That's one ugly couch! It was the winner in the 2010 Worldwide Ugly Couch Contest. But you may know of a couch even uglier. Poor you. The search is on for the 2011 winner, so submit a picture of your ugly couch now. Link -via J-Walk Blog

(YouTube link)

The US has Isaiah Mustafa; the rest of the world has this. It's an ad for Old Spice Danger Zone that airs various other nations. Funny, yes, but I think America got the better end of the deal. -via The Daily What

There is a cave on the side of the side Gellert Hill near Budapest, Hungary, in which it is said that a monk, possibly St. Istvan, lived his life. It later became a place of worship run by the Pauline monks. In 1951, the communist government arrested the monks and sealed the cave with a wall of concrete. The wall was torn down in 1989, and once more the cave is used as a church. Read more about it at Atlas Obscura. Link

(YouTube link)

Purdue University holds an annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest for students from colleges all over. A world record was set this year, as the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers team of 17 students built a contraption that took 244 steps to water a flower. That beat the existing world record of 230 steps. Read all about it at Popular Mechanics. Link -via Boing Boing

Three-month old Evita the ocelot was born in January at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. She was introduced to zoo visitors for the first time yesterday. See more pictures at the zoo blog. Link -via Urlesque

A rare species of lady's slipper orchid (Cypripedium fargesii) grows black spots that look like a fungus. But it's not a fungus; it's a feature, as Zong-Xin Ren of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found out during four years of research.

The lady’s slippers are generally pollinated by bees but C.fargesii is different. Over many hours of observation, the only insects that Ren ever saw leaving the flowers were flat-footed flies. Ren captured four of them and when he peered at them under an electron microscope, he saw pollen grains from the orchid, and spores from a fungus called Cladosporium. This fungus infects leaves and fruits, and when it does so, it produces black mould spots. The purpose of the orchid’s black splotches was becoming clear.

Ren also analysed the orchid’s scent, an unpleasant fragrance reminiscent of rotting leaves. He found that the flower produces over 50 aromatic molecules that are found in other flowers, but three unusual ones that are common to Cladosporium moulds.

Like they always say, you catch more flies with fungus than with vinegar. Cypripedium fargesii is not the only orchid that attracts pollinating insects by deception, as you'll see in the article at Not Exactly Rocket Science. The article also illustrates the importance of humorous headlines. Link

The Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1 is a monster crane with a 100 meter (328 feet) boom that can lift up to 1200 tonnes (1322 US tons). You may have seen bigger cranes, but this one is carried on its own truck -two, actually. See pictures and video of this crane in action at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

The fossil itself is not as big as this picture.

The spider, a new species called Nephila jurassica, stretches about two inches from end to end. It was found in a fossil-rich rock formation near Daohugou village in northeastern China. The fossil dates back to the Middle Jurassic, about 165 million years ago, researchers reported in the April 20 Biology Letters.

Spiders from the same family still exist today. Female giant golden orb-weaver spiders can grow to a whopping 4 or 5 inches in diameter (although males tend to be less than a quarter that size). These spiders are known for spinning huge webs of golden silk and have been known to trap bats and small birds.

Spider fossils are very rare, and this discovery leads scientists to believe that the Nephila genus is 130 million years older than previously thought. Link

(Image credit: Paul Selden)

(YouTube link)

Why are giant eggs hollow and small eggs full of sugary creme? Several years ago, we brought you the recipe for making your own Giant Cadbury Creme Egg. Epic Pudding Time shows you a shortcut to making your giant egg by using existing eggs in this video. -via the Presurfer

The Bregenz Festival brings opera to the shores of Lake Constance in Bregenz, Austria in July and August. They are now building the stage on the lake front, which is, as you can see, quite an enterprise. See more pictures of this fantastic stage and its meaning at Kuriositas. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Kecko)

War- what is it good for? Well, if the Falkland Islands are any indication, it certainly helps penguins.

