U.S. News and World Report surveyed cities across the US to determine the best places to raise kids. They took into account crime rates, school system ratings, cultural opportunities, recreational activities, child-friendly policies, and other factors. The results:

Virginia Beach, Virginia
Madison, Alabama
San Jose, California
Overland Park, Kansas
Boston, Massachusetts
Denver, Colorado
Rochester, Minnesota
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Plano, Texas
Edison, New Jersey

The advantages of each city are listed in the story and slide show. Link -via Digg

In the world of radio journalism, there's nothing better than "This American Life." With their remarkable focus on everyday people and their indescribable story selection, the hipster-friendly show is a unique radio magazine.

Try your luck on ten questions about the PRI show and its television counterpart in this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss. Link

An oak barrel of butter has been found in a bog near Gilltown, Ireland. Two workers, John Fitzharris and Martin Lane, noticed a white streak in the peat and uncovered the barrel, estimated to be 3,000 years old. Pádraig Clancy and Carol Smith of the National Museum of Ireland took charge of the barrel.

"It's rare to find a barrel as intact as that," Mr. Clancy explained, "especially with the lid intact, and attached. It's a really fine example."

He estimates that the barrel is approximately 3,000 years old, from the Iron Age.

At the moment it is being dried out by staff at the Conservation Department. Once dry it will be soaked in a wax-like solution which preserves it.

"At 35ks, it's a pretty big one," Ms. Smith explained. Other examples of bog butter they showed tended to be less intact and much smaller.

http://www.discoveryon.info/2009/08/3000-year-old-butter-found-in-kildare.html -via Unique Daily

In 2000, Rich Hughes was diving near a shipwreck off the coast of Pembrokeshire, Wales when he spotted a shiny object under the sea. He retrieved a pocket watch with "Richard Prichard 1866 Abersoch North Wales" engraved on the casing. After nearly ten years of detective work, Hughes reconstructed the story of the pocket watch and its owner. Ship captain Richard Prichard died during a voyage of the Barbara and was buried at sea. A man named Jones took over both the ship and the captain’s effects, but did not have the necessary navigational skills. The ship sailed into the wrong channel and sank during a storm in 1881. The crewmen were rescued, but captain Jones went down with the ship, and presumably had the watch on his person. Hughes enlisted the help of an amateur historian to track down Prichard’s family.

The watch, which was seized up and will never work again, will be handed to Mr Cowell later this month.

His grandmother was Captain Prichard's cousin, making him the closest surviving family member.

He said: "I am delighted the watch has come home after all these years.

"It has come as a complete surprise to me that my ancestors had such a colourful, seafaring past."

The watch will go on display at the Porthmadog village hall. Link -via Arbroath

Etsy seller GEEKitty hand crafts cat toys of felt with no metal or plastic parts. You can have a speech bubble made with up to four characters of your choice, or buy one ready made with “meh”, “srsly”, or “lol”. Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

San Francisco’s Lombard Street, full of hairpin curves and known as “the crookedest street in the world” was turned into Candyland Wednesday to celebrate the game’s 60th anniversary. Children from from UC San Francisco Children’s Hospital and the organization Friends of the Children formed teams to play the oversized game. They also interacted with game characters and enjoyed birthday cake. http://www.examiner.com/x-5494-SF-World-Travel-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Lombard-Street-in-San-Francisco-becomes-Candy-Land-for-a-day -via Metafilter

(image credit: Flickr user calmenda, who has more pictures)

Maybe bacon as an internet meme has jumped the shark, but it still makes all kinds of food taste fabulous!

Fine, the bacon lube and bacon bras are a little creepy. Maybe we’ve gone too far when we’re literally trying to screw bacon. But I steadfastly refuse to stop eating it in every form imaginable. So to celebrate the endless survival of bacon, I’ve compiled this handy chart of 100 Ways to Use a Strip of Bacon. From bacon apple pie to bacon guacamole, bacon pickles, bacon marshmallows, and yes, even bacon-wrapped tofu, here are the 100 most glorious ways to enjoy god’s greatest gift to tastebuds.

Click on a picture at Endless Simmer to go to any of 100 recipes from all over. Link -Thanks, Brendan!

Personas is an application that searches your name on the web and returns a profile of what it finds. Mine is pictured.

