Prindiville as a Muppet. Really. He has been a Muppet fan all his life. When the time came, Sid ordered custom designed Muppets that resembled the couple and produced a film about them. It was shown along with the previews at a theater he took Sara to. Of course, she recognized who the Muppets were as soon as she saw them. And she said yes! Read the story of how the film came about, see photographs of the happy couple, and watch outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage of the project. Link -Thanks, Mike Weinstein!

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The structure of your individual brain has a lot to do with how you perceive optical illusions. Researchers at University College London asked subjects how they perceived illusions of size such as the one used in this video, and then measured the size of each subject's visual cortex -the amount of brain matter devoted to processing vision.

The researchers then took MRIs of the subjects' brains. What they discovered astonished them - there was an almost perfect link between the size of somebody's visual cortex was and how much the optical illusion affected them. The smaller the visual cortex, the more a person was taken in by the optical illusion. Those with the largest visual cortices were also those most able to see the circles' true sizes.

Read more, and see the different illusions used, at io9. Link -Thanks, Greg Ross!

It's time for the Fill in the Bubble Frenzy with boy genius Mal and his talking dog Chad! What is he saying in this empty speech bubble? Tell us and you might win any T-shirt available in the NeatoShop -take a look around, pick one out and tell us what shirt you’d like with your submission in the comments. If you don't specify a t-shirt with your entry, you forfeit the prize. Enter as many times as you like (text only, please), but leave only one entry per comment. For inspiration, check out Mal and Chad’s comic strip adventures by Stephen McCranie at malandchad.com. Have fun and good luck!

Update: The winning line is "The overworked elfs on strike holding Santa will never suspect we attack with a Christmas trebuchet!" Congratulations, drewp, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

You can probably guess that fruitcake will be on a list of not-so-welcome traditional Christmas foods. This list also covers figgy pudding, green bean casserole, and lutefisk.

To make lutefisk you catch a cod, take out the bones, skin it, salt it, and hang it out to dry for several weeks until it hardens and smells like a dumpster. Then, bring it inside and soak it in lye for several days. (Yes, lye) Lye will turn cod into a gelatinous blob that slithers down your throat.

Have you ever eaten lutefisk? Does anyone like it? Link -via Breakfast Links

Many of the iPhone generation used a Speak and Spell toy as their first computer. Now, thanks to Etsy seller blakemedia, you can hark back to those carefree days with a iPhone sticker that looks just like a Speak and Spell! Guaranteed to make all those who see it smile. Link

A 3-year-old cat named Pepper used a trick worthy of Houdini to escape from a burning kitchen in Stoke Gabriel, South Devon, England. Frightened by an exploding microwave, he leapt to a window and nudged the catch open with his nose. Neighbors noticed smoke billowing from the open window and alerted the fire department. Homeowners Phil and Sharon White are grateful the fire was contained.

Phil said: "There is some damage but nothing compared to what it could have been."

Phil's wife Sharon added that Pepper is a law unto himself and has a fiery streak. "But all is forgiven now, " she said.

She said that neighbours also deserve credit.

Sharon said: "We are thankful that they did not just dismiss it as a bonfire. They rallied around and even directed the fire service here through the narrow lanes."

Pepper is still a bit spooked by his ordeal. "But he is still managing to eat plenty of food," said Sharon.

Link -via Arbroath

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We featured the Bowen Beer Bottle Band last Christmas performing "Do You Hear What I Hear?" The second annual Bowen Beer Bottle Band video features an expanded lineup of performers in "Angels We Have Heard on High." Link -via Buzzfeed

Japanese researcher Ryuma Niiyama has been working for years on a robot that can run like a human on two legs. The 2010 version of the robot has made great strides (pun intended) compared with earlier prototypes.

He calls his robot Athlete. Each leg has seven sets of artificial muscles. The sets, each with one to six pneumatic actuators, correspond to muscles in the human body -- gluteus maximus, adductor, hamstring, and so forth [see diagram below].

To simplify things a bit, the robot uses prosthetic blades, of the type that double amputees use to run.

And to add a human touch, Niiyama makes the robot wear a pair of black shorts.

The first such robot, built in 2007, couldn't take one step without falling. Athlete, on the other hand, can sprint three to five steps before falling over, as you'll see in an unintentionally humorous video. Link -via DiscoBlog

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How different the classic Christmas tale of Rudolph would be if modern cosmetic surgery had been available to the reindeer of the North Pole! -via Gorilla Mask

Nick Brewer appeared as Robot Santa at SantaCon in New York City. It was his second year as a robot Kris Kringle, with an updated costume he calls Santabot 2.0.

Construction of Brewer’s Santabot outfit took about a month, not including the crash course in using an Arduino board for the electronics. Arcade-style buttons on his chest controlled various features, including lights, voice-changer (“Destroy! Destroy!”), sound system, LOL shield (scrolling, “What is love?” along with holiday messages) and the well-loved but short-lived candy dish that emerged from his 8-bit belly.

People got a little rough on the cardboard at times, but overall Santabot was mobbed with admirers, so much so that Brewer didn’t even make it to the main SantaCon convergence area at Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain.

“We got so bogged down with people and pictures it got to the point we couldn’t make it across the street,” Brewer said.

See several videos of Robot Santa in action at Underwire. Link

(Image credit: Jess Alford)

The National Air and Space Museum, a part of the Smithsonian Institution, keeps these very special jingle bells as a part of history.

These bells are part of the harmonica and bell set carried by astronauts Walter "Wally" Schirra and Tom Stafford aboard Gemini 6 in December of 1965. The mission was to test the docking and maneuvering capability of the Gemini spacecraft.

Approximately five hours after the successful maneuvering of the the two spacecraft to within six inches of each other, astronauts Schirra and Stafford played "Jingle Bells" with these instruments and pretended to see a UFO called Santa Claus.

Forty-five years later, they are on display in Washington as part of the "Apollo to the Moon" exhibition. If you can't go, you can see a lot of history at the Smithsonian Institution's website. Link

(Image credit: Eric Long, National Air and Space Museum)

Dr. Phil Plait has published his selections of the best astronomy pictures of 2010. Not only will you see awesome pictures, but each has an explanation, like the full version of the cropped picture you see here.

Whenever a new type of instrument is used to examine the skies, surprises are guaranteed. And when the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) started scanning the heavens in 2010, it returned one amazing view after another. My favorite by far is this one, showing NGC 1514, a dying star shedding material.

This image, in the far-infrared, is very different than optical shots of the nebula, which show it looking more like a disk. It's not certain just why this object has these two rings, but it's likely that dust ejected from the dying star is slamming into gas previously thrown off. That older gas is most likely in an hourglass shape, common in such objects. Perhaps the dust is hitting the inside of that hourglass figure, making the rings. Maybe it's a different reason entirely. We don't know!

See also 14 at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link -Thanks, Phil!