Rockhopper Penguin (Image credit: Flickr user Marcus Borg)

For several hundred years, human activity on the Falkland Islands -roughly 300 miles of the Argentine coast- threatened its penguins' survival. But the trend started to reverse in 1982, when Argentina and Britain began duking it out for control of the Falklands. Turns out, a war, a few landmines, and some unstable diplomatic relations might have been just enough to get the penguins back on track.

The Falkland Islands are small. Collectively, the 200-plus islands that make up the Falklands are only about as big as Connecticut. But through the years, they've managed to inspire some Texas-sized international contention. Ever since Argentina gained independence from Spain in 1816, it's been vying for control of the Falklands in one form or another. Some Argentines even claims possession of the region today, even though Queen Elizabeth's face graces every piece of currency, the Union Jack appears on the official flag, and every other government in the world recognizes British rule over the Falklands. Despire the fact that Argentina famously lost its military bid for control of the islands back in 1982, national polls still show 80 percent of Argentines want their government to take back the Islas Malvinas, as they're known in the Spanish-speaking nation.

King Penguins (Image credit: Flickr user andym8y)

So what is it the Argentines so jealously covet? Hard to say. The Falkland Islands aren't home to much, other than about 3,000 humans, 700,000 sheep, and a few fishing installations. What they do have, however, is an enormous population of penguins from five different species -the Southern Rockhoppers, the Magellanic, the King, the Gentoo, andthe Macaroni. Their names derive from, respectively, the ability to hop on rocks, a celebrated circumnavigator, a British ruler, a religious slur, and a slang reference to flashy dressers. With those five species combined, the Falklands are home to to a penguin army more than 1 million strong. That's pretty impressive, but it's believed the number was closer to 10 million only 300 years ago.

I just learned a lot about sunspots from Dr. Phil Plait. He's quite excited about NASA footage that shows the formation of a cluster of sunspots earlier this year.

Sunspots are actually regions of slightly cooler material at the Sun’s surface. Hot plasma (ionized gas, stripped of one electron or more) rises from the solar interior, reaches the surface, cools off, and sinks back down. This is called convection, and is the same process you see in a pot of boiling water. But at the surface, the tortured and twisted magnetic field of the Sun can suppress convection, preventing the cooler material from sinking. Since the brightness of the plasma depends on the temperature, this cooler stuff is darker. Boom! Sunspot.

Or, in this case, sunspots. You can see five of the suckers here, changing and mutating as the plasma interacts with the magnetic field. I recognize these spots, too: they were responsible for the first X-class flare of the season on March 15th. There’s dramatic footage of that as well which I posted on my blog at the time. They’re busy spots; they blew out a lower energy flare a few days earlier, too.

And here I am calling them cute and little when they’re actually comfortably bigger than the Earth and exploded with the energy equivalent of millions — millions! — of nuclear bombs.

Now I'm excited, too! Watch the video at Bad Astronomy. Link

(Image credit: NASA/SDO)

(YouTube link)

Q: How hard is it to get a cat into a bowl?

A: That sounds like a skit for a Japanese variety show!

-via Metafilter

To commemorate the royal wedding next week, UK outlet Brewdog is selling a limited edition run of 1,000 bottles of Royal Virility Performance, a specially brewed beer that contains Viagra!

According to the specially commissioned label, the Royal Virility Performance contains Viagra, chocolate, Horny Goat Weed and ‘a healthy dose of sarcasm’. The beer is a 7.5% ABV India Pale Ale and has been brewed at BrewDog’s brewery in Fraserburgh.

With this beer we want to take the wheels off the royal wedding bandwagon being jumped on by dozens of breweries; The Royal Virility Performance is the perfect antidote to all the hype. A beer should be brewed with a purpose, not just because some toffs are getting married, so we created something at our brewery that will undermine those special edition beers and other assorted seaside tat, whilst at the same time actually give the happy couple something extra on their big day.

One bottle will cost you £10 plus delivery charges; may not be available in your area. Link -via Boing Boing

The PC version of Portal 2 launched today. Obviously, there will be a drop in productivity in all sectors, and no reason to bother holding class. Geoff Pado's professor gave in. Link -via reddit