Remember the sustainable gingerbread house contest? Nineteen entrants took the challenge to design and build environmentally-friendly gingerbread houses. You can see them all at Terry*, with links to more pictures and information on each. Link -via The World’s Fair

Nantes, France is hosting an exhibition of mechanical sculptures by François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice (official site en français). Each sculpture is also a moving vehicle! Besides this 11-meter tall elephant, see the giant squid, deep-sea fish, and more. Link

Instructables tells you how to design your own cookie cutters! Great for shapes you’d never find in stores, like Pac Man, the Star Trek Communicator Badge, a One-up Mushroom, and Meeple. Or model some after your own interests. Link -via Dump Trumpet

Physicist Dr. Robert Lang took up origami as a hobby (featured previously at Neatorama). Who knew his hobby would lead to breakthroughs in astronomy, heart surgery, and consumer safety? You’ll be surprised at all the ways intricate paper-folding can be applied to modern technology. Damn Interesting has the story. Link

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A group of 9 university students performed these “Olympic Highlights” on the Kasou Taishou(also known as Kinchan and Katori Shingo’s All Japan Costume Grand Prix) special that aired last night on NTV:

Even though we are used to amazing special effects, we can still be impressed with old-fashioned cleverness. From Japan Probe -via Random Good Stuff

Window washer Alcides Moreno fell 47 stories outside the Solow Residences in New York City on December 7th. He broke bones in his arms, legs, back, and ribs. His brother, who was working with him, was killed. Since then, Moreno has undergone 14 operations and required 24 pints of blood. But after being in a coma for weeks, Moreno is awake and talking, and is likely to walk again! From the same page:

Fell 47 stories - roughly 500 feet. Only 50% of people survive a fall from three stories.

Doctors said the highest fall they've seen someone survive in New York City was when a person under the influence of drugs survived a 19-story plunge.

Link -via YesButNoButYes

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From the German TV show Wetten, dass..? {wiki}, here’s a guy throwing toilet plungers at a line of backs. I hope those guys got paid decently. -via Grow-A-Brain

Japanese Bug Fights is a website that showcases videos of different species of bugs in battle, including both insects and arachnids. Users are invited to submit videos. The rules:

1. Two Bugs to a fight
2. Bug fights go on as long as they have to
3. No outside weapons in Bug Fights

Link -via Gorilla Mask

A Norwegian-US science expedition to the South Pole of Inaccessibility found a bust of Vladimir Lenin waiting for them. The South Pole of Inaccessibility is the point in Antarctica that is furthest from the coasts, and rarely visited. A Soviet team had visited the area in 1958 and built a cabin. They perched a bust of Lenin on top of the chimney before they left several weeks later.

"Today the bust is clearly visible from many kilometres away, and remains as they left it on the chimney, although the cabin itself is buried under the snow," the explorers say.

The actual South Pole is 878 kilometers from the Inaccessibility Pole. Since a moving glacier covers Antarctica, the location of the South Pole is recalibrated and moved every few years. Link -via Fark

This German neurosurgical set is dated to the early 19th century, when brain surgery meant boring holes with hand drills and slicing parts of the brain that doctors didn’t quite understand.

Around the central trepanning brace there are two fixed hand held trephines, two detachable handles and trephines attachments, a scalpel, Hey saw, elevator, brush, scissor handled spreaders, a starter trephine and two raspatories.

If it wasn’t labelled, I would have guessed this was a set of instruments of torture. Link -via Retrospectacle

When you’re working on beer by the liter, be careful not to toast too heartily! This once-in-a-lifetime photo is from Flickr user Slake B. http://www.flickr.com/photos/blakesamic/2151717824/ -via J-Walk Blog

MC Hammer is set to launch a new video site called DanceJam.

The Web site, scheduled to debut in mid-January, will try to upstage YouTube and become the Internet's hub for sharing and watching dance videos. DanceJam then hopes to make money by grabbing a piece of the rapidly growing Internet advertising market, which is expected to rake in $27.5 billion in 2008, according to eMarketer.

Hammer has been a technogeek since the early days of Silicon Valley, but he didn’t see the entertainment value of the internet until he saw what YouTube was doing. DanceJam is expected to launch later this month. http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/M/MC_ENTREPRENEUR?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-01-02-08-27-21 to story. Link to Hammer’s blog.

(photo credit: Jeff Chiu/AP)

Could you pass eight grade science? Take the quiz! I did well, partially because I help my fifth-grader study these exact things for her science class. http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/science -via Geek Like Me

Mark Khaisman is a Ukranian artist and architect living in Philadelphia. His mixed media works were made by applying packaging tape to plexiglas panels! http://www.inliquid.com/artist/khaisman_mark/khaisman.php -via Dump Trumpet

Ryan and Andrea of Rattle-n-Roll create baby announcements styled after rock-n-roll gig posters! They’ll make announcements to send out, and posters for your nursery or as keepsakes. Pick your template and colors, or they can custom-design yours. Link -via Grow-A-Brain