A king penguin living at the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland has been promoted to the rank of honourable regimental sergeant major by the Norwegian Army.
Retired Major Nils Egelien of the Royal Norwegian Guards said: "It all started in 1961 when the King's Guard of Norway came to the military tattoo and we were very very interested in the king penguins.
"In 1972 we came back again and adopted a king penguin in the name of Nils Olav and the rank of lance corporal.
"In 1982 he was a corporal, in 87 a sergeant and in 1993 a regimental sergeant major."
The penguin that was promoted is the second Nils Olav, as the first to bear the name died in 1987. A bronze statue of the penguin will be made for the King of Norway. Link -via the Presurfer
Nicole Cotroneo at Girl Eats World is in St. Lucia, and has a delightful account of eating cocoa fresh from the tree in the Venus Rainforest Preserve. Link -via Grow-A-Brain
A mashup of video from The Matrix and audio from Fight Club. They mesh so well, these movies must have more in common than I thought! -Thanks, kinomozg!
If you saw someone wearing these Hello Kitty contact lenses, you would miss everything they said because you would be busy trying to figure out what is wrong with their eyes. Come to think of it, my eyes are starting to hurt! Link -via Scribal Terror
Make your own LED slippers, so you won’t trip over toys while making your way to the bathroom at night. They may also help you to avoid cats, but only if they are stationary. -via Unique Daily
When the wind chill is below 0°F and the water is below freezing, surfing is the last thing on most people’s minds. Not so for Toronto surfers Mark Karvonen, Walter Tuokkola, and Geoff Johnson, who headed down to Lake Ontario to catch some waves. Why?
Mark: Because that's when the waves are at their best! Storms that track up the US, especially along the east coast, kick up some serious swells on Lake Ontario. A little snow storm won't keep us from the sport we love. In fact, we look forward to big storms because we know they bring waves with them.
A black hole in what has been nicknamed the “death star galaxy” is sending a jet of radiation and energy to a smaller neighboring galaxy. Millions of stars are in the path of the deadly stream, possibly with orbiting planets. Such an attack would render any planet lifeless. The cosmic violence is only about a million years old, and may stretch for another 10 to 100 million years. The two galaxies revolve around each other, and are 24,000 light years apart. The attack poses no danger to Earth, as the galaxies are over a billion light years away. Link-Thanks, Cheese Duck!
Inspired by a list of “best and worst quotes from 2007” and a trip to Krispy Kreme, Marty Z and his wife created this funny t-shirt design. http://www.cafepress.com/martyz -Thanks, Marty Z!
How cool would it be to have your portrait done by a robot? The robot was designed by Sylvain Calinon, robot researcher at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA).
When the robot recognizes a face in its field of view, it first grabs a snapshot of this face and extracts the relevant features and contours characterizing it. The robot then grabs a pen and start drawing the user's portrait, starting from the rough contours and adding details iteratively.
Just about everyone knows the song Frère Jacques (Brother John). Here are 45 versions of the song, in many languages and several dialects of French. Link -via Metafilter
Celebrity Hotel Rooms is a collection of ten of the swankiest hotel suites ever. This picture shows the Peninsula Suite in Hong Kong's Peninsula hotel, which will run you $5,000 a night! Amenities include a 24-hour butler and a stand-by Rolls-Royce. Link
Neatorama had a lot of stories and videos about cats in 2007. Here are some of the more popular ones, in case you missed them or want to see them again.
January
Goliath is a twenty-pound cat who got wedged in a dog door! Video of what became ubiquitous in 2007: LOLcats. A family of cats performing to a waltz.
Nora lives with a piano teacher, and loves to play the piano. This was later followed by a video of Nora’s Piano Duets. Nora now has a CD available called Cat on the Keys. $2.00 from every CD sold are donated in Nora's name to Best Friends Animal Society.
A fourth-grade class raised money to buy the disabled cat Xavier a wheelchair. Agui, the cat who can pronounce his own name!
April
Macavity rides a bus by himself to the chip shop! One Useless Cat makes friends with a rat. Kosh doesn’t want to walk on a treadmill.
May
Smokey owes his life to blogger EMT Tom Reynolds. Video showing how to vacuum a cat. Tama, the cat stationmaster for a Japanese railway. Pippy, the cat who will beg for anything.
June
Mr. Lee’s Cat Cam shows what the world looks like to a cat. Des, the cat with 26 toes! Where did they come from, anyway? The history of housecats.
July
Oscar, the cat who predicts death in a Rhode Island geriatric ward, became an internet sensation and one of the most talk-about stories of the year. A litter of kittens playing with toilet paper. How to compute the volume of a cat. The Hemingway Cats get a reprieve. A cute cat eating corn on the cob. The Laws of Cat Physics. Nimra adopted a litter flock of chicks! The Hello Kitty Cat Humiliation System.
The animation every cat owner can relate to: Cat Man Do, by Simon Tofield. The Flo Control Project must recognize your cat before he can come in the house! Molly survived the washing machine. Fitzy, the fabulous fetching feline.
November
Scientific proof that cats are liquid. A cat who loves his horse. Video of a cat that acts like a dog. Snoopy playing an invisible piano. Video of a dog, a cat, and a crawfish. With earworm music. Lil'Bit, the cat with two faces. Two cats having a conversation, plus a remix with an English translation. Baby, the bionic cat with metal implants in all four legs. A kitten battling a ferret.
December
Scientists clone fluorescent cats that glow red in the dark! Video of the cute upright kitten. Jelly came home with a copperhead wrapped around her neck! Japan’s Rent-A-Cat industry. Musashi's Christmas Song.
To compile this list, I sifted through 25 pages of Neatorama's animal archives, which took a long time because there are so many interesting stories about all kinds of animals. I highly recommend that you take a look!
These interactive flash toys may be educational, but they are so much fun you probably won’t notice. I spent a lot of time just throwing things around! http://www.barechoons.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27 -via reddit
Artist Jay Broemmel designed a dragon bike! Its eyes are blue LED headlights that turn when the handlebars are turned. The jaws snap when you squeeze the left brake. Link -via Gizmodo
