Points for you if you already understand this physics-based bumper sticker. The effect is called blue shift. From Wikipedia:

Blue shift is the shortening of a transmitted signal's wavelength, and/or an increase in its frequency, due to the Doppler Effect, which indicates that the object is moving toward the observer. The name comes from the fact that the shorter-wavelength end of the optical spectrum is the blue (or violet) end, hence, when visible light is compacted in wavelength, it is shifted towards the "blue" end of the spectrum. Since the longer-wavelength end of the visible electromagnetic spectrum is red, the opposite effect, of a lengthening of a signal's wavelength, is referred to as redshifting.

While the terms "redshifting" and "blueshifting" imply significantly redder or bluer light, only the most distant galaxies and those moving at speeds far above average emit light that arrives with perceptible red or blue tinges. For the most part, shifting is not a visible phenomenon.[1]

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As a British soldier in World War II, Denis Avey was captured by the Germans and sent to a prison camp, which was connected to the Auschwitz camp. While most inmates were concerned with getting out, Avey was trying to get in to the death camp to find out about the conditions. He made friends with Auschwitz prisoner Ernst Lobethall and swapped uniforms with him for overnight visits to each other's camps. Lobethall got needed rest and food in the POW camp, and Avey gathered information from the death camp.

Mr Lobethall told him he had a sister Susana who had escaped to England as a child, on the eve of war. Back in his own camp, Mr Avey contacted her via a coded letter to his mother.

He arranged for cigarettes, chocolate and a letter from Susana to be sent to him and smuggled them to his friend. Cigarettes were more valuable than gold in the camp and he hoped he would be able to trade them for favours to ease his plight - and he was right.

Mr Lobethall traded two packs of Players cigarettes in return for getting his shoes resoled. It helped save his life when thousands perished or were murdered on the notorious death marches out of the camps in winter in 1945.

Avey never spoke of his Auschwitz experience after the war, and didn't know what became of Lobethall until recently. Lobethall moved to the US and lived a long life.

But before he died Mr Lobethall recorded his survival story on video for the Shoah Foundation, which video the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. In it he spoke of his friendship with a British soldier in Auschwitz who he simply called "Ginger". It was Denis.

The BBC brought the 91-year-old Avey and Lobethall's sister Susana Timms together to watch Lobethall's testimony and captured their meeting on video. Link -via Arbroath

This periodic table of cupcakes is for a chemistry nerd's birthday party. Each cake is labeled with an element and color-coded by its state of matter. I hear hydrogen and helium are very light and fluffy. Looks like someone already ate ununseptium. Link -via reddit

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Hey, it's a holiday weekend, so take 17 seconds to enjoy playing with a baby kitten. -via Arbroath

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Kenyan contortionist Lazarus Gitu appears on a German television show. Gitu performs with Circus Mama Africa as The Snake Man. -via Bits and Pieces

Lorrie at Clueless in Carolina recently found a newspaper in her mother's home announcing the news that World War II had ended. Besides news, it contained sponsored ads celebrating VJ Day.

You could almost feel the joy and relief wafting off of the page. Holding the newspaper made me feel happy, as if the happiness of the people who printed, delivered and received the paper was somehow still preserved. Okay, I'm a weirdo! But I wish I could put it in your hands and see if you felt the same way.

See scans of several ads and features from the Charlotte Observer, August 15th, 1945. Link

Oregon journalist Paul Linnman was 23 years old in 1970 when KATU in Portland flew him to Florence to cover the removal of a beached whale. Officials had decided to get rid of the carcass by blowing it up with dynamite. Almost 40 years later, Linnmann looks back at that fateful day.

"We're hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. A piece of blubber the size of a fingernail could kill you if it hit you in the right part of the head, so we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats."

The video taken that day is now the fifth most-viewed internet video of all time. Linnman said not a day goes by that someone doesn't mention the story to him. Link -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: The Infamous Exploding Whale.

Residents of Axedale, Australia called authorities when they smelled what they believed to be a gas leak. Firefighters responded to the home and found a 120 kilogram pet pig, which they believe to be the source of the gas.

