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Music by Serge Chubinski-Orlov, with vocals by Linda Ganzin. The beautiful time lapse video is a collaboration between the Innerlife Project and TimeLapseHD. Link -via Nag on the Lake

The Westboro Baptist Church {wiki} held a demonstration in front of the Twitter office in San Francisco on Thursday. Even more people showed up for a counter protest, featuring the best protest signs I've ever seen. See more signs at Laughing Squid. Link

(image credit: Rubin Starset)

This is just one of 5 Science Fair Projects for the Internet, brought to you by College Humor. Other subjects are Facebook, Google search, comment thread eruptions, and how to build a great website. http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1799611 -via Digg

The Chaos is a poem often used to demonstrate how difficult it is to pronounce words in English, as the spelling and pronunciation varies so. It was written by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, who first published it in 1909, then revised and lengthened it several times before his death in 1946. More lines were added posthumously. The Spelling Society published The Chaos in its entirety. Here are the first few (and the easiest) lines:

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;

Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

The poem is now 274 lines long, meant to be read out loud. How much of it can you manage before mispronouncing something? http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php -via Geeks Are Sexy

How well do you know your computers, operating systems, and peripherals? Find out with this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. They'll give you a question, and you decide whether they're talking about an Apple computer, or an IBM clone type computer that uses Windows. Or neither. I scored 80%! Link

The authors of an article in Focus magazine, a BBC publication, took a look at statistics in 35 countries to rank those nations according to their tendency towards the seven deadly sins. Australia was found to be the most "sin-prone" nation, with the US coming in second. Canada, Finland, and Spain rounded out the most "sin-prone" rankings.

Topping each of the sin categories were South Korea (lust), the US (gluttony), Mexico (greed), Iceland (sloth and pride), South Africa (wrath) and Australia (envy).

Of course, some question the research methods and the results. http://www.news.com.au/national/australia-ranked-world-number-one-for-sinning/story-e6frfkvr-1225824525361 -via Simply Left Behind

NASA's Spirit rover {wiki} landed on Mars in 2004. After its planned 90-day mission, the rover kept on working for another six years. Last May, it became stuck in soft soil and could no longer rove, but continued analyzing the Martian environment. Now NASA has decided to put the rover into hibernation mode at least until temperatures rise on Mars, which could be six months.

Despite the science that can be done at the site, the probable end of Spirit’s career as a mobile unit seemed discouraging to JPL rover driver, Ashley Stroupe. A week and a half ago, the rover team changed their approach to getting the rover unstuck and experienced much greater success.

“We had a tremendous amount of hope,” Stroupe said.

In the end, though, they ran out of time. Now, their main task is positioning the rover to capture the greatest amount of solar energy possible: The rover is currently tilted south, away from the sun in the northern sky. If they can reduce the tilt, Spirit may be able to periodically communicate with Earth throughout the winter. If they can’t, it will be a long, silent winter for the robot.

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The image above is a portion of a fitting tribute to Spirit at xkcd. Link

Ten Word Wiki describes itself as "an encyclopedia for the ADD generation." The site is like Wikipedia, but all entries are limited to ten words. Since there aren't that many entries yet, you may want to browse the "recent changes" tab. Here is the entry for "pie".

A savoury or sweet gloop, usually lumpy, encased in pastry.

And for "Lance Armstrong".

Inspirational unibollocked cycling legend. Singlehandedly invented the rubber wristband industry.

Humor is encouraged, so browse at your own risk. Link -via b3ta

I usually avoid niche photo blogs because so many now are just asking for people to pose in a certain way and submit a picture, but this one tickled my funny bone. Hot Chicks with Storm Troopers offers photo evidence that Star Wars nerds dedicated enough to dress as Storm Troopers can and do attract women. Link -via Buzzfeed

Combine the imagination of a five-year-old with the talent of a professional comic artist and you get Axe Cop. Malachai Nicolle comes up with the stories and his 29-year-old brother Ethan Nicolle {wiki} draws them. The result is wonderful! Anyone who's ever had, or ever been, a five-year-old storyteller will get a real kick out of this. Link

Neatorama readers may remember Lakshmi Tatma, the little girl who was born with eight limbs due to a headless parasitic twin. The twin was surgically removed two years ago. Lakshmi is now four years old and has started school, but her physical problems are not over.

Six months after the complex operation to remove Lakshmi's parasitic twin, doctors discovered she had developed scoliosis, or a curvature of the spine.

Without a complex operation to correct her spine doctors have warned her back will be forced into increasingly severe deformities as she grows, possibly leaving her disabled.

Separately, Lakshmi requires an operation to 'detether' her spine after it was discovered she was born with abnormal tissue connecting the spinal cord to her nervous system.

In a further operation orthopaedic surgeons must perform a procedure to 'close her hips', which are set too far apart and result in an unusual 'gaited' walk.

The charity that looks after Lakshmi's progress is stretched to its limit, so a fund has been set up for her future operations. Link -via Digg

Popular Mechanics tracked down the stories of the longest, deepest, most expensive, and weirdest tunnels ever built. They all have interesting stories behind them, and some have innovative features, such as the 15-mile-long Laerdal Tunnel in Norway.

Driving through a windowless tunnel for 20 minutes can get a bit monotonous, so a team of psychologists and engineers focused on retaining driver concentration. "The psychological reaction of a person in a tunnel is very important … it makes the difference between people accepting the facility or simply just avoiding it," says Youssef Hashash, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, who has worked on 10 different tunnel projects. "Given the length of this tunnel, you need a carefully designed environment and lighting system." Some solutions used in the Laerdal tunnel include bright blue lights and subtle curves that keep drivers engaged. Most important, though, is the fact that the tunnel is divided into several different sections, breaking up the drive and creating the impression that commuters are traveling through a handful of smaller tunnels.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4343590.html -via Unique Daily

Scientists keep discovering extinct species that hardly seem possible outside of cartoons. If they were still around, we might not be! Web Urbanist shows us some of the biggest, fiercest, and weirdest of animals that are no more. For instance, the whorl shark had its own "jaw saw"!

Whorl Sharks
were similar to their modern cousins despite jetting along almost 300 million years ago. While modern sharks have rows of serrated teeth ready to replace any that fall out, the whorl shark has an interesting lower jaw that looked like a circular saw, where newer teeth would push older teeth further along the line. There’s some debate about the placement of the tooth structure, but regardless of its location in the mouth or deeper in the throat, it had a startlingly unique appearance.

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Pringle of Scotland is an old and established sweater company which has nothing to do with potato chips. They commissioned artist David Shrigley to make a humorous video about the firm. The result is strange and delightful! -via Flotsam

On January 27, 1888, a group of 165 prominent men in Washington, DC incorporated a club called the National Geographic Society.

Its first president, lawyer Gardiner Green Hubbard, was the father-in-law and early financier of inventor Alexander Graham Bell, another founding member. Hubbard was also the first president of the Bell Telephone company, known today as AT&T.

The society’s publication, National Geographic magazine, began printing just 10 months after that founding meeting. It was initially a drab-looking scholarly journal sent to 165 charter members. Now its hallmark photography and more mainstream writing reach the hands of more than 40 million people per month.

Wired takes a look at the history of the Society and how it grew from its humble beginnings into a multi-faceted organization that includes the magazine and its various spinoffs, a TV channel, research grants, educational programs, and a vast website. Link

(image credit: Steve McCurry/National Geographic)