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You go, girl! This 600 meter sprint was part of the 2008 Big Ten Indoor Track and Field Championships. Heather Dorniden of Minnesota went into the race as the favorite, but the odds changed along the way. -via TYWKIWDBI

Afniel has an intriguing but simple method of drawing fantasy maps starting with absolutely nothing. She presents it as a way to get children interested in cartography, because the results look quite like real maps. Well, it might get an adult interested in world-building as well! The map shown looks a bit like western Europe, don't you  think? Link -Thanks, Charis Michelsen!

Well, who am I to argue with a claim like that? It's better to spend your time just looking at them! Link

(Image credit: Flickr user tom hartley)

In case you are too young to remember, macramé owls were all the rage about 40 years ago. Now rarely spotted and near the brink of extinction, there is an organization dedicated to saving this cultural landmark.

This organisation is dedicated to saving, rehabilitating and reviving the Macramé Owl.

The Macramé Owl is a rare species that is dreadfully declining in numbers worldwide. This heartbreaking situation is partly due to the difficulty in finding jute at local craft shops. It is further exacerbated by a lack of a sense of humour in humans for the sake of Seriousity.

Learn about owl watching, macrame owl hoots, the different variety of owls, and what you can do to save them. Link -via Laughing Squid

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Three astronauts touch down after being cryogenically frozen for years during their space flight. This is a choose-your-own-adventure type video, where you select what happens next. Of course, if you are like me, the premise will immediately remind you of a certain Charleton Heston film from the early '70s. -via the Presurfer

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The Lego version of CSI is a lot like the real thing, bad puns and all, but the gore is plastic. -via Laughing Squid

We've posted about some extremely unsafe toys here. the one that came to mind immediately when I saw the title of this Cracked post was the Atomic Energy Lab, and it's included. But the others are just as shockingly dangerous! However, I remember some of them from my own childhood, the childhood with no seat belts or bicycle helmets or minimum age for babysitting. Shown here is a kit for children to learn how to melt and mold their own lead, which could not only burn a hole through flesh, but poison your brain as well. NSFW text. Link

I wouldn't exactly call it narcissism, but animals like to look at their reflections just like people do. And when a photographer is there to capture the moment, you get double the subjects! See 16 photographs of animals and their reflections in water in a gallery at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user ucumari)

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Flula Borg is German buts lives in Los Angeles and finds that English idioms make no sense. If you are at work, be warned that the audio has the word "bastard." Continue to see more of Flula's videos. -via The Daily What

Leslie Hall is the Quality Assurance Industrial Specialist for Tabasco Sauce. That means she tastes the hot Tabasco brand sauce all day, every day. It's her job.

“I like it hot! I’m a Louisiana girl,” she smiled. She better like it — as a food scientist, Leslie tests every batch of Tabasco Sauce four times, checking for all the key Tabasco qualities and searching for any flavor irregularities. She keeps a box of Saltine crackers on hand to cleanse her palate and a nearby freezer is stocked with boxes of miniature ice cream sandwiches to help combat the warm burn on the lips and tongue.

But even after eating hot sauce all day long, Leslie still goes home and cooks with it, “We have young children, so my husband and I season our food after we serve it.”

Andrew Evans talked to Hall and toured the Tabasco plant in Avery Island, Louisiana. Learn some of the company's history and how they make the sauce at National Geographic Traveler. Link (with video) -Thanks, Marilyn!

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YouTube member cmtification wore this Luxo Jr. costume for Halloween last year. The only information I can find out about him/her is that cmtification is 16 years old, that he/she made the costume him/herself. -via The Frogman

MLC Productions was on Nikoi Island in Indonesia last month to shoot a commercial. While they were on the beach, a nest of sea turtle eggs hatched! So they recorded the babies on their all-important trip from the sand to the ocean. The video is both cute and moving. Link -Thanks, Martin Yeoh!

What's up with the thesaurus? Redditor Shanethe13 looked up banana, for what reason I do not know, and found the pronunciation given by Thesaurus.com to be a little strange. Other redditors found more intriguing pronunciations (click the speaker to hear them).

banana
pineapple
octopus
pussycat
carrot
watermelon
cheese
confetti
band aid
antelope

Some anomalies found were close synonyms of the word, but these are a stretch. Link

Jaguars are the largest native cat in the Western Hemisphere. They once flourished, but now are endangered thanks to centuries of hunting and habitat loss. The only protected jaguar reservation is in Belize, where they are thriving and drawing tourists, but those cats are separated from other jaguar populations that live (and are declining) in other countries. Jaguar expert Alan Rabinowitz, the CEO of conservation organization Panthera, has a plan to open up pathways to connect various jaguar populations.

Panthera’s Jaguar Corridor Initiative aims to connect 90 distinct jaguar populations across the Americas. It stems from an unexpected discovery. For 60 years, biologists had thought there were eight distinct subspecies of jaguar, including the Peruvian jaguar, Central American jaguar and Goldman’s jaguar. But when the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity in Frederick, Maryland, part of the National Institutes of Health, analyzed jaguar DNA from blood and tissue samples collected throughout the Americas, researchers determined that no jaguar group had split off into a true subspecies. From Mexico’s deserts to the dry Pampas of northern Argentina, jaguars had been breeding with each other, wandering great distances to do so, even swimming across the Panama Canal. “The results were so shocking that we thought it was a mistake,” Rabinowitz says.

Panthera has identified 182 potential jaguar corridors covering nearly a million square miles, spanning 18 nations and two continents. So far, Mexico, Central America and Colombia have signed on to the initiative. Negotiating agreements with the rest of South America is next. Creating this jaguar genetic highway will be easier in some places than others. From the Amazon north, the continent is an emerald matrix of jaguar habitats that can be easily linked. But parts of Central America are utterly deforested. And a link in Colombia crosses one of Latin America’s most dangerous drug routes.

An extensive article at Smithsonian tells of the jaguar's life in the wild, how this plan came about, and how it might just work -if the many obstacles can be overcome. Link

(Image credit: Steve Winter/Panthera)

If you wear a costume that illustrates an internet meme, you might find yourself explaining it over and over, but when someone "in the know" sees you and gives a thumbs up, it's all worth it! Still, this Old Spice Guy shown here will probably be recognized by everyone. Our own Jill Harness put together a list of the hottest meme Halloween costumes for this year in a list at Oddee. Link