I have never, ever worked anywhere where the boss decided it was a good idea to have an office pet. Some offices have aquariums, but that’s always just a decoration for clients or customers. However, over the past few years (while I’ve been working from home), many office managers are exploring ways to make the workday more pleasant for their staff. Whether this is to increase production or to make employees deal better with the fact that they haven’t had a raise in years is anyone’s guess. If you decide to try this, your best bets are aquarium fish or a cat. Don’t opt for an alligator snapping turtle. -via Tastefully Offensive
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Marc Polet and his wife were out on their farm in Belgium when a wild boar approached at breakneck speed and attacked! But then their miniature ponies spring into action and chase the boar off. That’s a good pony. Those who speak French say the commentary is quite amusing, but outside of a couple of familiar epithets, I can’t understand a word. Therefore, this may contain NSFW language in French. -via Viral Viral Videos
You’d be a little peeved if someone interrupted you while making sweet love. It’s the same with the giant tortoises on Assumption Island. National Geographic expedition leader Paul Rose is in the Seychelles right now. When he goes to see what’s making that sound, it breaks the romance of the moment, so to speak. The angry tortoise leaps into action to chase the intruder away. I guess he told Rose what's what, and good riddance! When he’s finally driven the interloper out of his territory, he returns to his lovely lady. He should be there in, oh, about an hour. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
The gentle tale of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger gets mashed up with Ridley Scott’s Alien in a new tale by Giant Hamburger. Pooh’s reaction to a face hugger latching onto his snout: “Oh, Bother.” Things progress from there in the manner you would imagine, with frequent stops for smaller stories wedged into intermissions. There’s even a cameo appearance by the Predator. Start here to read it all, and choose the largest size you can to see all the gory details. -via b3ta
The literal meaning of “dinosaur” is “terrible lizard.” And these dinosaurs in the latest video from Joel Veitch, Alex Mallinson, and David Shute of Rathergood are certainly terrible. The species are all dinosaurs that really existed, but if they are anything those portrayed in this video, they would never have survived as long as they did. The lizards might be terrible, but the animation is rather good. -via b3ta
This LEGO stop-motion video is an abridged version of Jurassic Park with all the major action scenes plus a few snarky bits of humor thrown in. The sets are huge and ingtricately-detailed, and the special effects are cool (note the skeleton in the electic fence scene). Paul Hollingsworth of Digital Wizards and his 8-year-old daughter Hailee started working on this project over Christmas vacation, and enlisted all their friends to contribute their talents. The story of how they did it is in the behind-the-scenes video. -via Metafilter
It’s a story told in notes taped to the office refrigerator. The turkey and swiss sandwich is missing, and the thief is holding it hostage. The notes become more ridiculous and desperate, and Human Resources even steps in to try and stop the carnage. It probably never would have escalated if Turkey and Swiss on Rye (the victim) hadn’t used Comic Sans for an office note. That can really grind your gears. This sequence was played out at the College Humor office. See the whole thing here, with a priceless punchline. -via mental_floss
Randall Munroe of xkcd fashioned a scatterplot graph to compare mysteries in both their overall weirdness and their explainability. However, people will still argue over what the explanation is. Most people look at the Loch Ness Monster mystery and say “pareidolia,” while a few folks just know there’s dinosaurs in the lake. The makeup of the graph will change over time. Some day, the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will swing from the upper right to the lower middle. The tale of how the graph came to be is in the hovertext at xkcd.
Aerobatic pilot Sebb Stratta takes full advantage of his job by sharing it with his friends. Want to go for a plane ride? Get ready for spins, loops, and strangely-moving horizons! Plus, he has a dash cam ready to catch their reactions. It’s a thrill they will remember fondly -after they are safely on the ground. -via Viral Viral Videos
A truck carrying 6,800 kilograms of live catfish spilled its load Tuesday when a door swung open in Guizhou province, China. Tons of fish covered the road in the Kaili Development Zone. But the incident did not end with a call to a hazmat crew, or people carrying fish home with them.
According to NetEase, firemen were dispatched to the scene and with local residents' help, the fish were eventually reloaded onto the truck.
