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

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I don't understand much Japanese, but part of this conversation is in cat language. -via Arbroath

With people creating action scenes like this with toys and a computer, maybe Hollywood can go back to making movies with great acting and dialog. This light saber battle is a creation of Fancy Pants Productions. Link (embedded YouTube video)

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Sure, you liked OK Go's first video for the song "This Too Shall Pass", but you'll love this Rube Goldberg production as well! This official video for the recorded version was directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. -via Buzzfeed

Why would someone post a video of a painting? Because you need to see it in three dimensions to get the full effect.

This is a movie of a super-cool "painting" hanging in the basement of the British Library, in London. The author has done many such paintings, but this is the best (and all the others are very similar). It's called "Paradoxymoron", by Patrick Hughes

Link -via Digg

You might remember the picture of Disaster Girl that was a popular meme a couple of years ago. Jack Shepherd at Buzzfeed called the child pictured here "Disaster Girl's evil grandma". She is actually Flickr user Nathan Callahan's mother, pictured after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933. Link -via Buzzfeed

There are quite a few things that can go wrong with our sleep cycles, but can anything be more terrifying than "exploding head syndrome"?

This creatively named disorder occurs during the onset of deep sleep, when the person is suddenly startled awake by a sharp, loud noise. These noises range from cymbals crashing to explosives going off. To the person hearing them, the explosions seem to originate either from right next to the person's head or inside the skull itself. There's no pain involved, and no danger, either. Doctors don't know what causes exploding head syndrome, but they do know that it isn't associated with any serious illness.

This is only one of the ten disorders listed. Sleep well tonight! Link -via Digg

Brad Martin and his son Ben sell Airsoft BB guns at their store in Cornelius, Oregon. A recent shipment of 30 of the toy guns were intercepted and seized by ATF agents when they entered the country at Tacoma, Washington.

The Martins said they buy their stock from Taiwan because the merchandise is less expensive. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized a shipment of 30 in October. That shipment is worth around $12,000 and the ATF is promising to destroy the entire shipment.

Special Agent Kelvin Crenshaw said the toys can be easily retro-fitted into dangerous weapons.

Martin disputes that the guns can be converted. Another reason for the seizure is that they were missing the orange tip mandated on imported toy guns.

The Martins said they've received shipments before from Taiwan that were missing the orange tips and were simply asked by customs agents to drive up to Tacoma and paint the tips orange themselves. They are wondering why it is an issue now.

Link -via J-Walk Blog

Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test your knowledge about Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and the students at Sweet Valley High. Despite never having read any of the 152 books (they were first published in 1983), I scored 45%. Link