A 100-year old tree in Belgium is the new star of the internet. The Talking Tree has over 4,000 fans on its Facebook page, over 2,000 following its Twitter feed, and many other people visiting its website.

As you can see in the video below, the tree transmits raw information about particulate matter in the environment and weather conditions to researchers. They analyze what the tree sees and senses, then translate that into updates like "Won't be doing too much photosynthesis in this cloudy weather," and "This ozone concentration makes it difficult to do my job." It also advises people to ride their bikes on days with air pollution.

Link -via Discoblog

Every September 22nd, we celebrate Elephant Appreciation Day! To show our appreciation, here's a look at some of the amazing things elephants do.

1. Play Soccer and Darts

(Image credit: Reuters/Sukree Sukplang)

An annual festival in Surin Province, Thailand celebrates elephants and all that they do. Highlights of the event include a soccer match, battles recreations, and an elephant dart competition!

2. Wash Cars



Elephants at Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon will wash your car for just $20, but be warned that the guarantee states they will not get it clean! However, the elephants have fun spraying water everywhere, and the money goes to support the zoo. See a video of the elephants in action.

3. Play Harmonica

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This baby elephant at Phuket Island in Thailand enchants tourists with her dancing skills and harmonica music! She's not the only harmonica-playing pachyderm. An elephant named Five at West Midlands Safari Park in England plays the harmonica every chance she gets, and an African elephant named Bubbles plays harmonica at Myrtle Beach Safari in South Carolina.

A billboard bragging about the schools in South Bend, Indiana was erected without anyone noticing a certain misspelled word, until Lee MacMillan took a picture and posted it on Facebook.

Responsibility for the spelling error has been claimed by the Blue Waters Group. The company does work for the city of South Bend's redevelopment commission to promote the city.

"I feel terrible. It's a mistake we made and we're guilty of it, and responsible for it. and we take full responsibility for the error," said Patrick Strickler, president of the Blue Waters Group.

"Four people looked at it, eyeballed it and didn't see the mistake, and those people all work for me,” Strickler explained. “We take responsibility for it. We simply blew it. We did not see the missing "L."

The billboard has since been taken down. http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100920/News01/100929951/-1/XML -via The Daily What

(Image credit: Lee MacMillan)

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Have you ever noticed how much a curled-up cat looks like a croissant? The best cats look like fresh, flaky, buttery croissants. The kind that would make a wonderful snack tight now. -via Laughing Squid

Suzanne Thi Hien Hook was born in Vietnam in 1969. Abandoned at birth, she was housed in an orphanage where she was underfed because of her mixed race heritage. A British organization arranged for her adoption by a Middlesex couple in 1972. Hook grew up to be a successful businesswoman with a fancy house and all the trapping of a good life. In 2007, she returned to Vietnam for a year of volunteer teaching and came home with a mission.

Suzanne, whose Vietnamese name is Thi Hien, has now sold her £500,000 home in Buckinghamshire, Mercedes sports car and collection of 300 shoes.

She has also sold off all of her clothes and furniture to achieve her dream of setting up an orphanage for abandoned children in Vietnam.

Suzanne, who is abandoning her English life to run the Allambie Orphanage, in Ho Chi Minh City, admitted her ”whole life is up for sale”.

She said: ”I’m practically selling everything. My whole life is up for sale.

Hook's Allambie orphanage is scheduled to open in November. Link to story. Link to orphanage website. -via Arbroath

Sightings by locals in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan led researchers to look for tigers in higher elevations than they've ever been known to reside. Dr. Alan Rabinowitz of Panthera, a big cat conservation organization, and BBC wildlife photographer Gordon Buchanan went up in the mountains and set camera traps above 3,000 meters of elevation. They left the cameras for three months, then found that among many other species, tigers indeed came to have their pictures taken.

This is the only place on earth known to have tigers, leopard and snow leopards all sharing the same valley.

It is remarkable to have these three big cats sharing their range.

Most extraordinarily, the cameras took footage of two wild tigers, one male and one female, a discovery that moved Mr Buchanan to tears.

The next step is to create a preserve that would protect the tigers and other animals. See several videos at BBC News. Link -via the Presurfer

Is your iPad a toy? You betcha! Make it even more fun with a clever case that makes it look like the Etch A Sketch you used as a child. Oh, yeah, it also protects your iPad from scratches and dings. Link -Thanks, Dan!

Here are two maps of the state of Kansas. Each map is filled with spots.



In figure 1, each spot marks a county in which the spotted sandpiper has been spotted.



In figure 4, each spot marks a county in which the spotted towhee has been spotted.



Both maps were prepared by the Kansas County Checklist Project. Their work, they say, “is intended to reflect the current records of bird sightings on file, somewhere, for each county. It is hoped that birders will print out these lists, use them in their birdwatching trips and report bird sightings not on the list to the appropriate individuals/organizations.” Much of project’s data is available on the web at Kansas Bird Species County Maps.

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The article above is from the September-October 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Props, costumes, and other artifacts from the TV series Stargate are up for auction September 25 and 26 in Seattle, Washington. If you can't be there, you can bid on items via internet. Yes, it's possible you could end up with your very own Stargate! But it won't be cheap. Just the catalog for the event costs $45. Link -via Boing Boing

Update: You can download the catalog for free! -Thanks, MikeG!

Yes, there really was a Lynyrd Skynyrd, but his name was Leonard Skinner. Skinner, a gym teacher in Jacksonville, Florida, was the inspiration for the band's name. Skinner died yesterday at a nursing home in Florida. He was 77.

Mr. Skinner never asked to become part of rock ’n’ roll lore. He didn’t even like rock ’n’ roll. He was just a by-the-book gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, his alma mater, who, in the late 1960s, sent some students to the principal’s office because their hair was too long.

Gene Odom, who worked security for the band and survived the crash of its plane in 1977, said one of the longhairs was Gary Rossington. Rossington was guitarist in a rock band that would later name itself Lynyrd Skynyrd in a smart-aleck tribute to the gym teacher.

Skinner made friends with the band in later years, and took advantage of the name recognition for his business ventures. Link -via The Daily What

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Dan Roe made these solar-powered kinetic flower sculptures that move on their own, as long as they are in the sun! I can imagine how much my cats would love these. See more kinetic and robotic artworks at his website. Link -Thanks, Dan!

You may have been to Disneyland, but how much do you really know about it? Find out in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored a dismal 25%. I'd like to say that is is because I've never been to Disneyland, but it was because I just didn't know the answers. Surely you can do better! Link

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OK Go always makes great videos, but the real stars of this one are the dogs! And one goat. The song is "White Knuckles". -via Buzzfeed

Have you ever noticed a highway guard rail with a cap on the end like this? It's not just for looks! Read an explanation of what happens when a car hits a guard rail with and without an end cap. Beware that there are pictures of what happens when a guard rail does not have the safety cap. When I read things like this, I have more and more respect for civil engineers. Link

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See what can happen when you have a bobcat for a pet? I've been lacerated by domestic cats enough to know that I don't want to fight a wildcat over dinner. And this one is just a cub! People take in pets stranger than bobcats, however: read the stories of people who keep hippos, tigers, alligators, zebras, and more in The World's Ten Weirdest Pets. Link