Some of the prisoners liberated from Auschwitz in 1945 recreated the scenes of their lives there in art. An online exhibit places those artworks side-by-side with photographs of Auchwitz taken many years later.

In 1979, The Auschwitz Museum Archive reproduced selected pieces of art and sent them to writer/photographer Alan Jacobs.
After years of related work and many more trips, Jacobs, and his son Jesse, returned to the camps in 1996 to find and photograph the identical scenes depicted in the art. Krysia Jacobs then devised a way to present them as you see here. They are the result of work over a 24 year period.

An explanatory text, which may be disturbing, accompanies each image. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Mieczyslaw Koscielniak/Auschwitz Museum Archive)

The US has its share of strange town names. If you've made a few road trips, you've no doubt encountered some of them. Test your knowledge of these strangely-named cities in this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss. I scored 67%. Note: be sure to read the questions carefully! Link

A British military pilot managed to get twenty passengers to the ground despite a bullet between his eyes. Flight Lieutenant Ian Fortune was ferrying the wounded from a battle between American troops and the Taliban in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. As he was taking off with a full load of casualties, a bullet ricocheted through the helicopter and struck Fortune in the face.

Further rounds then struck the helicopter's automatic stabilisation system, shutting it down and making it extremely difficult to fly.

Despite blood streaming into his eyes, Flight Lt Fortune battled with the controls for eight minutes and managed to get the casualties back to Camp Bastion.

TV Presenter Mike Brewer was on the helicopter when the incident happened. He told Sky News:

"It was terrifying. We came under fire just as the ramp was closing. Then just after we'd taken off the Chinook suddenly lurched from side to side and we heard the pilot had been shot.

"The only reason we didn't plunge straight back into the desert was because of the sheer bravery and skill of Ian and the rest of the crew. They're all heroes."

Lt. Fortune is expected to recover from his injuries. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Chinoook-Pilot-Shot-Between-The-Eyes-Manages-To-Fly-Casualties-To-Safety-Ian-Fortune-Afghanistan/Article/201003115567655?lpos=World_News_News_Your_Way_Region_8&lid=NewsYourWay_ARTICLE_15567655_Chinoook_Pilot_Shot_Between_The_Eyes_Manages_To_Fly_Casualties_To_Safety%3A_Ian_Fortune_Afghanistan -via Fark

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Barman made a cool helicopter from the movie Avatar out of Lego pieces for the February competition at Brickshelf. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=420825 to pictures. -via Wacky Owl

Noah Dziobecki adapted the children's book Goodnight Moon and set it in the Star Wars universe for his son's birthday. Now his illustrations are available to download and print for yourself -free! Instructions for assembling the book are included. Link -via Boing Boing

The Academy Awards will be given out Sunday night. Every year we compare this year's winner with past winners and find they have certain similarities. The first page at the link lists the roles most likely to win an Oscar. Continue with the slide show for overwhelming evidence of each scheme's success. Link -via YesButNoButYes

The game Sushi Cat doesn’t demand a lot of skill (at least until you reach the higher levels), but it’s so cute and funny you have to keep playing. How much sushi can one fat round cat eat? It's basically like playing pinball with a balloon. You can leave and return to the same level. In between some levels, there's a cartoon about a lovelorn cat. Link -via Metafilter

In the same vein as Sketchy Santas, the new blog Easter Bunnies Will Steal Your Soul has pictures of terrifying rabbits and/or terrified children posing with that seasonal lagomorph we all know. http://www.easterbunnieswillstealyoursoul.com/ -via Urlesque

Just this week, the school my children attend got a $500 grant from an environmental agency. The school decided to buy all the students metal water bottles so they could bring water from home and consume fewer bottles of water at school, thereby saving plastic. My immediate reaction was "What's wrong with the drinking fountain?" National Geographic asks that question as well: Which is better for children, bottled water or tap water? The production of bottled water uses lots of resources and the bottles just go to landfills.

But switching to tap water could be a bad idea in some schools where the risk of lead contamination from old pipes—known to affect physical and mental development—is high, particularly in large urban areas such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

For instance in September 2009, the Associated Press published a nationwide investigation showing that the drinking water in schools in 27 states is contaminated with lead and other toxic substances from lead-soldered pipes generally installed before 1985.

Some school don't test the water because of the high cost of replacing pipes. They find it more cost-effective to serve bottled water, or even soft drinks to children. Link

(image credit: Flickr user Isobel T)

Imagine a sport where you can finish a drink in the midst of a race of only a few feet. Turtle racing has become a trend in metropolitan bars like Bucky's Grill and Pub in Indianapolis, where the first turtle race was held last month.

Depending on the crowd, four to five of these exciting turtle races are held every Saturday night around 10 p.m. Every drink purchased gets the buyer one raffle ticket. Come race time, the tickets are drawn to see who is assigned as an honorary jockey to each of the six turtles. (The turtles, by the way, have clever names like Salisbury Strutter, Bermusa and Butkus.)

First place gets a T-shirt that reads "My turtle got lucky at Bucky's," and last place gets a complimentary shot. In some cases, coming in last place is probably harder than coming in first.

The only person to actually handle the turtles is a licensed reptile handler. Link -via Buzzfeed

(image credit: Wendy Rose Gould)

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I dare you to watch this hair product ad from Japan and not giggle. -via the Presurfer

The oldest dinosaur fossil ever found dates back around 230 million years. But the fossils of around a dozen specimens of a new animal called Asilisaurus kongwe, or silesaur, found in Tanzania lead researchers to believe dinosaurs diverged from another evolutionary line around 243 million years ago.

“Back then it was a very large river system, maybe something like the Mississippi today,” said lead author and University of Texas at Austin paleontologist Sterling Nesbitt. During that time, Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and India were all one giant continent called Gondwana.

Though silesaurs are very closely related to dinosaurs, they lack the open hip-sockets that are universal in dinosaurs. The Asilisaurus was a small, four-legged creatures with a long tail. Their beak-like jaws and leaf-shaped teeth helped the animals eat the soft, fibrous leaves of the primordial palms, ferns and conifers that were prevalent during the Triassic period. That suggests that, while the animal may not have been exclusively vegetarian, a good portion of its diet came from plants, he said.

The silesaur changes the conventional wisdom that the dinosaur's closest relatives were predators. Link

You never known who you're going to be connected with at Chatroulette. Even... yourself? Kate trained a webcam back at the screen when she joined Chatroulette. Then she captured the looks on many people's faces when they "connected" with themselves. Link (embedded YouTube video)

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Hugh Newman has a gift that works on everyone but the one person he wants most to please. A award-winning short by writer/director/composer Kurt Kuenne. -Thanks, Holistic CPA!

German researchers studying wasps known as beewolves (Philanthus triangulum) find they have a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria Streptomyces. The bacteria produce nine different antibiotics that protect the wasps from harmful bacterial infections and even fungus!

Female beewolves cultivate the useful bugs in specialised antennal gland reservoirs and apply them to the ceilings of brood cells, said the scientists. The wasp larvae, growing in the cells, later take up the bacteria and transfer them to the outside surfaces of their cocoons.

Laboratory tests showed that the beewolves employed an advanced form of "combination medication" using nine antibiotic varieties.

Johannes Kroiss, from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, said: 'A combined treatment with streptochlorin and eight different piericidines we were able to isolate from the cocoon helps to fend off a very broad spectrum of micro-organisms.

Not only do the wasps use a combination of broad-spectrum antibiotics, they've been doing it for millions of years. Link -via the Presurfer