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Monta Ellis of the Golden State Warriors lands a basket. He's been "trying to extend his range". I think maybe he succeeded. Link -via Unique Daily

Doctors Without Borders is setting up shop in Haiti to provide medical services to those affected by the earthquake. They will use an inflatable hospital.

It's exactly what it sounds like: a temporary hospital with inflatable components that can be deployed whenever needed. Doctors Without Borders has been employing them for years, including an impressive inflatable nine-tent, 120-bed center in Pakistan following a 7.6 magnitude earthquake there in 2005. The hospital post-and-beam frames can be made from the same fabric in inflatable lifeboats. Nylon interior and exterior walls leave space for air to create an insulating effect.

Link -via Cynical-C, who has a list of resources for sending donations to Haiti.

In First Person Tetris, when you rotate a block, you rotate the entire game! By the time you think you've figured it out, the dizziness begins to set in. It's quite addicting. Link -via Boing Boing

A Russian circus chimpanzee named Lusha picked stocks that tripled in value over a year's time. Lusha was presented with cubes representing 30 different stock options and selected eight to invest money in by picking the cubes. Her chosen portfolio outperformed 94% of Russian investment funds!

'She bought successfully and her portfolio grew almost three times. She did better than almost the whole of the rest of the market,' said editor of Russian Finance magazine Oleg Anisimov.

He questioned why so-called financial whizz-kids are still receiving hefty perks for their expertise .

'Everyone is shocked. What are they getting their bonuses for? Maybe it's worth sending them all to the circus.'

Link -via Blame it on the Voices

A female hippopotamus named Nikica swam out of her enclosure at a private zoo in Plavnica, Montenegro when flood waters rose over the fence. The two-ton hippo has stayed close to the zoo, but cannot be rounded up until the flood recedes.

A spokesman for Montenegro's natural disasters commission, which responds to floods, said the law required animals that can endanger human lives to be killed. But state veterinary authorities said they were not entitled to kill animals.

Zoo owner Dragan Pejovic insisted Nikica is not dangerous, "unless someone attacks and kicks her."

He said that her movements were being tracked by the zoo's private security and that she was "tame and peaceful".

Pejovic added that Nikica now had nowhere to return because the zoo, on a small island in a lake south of the capital, remains flooded. She was being fed with loaves of bread and bales of hay at a swimming pool of a restaurant owned by Pejovic and his brother.

Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Savo Prelevic/AFP/Getty Images)

The temperature at Russia's Vostok research station in Antarctica read -128.6F (-89.2 C) during the winter of 1983. This is the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth. The winter temperature at Vostok averages a mere -54F. Why the mercury dipped so low has puzzled scientists for 26 years.

But scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in Russia were able to solve the mystery with a computer model developed to simulate the future evolution of the Antarctic climate, along with weather charts and satellite imagery of the area.

They found that relatively warm air that normally flows over the Southern Ocean onto the high Antarctic plateau almost came to a halt during this period. A flow of cold air circling Vostok was preventing the mixing of this warmer air from lower latitudes, isolating the station and causing near optimum cooling conditions.
Adding to this was the absence of a heat-trapping cloud cover and the presence of a layer of tiny particles of ice suspended in the air (known as diamond dust), allowing more heat from the continent's icy surface to be lost to space.

Link -via reddit

Prena Thomas of Lakeland, Florida has an unusual "pet" she keeps in her freezer -a snowball! She made the snowball in 1977 and has kept it frozen safe in a bread bag ever since. Thomas occasionally takes it out to show to friends.

Thomas said that over the decades, she has never had a power outage that would destroy the cold hunk she says is precious to her.

"It's just like a little pet," she said.

Thomas made the snowball during a rare Florida snowfall 33 years ago. Link -via Fark

You'll be on video at Narita International Airport in Tokyo, but not for security purposes. An infrared camera scans incoming international passengers looking for people who may have a fever! Those who show signs of a fever are interviewed and may be given medical treatment. Link

(image credit: Lazlo Thoth)

If you've ever been to Retro Sabotage (featured previously at Neatorama), then you know Mario Jumping will not be like any other Mario game you've ever played. The payoff is well worth the effort. Link -Thanks, Tof!

A new set of tombs have been found near the great pyramids of Egypt, belonging to the workers who built the pyramids 4,000 years ago. The discovery points away from the idea that the monuments were built by slaves. Instead, Egyptologists now believe they were paid professionals, according to Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

"These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," said Hawass in the statement. "If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's."

Evidence from the site, Hawass said, indicates that the approximately 10,000 laborers working on the pyramids ate 21 cattle and 23 sheep sent to them daily from farms in northern and southern Egypt.

Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

Once, the United States issued $5,000, $10,000, and even $100,000 bills. Why on earth would someone carry bills that big, especially back when they were really worth something?

Believe it or not, it wasn’t just to save space in fatcats’ wallets. When the Treasury started printing these giant bills, their main purpose was making transfer payments between banks and other financial institutions. Before sophisticated wire transfer systems were fully developed, it was apparently easier and safer just to fork over a $5,000 bill to settle up with a fellow bank. Once transfer technology became safer and more secure, there really wasn’t much need for the big bills anymore.

Mental_floss has the story on when and why such large bills were issued, what they looked like, and why they aren't in circulation anymore. Link

Matthew Inman once again puts into comic form what we've all thought at one time or another. Has anyone ever been completely happy with their printer? Between the cost of ink, the difficulty of setting them up, and their reliability, it's a wonder anyone uses them anymore! Link -via Gorilla Mask

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Misery loves company, so this should make you feel as if you aren't alone. -via the Presurfer

Lee at Serious Eats spotted three different vendors in Thailand who sold ice cream sundaes served in hot dog buns.

The dessert was delicious: the bananas were chewy, the pineapple sweet and tart, the coconut ice cream rich, cold, and creamy, and the peanuts added the perfect amount of crunch and toasted flavor and the drop of milk brought all of the flavors together.

The bun? It got soggy pretty quickly (as I suspected) and if I ate it any slower, we would have had a real mess on our hands.

But it was a nice take on a portable sundae, minus the paper or plastic cup to throw out at the end! I kept thinking that it would have been interesting with a toasted bun.

If you toast that bread long enough, pretty soon you'll invent the ice cream cone. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Photographer Susan Mullally took portraits of homeless people who are part of The Church Under the Bridge in Waco, Texas. In each picture of the collection called What I Keep, the subject is holding an object that means something to them, and tells why. In the portrait shown, Vietnam veteran Tindall Herndon keeps his hat to remind him of fallen brothers-in-arms. Link -via Metafilter