It's hard to believe, but tomorrow will mark twenty years since Freddie Mercury died. Ochre Jelly pays tribute to the Queen singer with a likeness in LEGO, plus a post about Mercury's life and accomplishments. Warning: autoplay music video. Link

Wired magazine has an article full of tips for making your life better with science, from untangling your earbuds to dunking cookies in milk. The Muppets are there to lend a little levity, but the science behind these things is all real. This includes the physics of splattering spaghetti sauce on your shirt.

One of the occupational hazards of eating pasta is the way it slings sauce on everything around you—shirts, jacket … dates. Physicists creatively named this the spaghetti effect, the tendency of long flexible strands (like spaghetti) to whip side to side when pulled into a container (like your mouth). It’s a mild annoyance at dinner but a real danger in industrial settings where ropes or chains are rapidly pulled to and fro—or at home, when your metal tape measure goes feral. Fortunately, you can tame the noodle. —Judy Dutton

Instructions for better spaghetti-slurping follow. Link

I once considered taking up beekeeping as a hobby, and still might try it when the kids move out. Treehugger has a quick overview of what beekeeping involves. Who knows? It might turn out to be a sweet deal! Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Jaymi Heimbuch)

Siri Cole's pony named Pixie has gone missing from Queen Creek, Arizona. She should be easy to spot in a crowd, even of crowd of ponies, because her mane and tail are bright pink.

Siri Cole runs a unique business, Charming Party Ponies. She owns petite little ponies, available for rent at parties and festivals.

Pixie is a 10-year-old white Welsh pony mare, Cole's prized possession.

"I love her, she's really dear to me," she says. "I really want her back."

Pixie performed Saturday night at a festival offering rides to children. She was put away in her stall about 9 p.m. The next morning, she was nowhere to be found.

Cole believes someone must have taken Pixie. Link -via Arbroath

(YouTube link)

I don't even let my pets do this, and they're family. But a wild animal? Well, I guess it depends on how scary the wild animal is. This raccoon is a pet. His name is Deere. -via Buzzfeed

Here's an idea I can really get behind! Flattr proposes a new holiday -Pay A Blogger Day on November 29th.

Flattr, a startup that seeks to motivate Internet users to pay for content they love, is launching the first Pay a Blogger Day Nov. 29. The team hopes inspired Internet users will send some monetary token of appreciation — by buying a song, ebook, t-shirt or giving them a “Flattr click” — towards their favorite songsters, podcast creators, open-source software developers and bloggers.

“We think that many blogs are insightful and witty and people just expect them to be free even though there are a lot of effort and love put into them,” Flattr co-founder Linus Olsson told Mashable. “It’s about time to try to give them something tangible back, at least one day of the year.”

Olssen knows that bloggers won't get rich, but it may provide some needed encouragement.

“If you’re an amateur blogger and get one beer from your readers it could be the best beer you ever had,” Olsson says.

Link to story. http://www.payablogger.org/ to website.

The illustration on the cover of the Thanksgiving issue of The New Yorker magazine shows the Pilgrims immigrating to their new homeland. It's called “Promised Land” by Christoph Niemann. Link

Before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, the Calvinist group spent about ten years in the Dutch town of Leiden. You probably don't know much about what happened to them there. Historian Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs spent years piecing the story together, and has documented his findings in a new book. Meanwhile, you can taker a photographic tour of Leiden and the places that the Pilgrims lived, worked, met, and worshiped, at Smithsonian. Shown here is the Church of St. Louis, which served as a guildhall during the time of the Pilgrims. Link

(Image credit: Leiden American Pilgrim Museum)

Yep, that just about says it all. Don't forget the whipped topping! From Jeff Wysaski at Pleated Jeans. Link -via Buzzfeed

Check out this collection of posters made for classrooms in the 1970s. The captions have been removed, and newer (and funnier) captions attached by Michael Roberts of Denver Westword. The caption for the above image is "I'll bet I can make big bucks selling those chemicals on the side."



This image has the new caption, "I'd do a helluva lot better in this job than he would -- and be paid 60 percent of his salary."

Link -via Boing Boing

When you have a 3-year-old son and a one-year-old son, you try your best to keep an eye on them at all times. However, Mom was in the bathroom a little longer than usual, and these two found the new bag of flour. See the entire sequence caught on video at NeatoBambino. Link

As it turns out, nature has its own method for transplanting stem cells. When a pregnant mouse has a heart attack, her fetus goes to work to help repair the damage! The experiment mated female lab mice with males who had the genes to produce green fluorescent protein (GFP). Around half the embryos produced also had the ability to produce the protein. This way, scientists could track fetal cells separately from maternal cells. Then heart attacks were induced in the pregnant mice.

When the scientists examined the female mice’s heart tissue two weeks after the heart attacks, they found lots of glowing green tissue—cells that came from the fetus—in the mom’s heart. Mice who had heart attacks had eight times as many cells from the fetus in their hearts as mice who hadn’t had a heart attack did, meaning the high volume of fetal cells was a response to the heart attack.

What’s more, the embryo’s stem cells had differentiated into various types of heart tissue, including  cardiomyocytes, the rhythmically contracting muscle cells that produce a heartbeat.

Doctors have observed that women who experience weakness of the heart during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth have better recovery rates than any other group of heart failure patients. This study suggests that fetal stem cells may help human mothers, as well as mice, recover from heart damage. It may also explain another curious clinical observation: The hearts of two women who suffered from severe heart weakness were later found to contain cells derived from the cells of a male fetus years after they gave birth to their sons.

Link -via reddit

This whimsical store appeared in downtown Pittsburgh on November 18th. The sign on the door says the owners are on vacation, but that just covers the fact that this is an art installation by Toby Atticus Fraley.

The installation is part of the "Pop Up Pittsburgh" project designed to brighten vacant storefronts in downtown Pittsburgh. Along with a warmly lit inviting interior there are also a couple of animatronic robots giving some movement and interest to the installation.  It will have a year long run at 210 6th St.

See lots more pictures and read about the fictional repair shop's services at the "business" website. Link -Thanks, Toby!

(YouTube link)

Oskar the kitten may have been born blind, but things are looking up for him! Watch him in his new home, discovering what toys are for. We saw a slightly older Oskar in a video last month, playing with the wind from a hair dryer. That turned out to be a copy of the original video (now corrected) which did not explain that Oskar is blind. -via I Am Bored

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These two siblings found a toy on the floor and made appropriate use of it! The WWE would find themselves some stiff competition if this were to catch on. -via Buzzfeed