We’ve always said “Money can’t buy happiness,” because we don’t want to overlook the intangible pleasures of life. Of course, you know that research says that for people who don’t have much, money can well buy happiness, in the form of stress reduction, safety, health, nutrition, and a decent standard of living. We also know that spending money on others produces happiness. But aside from all that, the way you spend your money can make all the difference in the amount of happiness your purchases bring you. Jacob Falkovich has some tips on how to get the most bang for your buck. He even breaks it down into a formula to select what item or activity will bring you more happiness than the next item or experience. But even if you don’t want to crunch number with him, there’s a lot of good advice here.

Finally, if you take nothing else from this post, take this tip: buy great soap. I think that people strongly undervalue the happiness to be had from excellent products in cheap categories. A Chanel bag costs $5,000 not because it’s 1oo times better at being a bag than a $50 bag, but because it’s a signaling-positional-keeping-up-with-Joneses-luxury good. On the flip side, in every category that’s not consumed conspicuously the highest quality things will not be overpriced. I drive a cheap ass-car and wear $30 jeans but I buy the best soap, underwear, toilet paper, tea, socks, shaving cream and bbq sauce I can find.

The formula and the soap concern only the first of five tips for maximizing the happiness of your purchases. Read the rest at Put A Number On It! -via Metafilter

Joe Santagato came up with a game that’s not only challenging, but entertaining. He and his siblings try to make each other understand a nonsense phrase they say while wearing a dental mouth opener. Yeah, that’s what those things are called.

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There are points where I can tell they really want to just break down and start acting their words out, like charades. If you ever get a chance to play this in real life, don’t be in a hurry to get the right answer, because it’s much funnier when you don’t! -via Tastefully Offensive

The Covington Farmers Market in Covington, Kentucky, marked its season opening Saturday by staging The Running of the Goats. The name was meant to evoke images of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, but organizers assured people on its Facebook event page that the goats would not be running rampant. They would be marching to the market, escorted by handlers.

Are the goats RUNNING through the streets (Bulls of Pamplona style??)
Nope! The goats will walk/trot an organized route through Covington guided by our goat team volunteers and the City of Covington Police Department. You and yours are asked to walk along on the sidewalks. Several local shops will have fun interactions (music, photos) to keep the walk interesting along the way.

No one bothered to explain that to the goats.

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During the parade, six of the seven goats decided to break out of the pack and run through the town. A mad dash ensued as volunteers and police tried to catch the goats. They eventually rounded them all up by Sunday, after the last two goats spent Saturday night on the run. Organizers say that the incident brought so many people to the park that they plan on doing it again next year, with improved procedures. -via Arbroath

Nathan Yau at Flowing Data has a chart that explains where you are on the age continuum. Select your age, and find out what percentage of all living people are older than you are, and what percentage are younger. Before you try it, think about whether you even want to know. At least I can console myself with the fact that I am at the 50th percentile in my household, unless you count the cats. Now get off my lawn! -via Digg

This truck was spotted in Florida. If you were following it, you might become alarmed until you saw it from the side. The truck belongs to All-Pro Blinds (note the URL), which has several locations in northern Florida. It’s an old joke, but it’s still funny. And like many other people, you will be reminded of a similar joke (NSFW language). -via reddit

Tumblr user kehinki imagined a synopsis of a James Bond-type movie with the gender roles reversed. Other Tumblr users gladly added to the story until it was a full-blown treatment. A team of spies made up of diverse women battle super villains, also women, while the sole male character is only there because he’s sexy. Here’s one contribution.

In one scene, the lead villain captures the Strong Male Character. He is, once more, inexplicably shirtless as she ties him to the chair. He makes some quips about his sexual independence before he is rescued by a sweat-drenched Helen Mirren, who kicks down the door and nukes everyone in the room. Strong Male Character’s hair remains perfect throughout the ordeal.

Oh yeah, the Bond character is played by Helen Mirren, which means we must cast a 20-something male. Artist Jenna Amber was inspired to add the above illustration of the main characters. See a few more illustrations of the movie at Ambervisions (possibly NSFW). -via Metafilter

How can you find enough space to build a campground in the city? Make it a skyscraper! That’s the idea behind “Camping in the Sky,” a concept building from the Italian architecture firm FLT Office. The outside of the building can go from transparent to semi-translucent depending on weather conditions, and therefore acts as a greenhouse for the trees and plants inside -and the photovoltaic skin provides the energy needed to keep guests comfortable year-round.     

The proposed skyscraper model boasts a rooftop that can host concerts and other events. On every level of the skyscraper is a forest to simulate the natural environments found during a camping trip. As an added benefit, the skyscraper can act as a greenhouse during the winter to protect guests and internal plants from the cold temperatures and other weather patterns. The boom on a sail is the inspiration for the adjustable skin on the skyscraper. The façade is the piece that contains the organic photovoltaic system which works in conjunction with the skin to maximize flexibility.

The designers say that you don’t even need a new building to do this -it can be installed on the core of an existing abandoned building. Read more about “Camping in the Sky” at Housely. 

