Last week, Australian teenager Matt Corby uploaded a photograph showing an 11-inch Subway sandwich. The original Facebook post has since been deleted, but Subway did respond to Corby.

"Hi, Matt. Thanks for writing. Looking at this photo, this bread is not baked to our standards," Subway wrote on Thursday in response to his post.

"We have policies in place to ensure that our fresh baked bread is consistent and has the same great taste no matter which Subway restaurant around the world you visit. We value your feedback and want to thank you again for being a fan."

If it were just one sandwich, the picture probably would not have gone viral, but apparently it touched a nerve with sub sandwich eaters. Quite a few other Facebook users posted similar pictures of a Subway footlong as 11 inches or a bit less. By the time Subway Australia responded in the comments of this Facebook post, they could no longer pretend it was an isolated incident.



So if a Subway Footlong®  is not intended to be a measurement of length, does the same logic apply to a 6-inch sandwich, which is made from cutting a Footlong® in half? And is the ® symbol a new version of "quote" marks in that when you see them, you automatically think that it doesn't mean what the words say?

I have not seen a picture of a 13 inch sandwich, at least not yet. A quick survey of New York City sandwiches found four out of seven at 11 or 11.5 inches.

Some say that the internet uproar over an inch of sandwich is silly. Others point out some of the greater implications of the controversy:

1. Will it still be silly when next year, the Footlong® is only ten inches? Or nine?
2. What if we decided the dollars we pay for the sandwiches are not intended to be a measurement of money?
3. Would it be silly to complain if a gallon of gas were to become 10% smaller?

So what do you think -is this a tempest in a teapot or a place where customers should draw the line?

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The backyard figured if the cats have so much fun with this little red dot, they can, too! -via Daily of the Day

Reed Rothchild came up with a recipe to combine "the three the things that are most important in my life, bacon, steak, and tacos." The Steako is a taco that uses a steak instead of a taco shell. And not just any steak -one with bacon weaved through it. The filling has both ground beef and bacon in it, and everything is cooked in bacon grease. Add butter, sour cream, cheese, and salsa and you have a real heart attack special! See the process of making this carnivore's delight at Cooking with Reed. Link -via Foodbeast

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This is the official video from the band Psychostick. Link  -via b3ta

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Fletcher had never seen snow before. He is surprised and puzzled, but immediately takes full advantage of the fun things you can do with snow. Taste it! Dig it! Throw it! Run in it! Jump in it! Find joy in it! -via reddit

P.S. The reddit thread makes it clear this was recorded in the UK, where they believe a couple of inches is a lot of snow and businesses shut down. Scandinavians puzzle over that, while Americans tell stories of how different states handle snow.

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YouTube member BONKx4 has lots of videos of his cats, Sgt. Grumbles and SoySauce. This one was picked up by GoPro, as it shows the kitties playing from a variety of camera POVs, including what I believe is sequence from a camera strapped to his head. Warning: Skrillex soundtrack. -via b3ta

Eartha Kitsch found a dollhouse for sale at eBay that was manufactured in 1962. That was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis and shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Americans were naturally concerned with the possibility of nuclear attack, and many people built fallout shelters. While most real shelters were underground, that was impractical in a dollhouse, so this one is just off the kitchen. No wonder the model didn't sell well, and is now considered rare! See more pictures at the blog Ranch Dressing. Link -via b3ta

By now, you've probably heard about Lance Armstrong admitting to doping on The Oprah Winfrey Show that aired yesterday. But Armstrong's is hardly the most entertaining of sports cheating stories. A few from history stand out because of the stupidity, the cleverness, or the sheer audacity of the schemes -until they were caught. Did you know about the brothers who ran a marathon as a tag team?

In 1999, brothers Fika and Sergio decided to enter the 56 mile Comrades race in South Africa … as one contestant. While they weren’t twins, they did look an awful lot alike. Fika started the race while his brother hid in a portable toilet miles away. They switched places and Sergio ran the middle section of the race while Fika rested and then took over on the last leg. Despite their ingenious plan, they still only came in ninth place.

See if you can spot the difference between the brothers in the picture. Read the rest of their story, and those of four others, at mental_floss. Link

(Image source: Katy Walkers)

Satellite images can tell researchers where penguins nest even when the birds are hard to see,  because they leave a lot of penguin poop. One such image pointed to a huge, previously unknown colony of thousands of Emperor penguins. So Antarctic scientist Alain Hubert took a team out to find them.

