What better for a Labor Day cookout than a steak in the shapes of the USA? Philadelphia artist Dominic Episcopo took photographs of states that look good enough to grill. Link -via the Presurfer

German arachnologist Peter Jaeger has discovered 200 species of spiders in the past decade. Now he has named one of his finds after singer David Bowie. The new species, a large yellow spider in Malaysia, is called Heteropoda davidbowie. Jaeger said he named the spider to draw attention to the discovery, and to the endangered status of many spiders.

"It is working against time," he said. "We are also quickly losing genetic resources that have evolved over more than 300 million years."

Bowie had a 1972 album entitled The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. His 1987 tour was named the Glass Spider Tour. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2009/09/06/bowie-spider.html -via Digg

(image credit: Senckenberg Forschungsinstitute/Naturmuseen)

Have you ever wondered what the first item sold on eBay was? Or who ran the first banner ad on the internet? Or what the first spam massage tried to sell? 11Points has those firsts and more, including this picture, which was the first image on the internet in 1992. It was uploaded by programmer Silvano de Gennaro in Geneva at the request of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

Berners-Lee asked Gennaro to scan some photos from a CERN party and post them on that page. Gennaro didn't really get what he was talking about but scanned in the photos, FTPed them to the server and linked them to a page. The picture of the four women, complete with their early '90s "Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead" fashion sense, was the first one ever viewed in a web browser.

Link -via Unique Daily

Submit a fact to the website Learn Something Every Day and you may see it turned into a brightly-colored poster. There’s a new fact posted each day. They don’t even have to be factual facts, since Mel Blanc was not allergic to carrots. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Click on the raindrops to make a melody, which will loop for you in this interactive page from Lullatune. Click the green clock for a metronome if you like. I managed to make a pleasant tune and played it for quite some time while I surfed the ‘net. Link -via Arbroath

How much weight you gain may depend on when you eat, according to a new study that looked at the timing of meals in mice. Scientists at Northwestern University fed two groups of mice the same amount of high fat food, but one group ate during regular waking time, while the other ate during what would normally be their sleeping period. The second group gained twice as much weight as the first group!

"For a long time we questioned whether or not eating patterns had anything to do with gaining weight," says obesity expert Dr. Louis Aronne of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He points to previous observational research suggesting that people who skip breakfast in favor of massive meals in the evening hours tend to be overweight. "We had no proof that it's a real problem," says Aronne, who was not involved in the study. "If an experiment like this is replicated in humans, it might clarify for us just how much time of day matters when it comes to obesity."

It is not yet clear whether the difference is due to hormone production or the disruption of sleep patterns. Link -via Digg

A grocery store with 500 flavors of soda? You betcha, and the owner of Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles knows his sodas. In this video, learn about Romanian rose soda, the best-tasting diet soda, why glass bottles are better, and other fascinating facts about soda pop. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

Previously mentioned in: Four Neat Things About Los Angeles.

It’s been locked up since 9/11, but Ransom Riggs of mental_floss managed a visit to the Mojave Air and Spaceport and took plenty of pictures. The inactive airport is used as a parking lot for planes and also a junkyard of planes that will never be flown again. The result is a collection of photographs that are urban decay with an aviation slant. http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/33186.html

Like The Last Supper or the Abbey Road album cover, Stonehenge is such an iconic image that people the world over recognize it, even if it's made of bamboo or old refrigerators. Web Urbanist has collected 20 Stonehenge recreations from all over. Some try to faithfully resemble the original in England, others are art pieces using recycled materials. Pictured is Phonehenge in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Link -via Interesting Pile

On September 11 2006, more than 3,000 bloggers joined together to honor the victims of 9/11 by remembering their lives as individuals. The project helped to put a face on each person instead of seeing them as a large group of people. You can access a list of those posts with links here. Project 2,996 will be repeated this year. If you would like to post a tribute on your own blog on 9/11, sign up now. Link -via Holtie’s House

People of Walmart is a user-generated image blog with a niche that’s as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Honestly, when you’re talking about the world’s largest discount store, where you can find almost anything you need 24 hours a day, it’s a wonder you don’t see more people shopping in whatever they slept in. Only the funniest submissions are published. Link -Thanks, Bill!

Scientists have detected a black hole 12.8 billion light-years away, which means it was around when the universe was very young. This one is a billion times the size of our sun! The light from the black hole (or more correctly, from burning objects being sucked into it) has traveled so long to get to earth that its wavelengths have shifted. The process, known as redshift, help astronomers to calculate the huge distance to objects in space.

To see the supermassive black hole, the team of scientists used new red-sensitive charge-coupled devices (CCDs) installed in the Suprime-Cam camera on the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea.

CCDs are used in many light detecting gadgets from photocopiers to bar-code readers. In astronomy they are used to collect analogue information (such as light or an electrical charge from a distant object) and convert it into digital information that can be analyzed by computer software.

Link

(image credit: University of Hawaii)

This Cracked Photoshop competition asked what science classes would be like if science were as it is portrayed in movies. This CPR poster is only one of the top 19 funny images. Don’t skip reading “The Benefits of Electrocution”. Link -via Digg

Steve Valdez of Tampa, Florida had a check written to him from his wife. He took a check to her bank to cash it. Bank of America requires a thumbprint to cash a check from anyone who does not hold an account there. The problem is that Valdez was born without arms. The bank refused to cash the check.

According to Valdez, when he gave the teller the check, she said "Obviously you can't give a thumbprint." But Valdez says the manager refused to cash the check unless he did.

When Valdez told the manager giving a thumbprint would be impossible, she suggested he either bring in his wife or open an account. Valdez says that's not the way the bank would treat someone without prosthetic arms, and he refused.

A spokesman for Bank of America said that the bank should have made accommodations for Valdez. Link -via J-Walk Blog

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It was a simple slip of the tongue, but the bride’s and groom’s nerves turned the ceremony into a real hoot! -via Buzzfeed