Got a calendar? Circle this date: Sunday, August 12th. Next to the circle write "all night" and "Meteors!" Attach the above to your refrigerator in plain view so you won't miss the 2007 Perseid meteor shower.

"It's going to be a great show," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "The Moon is new on August 12th--which means no moonlight, dark skies and plenty of meteors." How many? Cooke estimates one or two Perseids per minute at the shower's peak.

The annual Perseid meteor shower is caused by the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle intersecting Earth’s orbit. For the best view, go somewhere away from city lights. And if you stay up late enough, you’ll get a good view of Mars rising the same night! Link -via J-Walk Blog

A plane crashed and caught on fire near the Ft. Lauderdale airport. The three occupants walked away uninjured, but two squirrels on the ground suffered burns and broken bones. They were taken to the local Wildlife Care Center for treatment, and are expected to make a full recovery. http://keyetv.com/watercooler/watercooler_story_215231718.html (with video) -via Fark

A fuel truck delivered 397 gallons of oil to the home of Nyoka Young in New Windsor, New York. The problem was that Young did not order the oil, and in fact has no oil tank. She was not home at the time, so the delivery man pumped the oil into a nonworking fill pipe from a previous tank, flooding the basement. It was an address mistake. Young and her son are staying in a hotel while the oil company pays for a cleanup. Young has been trying to sell the house, which may be difficult now. Link -via Arbroath

This Japanese animation is cute and sappy, and it made me cry. Link -via the Presurfer

Twin tiger cubs were born May 31st at the Tianjin Zoo in China. Because of a very rare genetic occurance, one tiger cub is yellow and the other is white! Link -via Fark

It’s a big, moon-shaped lightbox you can use indoors or outside. Go to English Russia for more intriguing photos of Your Personal Moon in use.
Link -via Reddit

This place, supposedly an information center, needs a motto: “You got questions? We’ve got question marks!” Found at Bits and Pieces.

You’ve seen some of these animals here and there; you’ve even seen some on Neatorama. Here are 24 of the world’s strangest creatures all together, with a bit of explanation about each. This one? It’s a bunny rabbit. Link -via the Presurfer

Forever Geek posted a list of the ten worst science fiction TV shows ever. You may not remember them all (for good reasons), so there is video evidence for each. And of course, more suggestions in the comments. Link -via Cynical-C

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially to someone who needs to use the facilities and doesn’t know the local language. Here’s a collection of clever male and female door signs from around the world. Link -via the Presurfer

Vivien Reynolds put up a plastic eagle owl in her barn to scare off birds. The idea didn’t quite work, as a swallow found it the perfect place to build a nest and raise a family. Link -via Arbroath

Charley is a cute and obviously well-loved cat who has cerebellar hypoplasia. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Reddit

These photographs of rocks that look like faces are pretty weird, but the last one is just amazing! Link -via Dump Trumpet

Matt Bailey uses Star Trek to teach analytics. In this example, he tackles the “red shirt” phenomenon. Part of his data:

* Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)
* Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)
* Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4
* Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)

So, the basic segmentation of factors allows us to confirm that red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.

He then goes into an in-depth analysis, with the conclusion that red shirts are more likely to survive when Captain Kirk finds a love interest. Link -via Metafilter

The results of San Jose State University's 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are in. Jim Gleason of Wisconsin beat out thousands of entrants for the honor of having written the worst opening sentence for a novel. Here’s his entry:

Gerald began--but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash--to pee.

The runners-up and the winners in various subcategories are also amazingly convoluted. The contest has been held every year since 1982, and was named in honor of notoriously bad writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Link