They finally came upon the colony at 11 p.m. on December 3, when the sun was still shining during the Antarctic summer. Spread out on the ice were 9,000 emperor penguins, about three-quarters of them chicks. Despite his polar experience, Hubert had never seen a full colony before. "You can approach them," he said. "When you talk to them, it's like they are listening to you."

The penguin colony had selected a nesting ground on an area of ice that is less likely to melt than many spots they could have chosen, which is good news for future generations of Emperor penguins. Link

(Image credit: International Polar Foundation)

Emmylou Cakehead organized an all-cake promotion for the DVD release of the movie The Helpers. The pictures you are about to see recreate a grisly murder scene -all done in edible cake (well, a few items are cookies). The fairly innocuous photo above may look like Chinese takeout, but it's all cake, made by Nevie Pie.

Nevie Pie also made the pizza, which is a cookie. The rest are on the next page, if you care to delve into the more explicit parts of the murder scene. The details of the cakes are incredible, but be warned that the effect is pretty gory. Look at your own risk.

Russell George was driving in Prestbury, South Africa, when he noticed a police van swerving. The officer would come to a stop and start off again, leading George to believe the driver was drunk.

George decided it would be best to call 10111. He was told the police would be there shortly.
“After five minutes, no one had arrived. So I jumped out of my car and I approached the driver’s side and asked him to come out. He looked at me and I could smell that he had been drinking.
“I asked him again, and he refused.
“I then grabbed his keys, pulled him out and locked him in the back of his own van,” George said.
He added that the police van was badly damaged, as if it had been involved in an accident.

The inebriated police officer was arrested and his firearm was taken away. There had been a report earlier that same evening of the cop pulling a gun on his girlfriend at a nightclub, and a motor vehicle collision in which witnesses reported a police van that had left the scene. The unnamed officer did not deny being drunk. Link  -via Arbroath     

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Shortest Film is a very short film by John Elerick. The credits are another story. They are very long, but probably the only credits you'll see this year that are worth reading at all -unless, of course, you're in them. -via Laughing Squid

For hundreds of thousands of years, several species of humans existed at the same time: the Neanderthals, the Denisovans, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, and possibly others we don't know about. An essay at io9 compares the speciation of early humans with the different aliens in the world of Star Trek. Now this might seem silly on the surface, but bear with me. The Star Trek franchise began in 1966, before computers made special effects aliens possible, and they had a limited budget anyway, so all the aliens from different galaxies were human-shaped, with only slight differences in prothetic makeup to distinguish them -and they could even interbreed. Six TV series, a dozen films, and five decades later, that trope continues. The series tried to explain it away in an episode of Star Trek: TNG called "The Chase" in which the connections between all the humanoid aliens are explained by a common ancestor, who left a message:

We knew that one day we would be gone, and nothing of us would survive - so we left you. Our scientists seeded the primordial oceans of many worlds, where life was in its infancy. The seed codes directed your evolution toward a physical form resembling ours: this body you see before you, which is of course shaped as yours is shaped, for you are the end result. The seed codes also contain this message, which is scattered in fragments on many different worlds.

The episode was deemed ridiculous and universally hated by fans. But it led Annalee Newitz to consider the possible analogies that could be made about early humans and their separate evolutionary histories. The different species of early humans all arose from Africa, but left the continent for other parts of the world at different times.

When one species splits into two or more, that's called speciation. Usually it happens when two groups of the same species are separated for long enough that they evolve to the point where they are no longer able to produce offspring. The big question is, were groups like erectus and the Neanderthals another species, or were they humans who just had facial and body structures that were different from modern humans? There is now a lot of DNA evidence that Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. So it's likely that all three groups were, in fact, the same species. But we still know almost nothing about Homo erectus, and are similarly in the dark when it comes to the Hobbits and other hominin groups that are still being discovered. It's possible that Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals, Vulcan/Romulan style, but couldn't interbreed with Homo erectus.

Whether human evolution is actually anything like a reverse-engineered explanation for economically-designed extraterrestrials is hard to say, but the essay and the points it raises about our ancestors on earth is a "fascinating" read. Link

Back when we were in preschool, there were only a handful of sensible options for the career-minded 4-year-old: doctor, plumber, fireman and astronaut. Clearly, had we heard about "sin-eating" or any of these other fine ways to make a living, we would have eaten more paste and focused a little less on our permanent records.