"She got very excited when two trucks and 15 firies turned up and she squealed and farted and squealed and farted," said fire chief Peter Harkins.

"I haven't heard too many pigs fart but I would describe it as very full-on."

Mr Harkins said the family had done the right thing by calling 000 to report a suspected gas leak: "It's all bottled gas up here and a leaking cylinder could pose a major fire risk.

"It was because we took it so seriously that 15 volunteers still managed to attend the call out at 10.30 on Tuesday night."

The pig's owners are embarrassed over the incident and refused to let the pig be photographed. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: AAP)

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With the help of a remote control car and a cat. I wish losing my baby teeth had been this fun! -via reddit

The Christmas shopping season began when stores opened early today to draw in bargain-hunters. When did the day after Thanksgiving become such a milestone? And where did the name Black Friday come from? The answers to these questions and more are at mental_floss today. Link

Mr. Bounce can take your mind off the Thanksgiving leftovers and the dishes still waiting to be done. The game is almost like "Pong for one", with tasks to accomplish instead of an adversary. Lucky for me, they provide a trajectory line for assistance. Link -via Look At This

A billboard in Chattanooga has people doing double takes. You have to look twice before you see which finger the woman is giving you -her ring finger. The caption reads, "She's tired of waiting." The ad is for a local jeweler.

"If you look at it twice you ought to get a chuckle," said Barry Schenck of M.M. Schenck Jeweler, "that's what we are hoping for."

Schenck says it's not the first time he's paid to post more than a dozen billboards before Christmas, but this latest stunt is getting feedback.

"It's sort of putting a lot of pressure on young men to ask their girlfriends to marry them," said Carolyn Miller of Chattanooga.

Critics say Schenck's ploy is in bad taste, but Schenck stands behind the scheme. He says the woman in the picture is no actress.

"She is single, she does have a boyfriend, and she is waiting," said Schenck.

http://www.wrcbtv.com/global/story.asp?s=11574177 (with video) -via Simply Left Behind

It's not exactly what people think of as a Christmas tree. The town of Poole, Dorset, England has a municipal Christmas tree that falls in line with Britain's stringent health and safety guidelines, which try to avoid all possible risks, no matter how remote.

Thus it has no trunk so it won’t blow over, no branches to break off and land on someone’s head, no pine needles to poke a passer-by in the eye, no decorations for drunken teenagers to steal and no angel, presumably because it would need a dangerously long ladder to place it at the top.

Last year Poole boasted a Norwegian fir draped with strings of coloured lights. It cost £500 and continued a decades-old tradition. The replacement, which is constructed on a metal frame overlaid with what appears to be artificial grass, cost £14,000 and comes with built-in fairy lights and hidden speakers to play Christmas tunes that will put shoppers in the festive mood. But the only mood apparent among shoppers who saw the tree yesterday was a bad one.

Citizens compared the tree to a wizard's hat and a traffic cone. Link

Alex may think his turkey cake looked like poo, but it has a long way to go to make it to this collection of Thanksgiving turkey cakes gone wrong. Link

According to a new study published in Nature, our skin helps us decipher the sounds we hear with our ears. Blindfolded volunteers listened to the "pa", "ta", "da", and "ba" sounds. Unknown to the participant, a puff of air, softer than would be felt in normal conversation, accompanied some of the sounds. Sometimes the puff of air accompanied the appropriate sounds, at other times not.

The researchers found that if there was no air puff, participants misheard "pa" for "ba" and "ta" for "da" 30 to 40 percent of the time. The accuracy improved 10 to 20 percent when an air puff over the hand or neck accompanied "pa" and "ta." No improvement occurred, however, if an air puff was sent through the tube in the ear, suggesting that the participants were not simply hearing the airflow.

The opposite effect was observed when the participants received an air puff with the inappropriate sounds— "ba" and "da." While subjects correctly identified these sounds in about 80 percent of cases when played without the release of air, the accuracy decreased by about 10 percent if the sounds were accompanied by puffs of air.

Most of the volunteers were not consciously aware of the puffs of air. Link