Rob Cockerham went around to everyone he kows who decorates with Christmas lights, using his Kill-a-watt meter to calculate how much they spend to light them up. The result is a three-page explanation that boils down to this: the energy used by Christmas lights doesn't cost much. The house shown is extravagantly but tastefully decorated with icicle lights.
This is probably the most lights you can have on your house without having strangers stop to take photos. They are all incandescent mini-lights and use a total of 724 watts. That's about 1 horsepower in energy use, which costs about 9¢ per hour.
Of course, the price of energy by kilowatt varies by location, but you may be able to find an example that compares to your lights. Link
The Nightjar bar in Hoxton, East London, England, had a cocktail on its online menu called the Moby Dick. One of the ingredients was listed as "whaleskin infusion." The ingredient means a small strip of whaleskin that was soaked in a bottle of Scotch whisky. But that small strip is illegal.
There is a Europe-wide ban on the sale of whale meat and products, except under strict restrictions in Greenland and Denmark.
Police were tipped-off in October that the bar was serving whale skin illegally, and raided the City Road premises on December 3.
It was carried out by officers from the Met's Wildlife Crime Unit and an officer from the United Kingdom Border Force.
"One item from the premises was seized," said a police spokesman. "This has been sent for analysis."
No arrests have been made.
The whaleskin was purchased in Japan last year by an employee of the bar, which has issued an apology. The drink has been removed from the menu. Link -via Arbroath
Twitter lit up with pictures yesterday when a monkey wearing a warm winter coat was spotted all alone in the IKEA parking lot in Toronto.
At around 3 p.m. ET, the diminutive primate was spotted in the store’s upper parking lot, where it was cornered by several Ikea staff members, who also called animal control to come retrieve the monkey.
“It apparently let itself out of its crate, opened the car door and went for a walk,” Toronto Police Sgt. Ed Dzingala said. “Smart monkey.”
Toronto Animal Services took custody of the monkey, and its owner came to claim him. However, as it is prohibited animal, the owner went home with a $240 fine instead of the monkey. Link -via Metafilter
Here's five minutes of a bulldog puppy named Tebow learning to walk. He keeps up a steady conversation about it. That's all that happens, but since you came here for cute and cuddly creatures, you'll get plenty of that! -Thanks, Scott and Shannon Lathrop!
Are you stressed out? Looking at cute baby animals might make you relax a bit, and will surely make you smile. Bored Panda rounded up 30 of the cutest photographs of different species in their babyhoods, including this tiny hamster. If you need an excuse to go see them all, tell yourself you're learning to identify animal species. That'll do. Link -via the Presurfer
A new baby elephant was born Friday at the Oregon Zoo. The calf, a female, is doing fine so far. But animal rights activists discovered that although the mother belongs to the zoo, the actual owner of the yet-unnamed baby is the private elephant ranch Have Trunk Will Travel. That discovery sparked such an outcry that the zoo felt compelled to call a press conference.
Why the outcry? Coincidentally or not, the Seattle Times published an investigative series the same weekend the yet-to-be-named calf took her first bites of hay. The series’ thesis: pachyderms in captivity die way too often. And one of those stories was about this particular baby, the offspring of Rose-Tu (mom) and Tusko (dad.) About how that baby might be yanked away from her big gray loving mom at some point and shipped off to do tricks for Have Trunk Will Travel, which animal-rights activists accuse of abusing elephants. Turns out, Have Trunk Will Travel actually owns that little baby elephant, Rumpelstiltskin style. The company also owns Rose-Tu’s fourth offspring, and her sixth. And that means the company has the right to take her away.
The agreement came about because Have Trunk Will Travel owns the baby's father, Tusko, which was loaned to the zoo for its breeding program. The show may never claim her, but activists don't want to take any chances. Read more about the complicated deal at The Daily Beast. Link
Family is family, no matter how nutty they are. Christmas family togetherness is accurately described in "The Season's Upon Us," the first single from the new Dropkick Murphys album SIGNED and SEALED in BLOOD. The album will be released January 8th. -via Daily of the Day
In 1960, British architect Geoffrey Alan Jellicoe proposed the city of the future for suburban London. Motopia was to be a residential town with all roadways elevated to the tops of the buildings. The ground was to be reserved for pedestrians -with moving sidewalks. He even had plans to insulate the overhead roadways to stifle traffic noise!