1. Filibuster

Long before the term "filibuster" came to be associated with elected officials, it was actually associated with violence and trickery. (Wait a second ...) In the 1600s, pirates known to the Dutch as vrijbuiters pillaged the West Indies, and eventually, the word was assimilated into the English language as "filibusters." Between 1850 and 1860, the name was used to refer to the American mercenaries who attempted to revolutionize Central America and the Spanish West Indies. The most famous of these filibusters was William Walker, a U.S. citizen who succeeded in gaining control of Nicaragua in 1856 by overthrowing the nation's administration. Walker became president of Nicaragua, but only until May 1, 1857, when a coalition of Central American states ousted him. Because filibusters of previous centuries strove to interfere with foreign regimes, the term evolved to refer to anyone who attempted to obstruct the government, as our legislators occasionally see fit to do when a particularly troublesome bill comes before them.

2. Lungs

Perhaps the cruelest case of naming irony in history, anyone employed to fan the fire in an alchemist's workshop was known as a "lungs." And because most alchemists were constantly trying to make gold out of lead and other such base metals, you can only imagine what kinds of dangerous materials were floating about in the labs. As a result, the actual lungs on a lungs gave out relatively quickly, leading to a profession with widespread early retirement.

3. Sin-Eater

In the words of Vice President John Nace Garner, the vice presidency "isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss." That may be true, buit the characters who've held the job are definitely worth a few good pages of trivia. Join Neatorama and mental_floss in toasting 10 backup plans that made this country great.

1. Chester Arthur: Garfield's VP

Chester Arthur took office under the thickest cloud of suspicion. As a lieutenant in Senator Roscoe Conkling's political machine, Arthur held one of the most lucrative positions in government—collector for the port of New York. For seven years, Arthur raked in approximately $40,000 annually (about $700,000 today), running a corrupt spoils system for thousands of payroll employees. With so much money and power, Arthur developed an affinity for fancy clothes and earned the nickname "the Gentleman Boss." But his luck didn't last. President Rutherford Hayes eventually stepped in and fired him from the post.

Even with the kickback scandal and claims that he'd been born in Canada (which should've disqualified him for the vice presidency), Arthur still managed to get elected on James Garfield's 1880 ticket. After Garfield passed away 199 days into his presidency, Arthur didn't hesitate to sign the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Much to the chagrin of Conkling, the Act revamped civil service by effectively killing the same patronage system that made Arthur very, very rich. In cleaning up civil service, Arthur also cleaned up his reputation, and he exited the White House a hero.

2. William Rufus de Vane King: Franklin Pierce's VP

William R. King was sworn into office in Cuba, becoming the only executive officer to take the oath on foreign soil. King had gone to Cuba to recuperate from tuberculosis and severe alcoholism, but it didn't work. He died in 1853 after being vice president for just 25 days.

That might not be the most memorable thing about King, though. It's widely rumored that the former VP was homosexual. Further still, he's suspected of being James Buchanan's lover. Neither King nor Buchanan ever married, and they lived together in Washington for 15 years before Buchanan became president. Of course, King's predilection for wearing scarves and wigs only fanned the rumors. President Andrew Jackson used to call him "Miss Nancy," and Aaron Brown, a fellow Southern Democrat, dubbed him "Aunt Fancy."

3. Henry Wallace: FDR's 2nd VP

Henry Wallace was a dedicated devotee of Eastern mysticism. While serving as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in the 1930s, he allegedly sent his guru to Mongolia under the pretense of collecting grasses that could withstand drought. In reality, Wallace was diverting funds to help his guru hunt for evidence that Christ had visited Asia.

But it wasn't Wallace's spiritual beliefs that landed him America's No. 2 job. Wallace was a big Franklin Roosevelt fan and supported his entire platform, which is why Roosevelt handpicked him as his third-term running mate in 1940. Wallace wasn't popular with the Democratic Party, but when Roosevelt made it clear he wouldn't run without him, the party acquiesced.

As vice president, Wallace made many international goodwill trips. Most famously, he traveled to the Soviet Union, where he experienced a political transformation that resulted in him becoming an avowed Soviet apologist. His communist leanings did nothing for his image, especially once he became secretary of commerce under President Truman. In 1948, Wallace unsuccessfully ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket, espousing views that sounded shockingly Marxist. He even described corporations as "midget Hitlers" attempting to crush the labor class.