NASA's Kepler mission team has announced that the space telescope has sent back data indicating the discovery of 1,284 previously undiscovered exoplanets. Kepler is using a new statistical analysis method to sweep an area of space for data instead of having to find one planet at a time. That enabled it to analyze so much data for the biggest planetary announcement yet. Of the 5,000 or so exoplanets we know about, almost half have been discovered by Kepler. But are any of those planets places we might want to visit?

In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.

"They say not to count our chickens before they're hatched, but that's exactly what these results allow us to do based on probabilities that each egg (candidate) will hatch into a chick (bona fide planet)," said Natalie Batalha, co-author of the paper and the Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “This work will help Kepler reach its full potential by yielding a deeper understanding of the number of stars that harbor potentially habitable, Earth-size planets -- a number that's needed to design future missions to search for habitable environments and living worlds.”  

There’s always the possibility that some of these planets may already be inhabited. The powerful space telescope doesn’t see far enough to determine that -yet. Read more about the new planets and the Kepler mission at NASA. -via Buzzfeed

(Image credit: NASA/W. Stenzel)

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

1. The ancient philosopher Empedocles believed he was not human, but was a Greek god. To prove this fact to skeptics, he vowed to jump into a volcano and return unscathed. He made good on the first half of his promise, but never followed up on the latter.

2. In 1979, Robert Williams became the first human being killed by a robot when a hydraulic arm slammed into him at a Michigan Ford Motor Company factory.

3. Franz Reichelt, an Austrian tailor and creator of the overcoat parachute tested his invention on February 4, 1912. He jumped from the top of the Eiffel Tower and plummeted 986 feet to his death.

4. Beatriz Robeldo was stabbed to death by her frightened husband when, in an attempt to cure his hiccups, she snuck up on him wearing a carnival mask.

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You’ve probably been told that airline tickets cost so much because of the fuel. That’s not exactly true. The other costs dwarf the price of gas. Wendover Productions breaks down the many factors that make your ticket cost so much more than driving (as long as you don’t drive alone). -via Digg   

We were waiting for it, and it’s finally here- the Honest Trailer for Deadpool. Like the movie, this video contains adult subject matter and NSFW language. And Ryan Reynolds. Yes, he came along to help make the Honest Trailer.

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Here we find out that the plot of Deadpool is pretty standard, but that doesn't matter when your characters and dialogue bring something new. And that it proved once and for all that comic book movies do not need an audience full of children to be a hit. -via Uproxx

First you think, “How does he do this?” and then you think, “How did he even dream this act up?” A street performer plays the drums that are a few feet away from him by throwing the drumsticks, which he is juggling, and then catching them as they bounce back.

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Then notice he is also playing with his feet. And keeping a pretty good beat to the music. Then take a look at his drums- they are attached to some wheeled contraption with more instruments and car horns attached. You have to wonder what else he does in performance. I hope they threw money at him. -via mental_floss

Two million dollars seems like a lot of money to spend on a half-hour of animation. You could probably do an entire season of He-Man for that. But modern prime-time animated shows are a different class altogether. Several factors set The Simpsons, Family Guy, and other popular shows apart from the kids’ series. Read about those factors at Money Inc and you’ll get a greater appreciation for the care that goes into those shows.

Myles McNutt and Daniel Hubbard are bothered by the way actors use coffee cups on TV, particularly large paper coffee cups that are supposedly filled with hot liquid, but obviously aren’t. They’ve put together a supercut of the most grievous instances in recent TV, with commentary about why it’s so bothersome. Real coffee cups are full, heavy, sloshy, and hot, while what we see on TV is empty paper cups that actors constantly sip from -at the wrong angle. They’ve also created the Empty Cup Awards, with more examples at Instagram.

However, everyone has a pet peeve about TV details. A discussion at Metafilter has many of them: women who’ve just given birth acting as if nothing has happened, eyeglasses with obviously flat lenses, boxes that have no weight, and waking up with perfect makeup.

If you were to do a Google search for Null Island, you’d find it has a website, a Wikipedia entry, a Twitter account, and plenty of maps. That’s pretty impressive -for a place that doesn’t exist. Null Island is a nickname for the spot on the earth where the prime meridian crosses the equator. Its coordinates are 0°N 0°E, meaning it has a longitude of 0 and a latitude of 0. The fictional island was invented by digital cartographers, who map the earth with precise latitude and longitude coordinates. But errors happen.

Unfortunately, due to human typos, messy data, or even glitches in the geocoder itself, the geocoding process doesn’t always run so smoothly. Misspelled street names, non-existent building numbers, and other quirks can create invalid addresses that can confuse a geocoder so that the output becomes “0,0”. While this output indicates that an error occurred, since “0,0” is in fact a location on the Earth’s surface according to the coordinate system, the feature will be mapped there, as nonsensical as the location may be. We end up with an island of misfit data.  

So Null Island ends up as a global version of Joyce Taylor’s Kansas farm, a default location that geographers become rather familiar with. Those who work with geographic information systems know what it means to have your information sent off to Null Island. But just because the island is fictional, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. Read about Null Island at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Ian Cairns)