The truck was ready to carry the fish to its destination after two hours of "rescue", which pretty much just involved spraying the road fish with water and plopping them into buckets.
There were no reports of any looted fish. But there are plenty of pictures.
(Image credit: NetEase)
Over 500 students were expelled from high school in Patna, Bihar, India, over a two day period for cheating on their class ten board exams. The results of the tests determine high school graduation and are often also used for college admission. A photograph taken during one exam session showed friends and family members outside the windows, ready to pass notes to test-takers. Education minister PK Shahi says it is impossible to conduct fair exam without the cooperation of parents.
He appealed to parents to not indulge in such practices but said reports of cheating in exams were common in all parts of the country, not just Bihar, adding that chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh and police chief PK Thakur had been asked to further tighten arrangements.
Around 1.43 million students are appearing for the class 10 state board examinations this year at 1,217 centres, many of which are allotted a large number of students without commensurate infrastructure to accommodate them. The school-leaving examinations are marked by violence and wide-spread use of unfair means that include parents and friends writing answers for examinees, often guarded by armed men.
In addition to the expulsions, seven parents were arrested for helping their children cheat on the test.
On-the-spot news reporters are always close to the action, and therein lies danger. Every once in a while, a reporter slips or gets knocked down live on air. Once we find out they are not seriously injured, it’s funny because the embarrassment is so public, Then, we you put all those clips together, we see news reporters as an endangered species because of their clumsiness and proximity to calamity. -via Tastefully Offensive
In one of the world's biggest caves, a scientist gets in over her head.
(Image credit: Robbie Shone)
TONGZI, CHINA, 2011—Deep inside the mountain, we hear the sound of a river. The four of us—all researchers who study caves—are exploring Quankou Dong, or Big Spring Cave, in a remote, mountainous part of China, just south of Chengdu.
The “big spring” is a river that runs through a passageway from one end of the enormous cave to the other. Along the way, it churns into class 4 rapids. Hours earlier, we’d entered through a dry passage. Now, it’s full of water, rising fast.
The cave’s entrance is stunning: 100 feet wide, 300 feet high. Once inside, you pass through Cloud Ladder Hall, a 16-acre room so high it has its own weather system. One of the largest cave chambers in the world, it rises more than 1200 feet, though its roof is typically hidden by clouds.
We first went inside Quankou Dong in 2008, after it’d been discovered the year before, and we had been back several times. On one occasion, I slipped on a rock, fell in, and got tossed around in the rapids! It wasn’t funny at the time—class 4 rapids are very difficult to maneuver and can be incredibly dangerous—but my colleagues and I laugh about it now.
This year, we’re undertaking an epic 24-hour exploration. Since you can’t rent a car in Tongzi, we pay a driver 300 yuan to drop us off and then pick us up the following day. We’re wearing kneepads, wind-resistant PVC suits, and helmets equipped with powerful caving lights. Our packs are full of climbing equipment. Around 2 p.m., we arrive at the mouth of the cave.
Matt Stopera of Buzzfeed became an accidental internet celebrity in China. It all started when his iPhone was stolen, but was still connected to Stopera’s cloud storage. Odd photos of a man and his orange trees were showing up. Stopera found out about the cloud storage connection, and figured out the pictures were coming from the new phone owner, most likely in China. So he disconnected the phone from his account, and though nothing else of it. Except that he wrote a post about it.
That story became a hit on Weibo, China’s big social network. Users all over the country became determined to find the man with the orange trees. Meanwhile, Stopera became a huge Weibo celebrity. The story builds gradually, but the upshot is that Stopera is in China right now. As you can see, they put the "welcome matt" out for him. Read the whole account in this post. -via Metafilter
The character Indiana Jones was first introduced to us as he was looting a sacred cave and ends up having to run for his life. That told us the basics about the character in an almost-wordless sequence while we were being entertained at the same time. Cinefix gives us an inside look at the scene’s background and the reasons it works so well. The soundtrack, cinematography, production design, and special effects all had to mesh perfectly to create the scene we all know and love that opens the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. -Thanks, Daniel Portolan!
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