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

I was surprised to see I had more "sports" in my profile than anything else -must've been the Olympics. And it's nice that my "legal" was bigger than my "illegal"! But the most interesting part was seeing all those things people said about me while it was processing. The one that stands out was "Your inquiry ‘Miss Cellania is an idiot' did not return any results." Ha! (Of course, now that I’ve written it out, there will be results for that query.) Try your own name and puzzle over the results. Link -via the Presurfer

For kids with xeroderma pigmentosum, sunshine is deadly. UV rays cause them to develop cancerous tumors. They stay inside and covered, except for rare occasions late at night. Patients travel to Camp Sundown in New York to meet others with the condition and enjoy activities designed to accommodate their needs. This year, those activities included a major league baseball game at Yankee Stadium.

Because they couldn't leave until the sun was almost down, and because it was a three-hour drive, they knew they'd be able to see only the last couple of innings of the game. But then it rained, causing a more-than-two-hour rain delay. While the rest of the crowd cursed, the campers rejoiced. How lucky can you get? The bus arrived just before the first pitch. "It was almost like the game was waiting for them to show up," Yankees GM Brian Cashman said. "That kind of gave us goosebumps."

To get the kids out of the bus and into their VIP suite for the game, Yankees media-relations director Jason Zillo -- the man who dreamed up the whole night -- had to take them on a rat's route of back staircases and tunnels to avoid any fluorescent lights. After the Yankees beat the A's 6-3, the stadium lights had to be dimmed to 30 percent. Once they were, all the kids came running onto the field with smiles that could've lit up the Bronx.

"It's cool to be part of this," said [Yankee player A.J.] Burnett, whom Zillo forced to leave at 3:15. "And it's kind of mind-boggling. I can't imagine if I couldn't take my children outside."

The Yankees partied and played baseball with the campers until they had to leave at 3:30 AM to beat the sunrise. Link -via YesButNoButYes

The ultimate backyard status symbol is a tree that has been to the moon. There are hundreds of them, and most are unaccounted for. Astronaut Stuart Roosa took a packet of tree seeds on the Apollo 14 mission to the moon in 1971. After orbiting the moon 34 times, the seeds were planted on earth and grew into trees.

Everyone wanted a Moon tree. In 1975 and '76, trees were sent to the White House, to Independence Square in Philadelphia, to Valley Forge. "One tree went to the Emperor of Japan. Senators wanted trees to dedicate buildings. We even did some plantings in New Orleans because the mayor there, Mayor Moon, wanted some," says Krugman. There were so many requests that "we had to produce additional seedlings from rooted cuttings of the original trees."

No one kept systematic records, notes Dave Williams. That's why the whereabouts of the trees today are mostly unknown.

There may be a moon tree somewhere near you! Link to story. Link to website. -via reddit

There are hundreds of motorcycle clubs in the US, most of which never make more than local headlines for charity work. Then there are the “one percenters”, the gangs whose criminal activities set a poor reputation for all bikers. Listverse will familiarize you with the biggest of these outlaw gangs. Link -via Gorilla Mask

A writer at Wolf Gnarls calculated that Bill Murray spent exactly 8 years, 8 months and 16 days stuck in a time loop in the movie Groundhog Day. According to Heeb Magazine, the writer and director of the 1993 film Harold Ramis disputes those findings.

"I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and, alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years… People [i.e. spaz] have way too much time on their hands. They could be learning to play the piano or speak French or sculpt ice"

Considering we are talking about a fictional movie containing a fantasy phenomena, the matter may never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. http://www.heebmagazine.com/blog/view/2075 -Thanks, Liz!

What happens when two smoke rings of equal size and different colors meet head on? It's almost like art! http://technology.todaysbigthing.com/2009/08/04 -via Metafilter

You'll find a discussion in this forum.

I love looking at ancient maps. Even those that are relatively correct feature fantastic artwork in the spaces that would otherwise have no information. But some of those extra decorations had a purpose.

The richly decorated Carta Marina, from 1539 might seem a little crude by today’s standards but modern satellite imaging revealed that the sea monsters shown in parts of the ocean on the map actually correspond to well known storm fronts, dangerous currents and maritime hazards. This was perhaps just a method of depicting this at the time, as a warning to sailors venturing into these areas

This picture is just a small detail of the Carta Marina. See the full map and many others in a roundup of old maps at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

You've heard of spontaneous human combustion and you may have read about frogs raining from the sky, but have you ever heard of earthquake lights? Or star snot? How about the Naga Fireballs, glowing red eggs that shoot up from the bottom of the Mekong River in Vietnam? These weird phenomena have yet to be explained by science. Pictured is a blue jet and a red sprite, colorful unexplained lights that happen above thunderstorms for unknown reasons. Link -via Digg