Planned for construction about 17 miles west of London with an estimated cost of about $170 million, Motopia was a bold—if somewhat impractical plan—for a city built from the ground up. The town was envisioned as being able to have a population of 30,000, all living in a grid-pattern of buildings with an expanse of rooftop motorways in the sky. There would be schools, shops, restaurants, churches and theaters all resting on a total footprint of about 1,000 acres.
The biggest draw of the plan was that people never had to worry about being hit by a car. However, we all know that some drivers don't stay on the roadway, and being squashed by a falling car is even more terrifying than being hit by one. Motopia was never built, but you can read more about what could have been at Paleofuture. Link
One can assume these quotes must really have a deep meaning, as least for the one person who decided to keep each one forever. The tat shown is from Catcher in the Rye. I hope she recalls the meaning behind it long enough to explain it to her grandchildren. See more literary quotes as tattoos at Flavorwire. Link
Does the name Howard Schultz ring a bell? He's the guy who figured out how to get you to pay $4.50 for a 75¢ cup of coffee.
TALL ORDER
In the early 1980s, a Swedish plastics company called Hammarplast sold plastic coffee filters that fit over a thermos. One day in 1981, one of the company's salesmen, 27-year-old Howard Schultz, happened to notice that a small Seattle coffee roasting company called Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spices bought more of the coffee filters than the Macy's department store chain did. Why?, Schultz wondered. And who would bother making coffee using such a tedious method when an automatic drip coffeemaker could do it all at the push of a button?
Schultz was so intrigued that he made a trip out to Seattle just to have a look at the company. He visited Starbucks' retail store in the historic Pike Place Market, where they sold fresh-roasted coffee beans by the pound and coffee-making supplies… but no coffee drinks or any other beverages by the cup. Schultz took a tour of the roasting plant and met the company's co-founders, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. He also drank some of the darkest, strongest coffee he'd ever had.
A FRESH START
Schultz decided right then that he wanted to work for Starbucks; but convincing Baldwin and Bowker to hire him took a little more time. It wasn't until about a year later, when they were planning to open the company's sixth store and the first one outside of Seattle, that they agreed to take Schultz on as director of retail operations and marketing. Even then he had a vision of building Starbucks into a regional and later a national chain, but like Baldwin and Bowker, he saw the company as a retailer of coffee beans that people would buy to make coffee in their own homes.
Then in the spring of 1983, Schultz made a trip to Milan, Italy, to attend a housewares convention. He decided to walk from his hotel to the convention center. On the way he passed four coffee bars, each one of them overflowing with people who were lined up to buy espressos, cappuccinos, lattes, mochas, and other exotic drinks.
The German design studio asdfg architekten wrapped reflective bands around a smokestack in Kassel, Germany. The five bands reflect the sky around it, creating the illusion that the upper sections of the chimney are floating. See more pictures at designboom. Link -via The Daily What
Mark Dos Santos created a series of prints evoking the style of Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers, except this is the Gotham Evening Post and the subjects are Batman characters! Some are available at for sale, and you can see large versions at Buzzfeed. Link
When you tell the bakery what you want on the cake, there's always the possibility that they will jot down every word you say. It's always best to write it down yourself, which is difficult over the phone, or even by text. Cake Wrecks has nine such literal cakes in the latest collection. Yes, these are just the latest submissions, because this sort of thing happens all the time. Link
Dr. Peter Terren of Bunbury, Australia, went all out for Christmas a couple of years ago with a Christmas bike with the "world's most powerful bicycle lights."
At around the same brightness as 10 standard car headlights, it is far too bright to be allowed on the road. Peter explains that he has used the latest modern light emitting diode technology. These LEDs are a huge 100 watts each and he uses 18 of them, each with it's own cooling fan. The resulting 100,000 lumens of light power is many times more powerful than any other bike light and is being considered by Guinness World Records. Put another way, it is like having 5000 small LED flashlights on your bike. But hey, there's more! Peter has included coloured LEDs to enable any combination of colours from the front or rear lights.
Not exactly what Santa needs to stealthily sneak into your home on Christmas Eve, but it will for sure spread Christmas cheer -and wake the neighbors! See more pictures at Tesla Down Under. Link-Thanks, Peter!
A cheese called pule will set you back £800 per kilogram. In pounds and dollars, that's a lot of money. Pule is produced at one farm in Zasavica, Serbia, where it is made from donkey milk.
It is said to take 25 litres of fresh donkey milk to make a single kilogram of the cheese, which the reserve claims is the most expensive in the world.
The white, crumbly cheese has been described as similar to Spanish manchego cheese, but with a deeper, richer taste.
