This handy place to keep your iPhone looks just like the phones we used when I was a kid! Each base is cast and sculpted one at a time. USB cord not included, so consider it an art work. $195 from Etsy seller freeland studios. Link -via Nag on the Lake

(YouTube link)

Dave may have had a terrible party in a previous life. He really hates that one particular song! -via The Daily What

The package was en route from Appomattox, Virginia to Puerto Rico. At the post office in Lynchburg, Virginia, postal workers noticed the box was moving. They had to get a search warrant, and when they finally opened the package, inspectors found a ferret inside! Postal workers promptly named it Stamps.

Photos from the Postal Inspector’s office show someone stuffed Stamps into a makeshift cage, doped him up on Benedryl, and tried to mail the ferret to the U.S. Territory.

The Postal Inspector handling the case, David McKinney, believes whoever tried to mail Stamps knew they were up to no good. The return address on the package is an abandoned house, and the sender doesn’t exist.

A local family with 15 other ferrets has adopted Stamps, who is healthy and estimated to be about two years old. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: US Postal Inspector)

This packing tape is printed with the image of a backbone, which leads to a great pun for a product name. http://www.copernicustoys.com/proddetail.php?prod=t-spine -via Boing Boing?

Joey Chestnut, one of the world's top-ranked competitive eaters (previously at Neatorama), won the asparagus eating contest at the Stockton Asparagus Festival in California.

Chestnut, who now makes his home in San Jose, captured his fifth career asparagus-chewing championship, devouring 8 pounds, 7 ounces of fried asparagus as hundreds cheered the local hero on.

"It was a great contest," Chestnut said. "The crowd was definitely on my side so I definitely was able to push harder than everybody else, I think."

The 8 pound, 7 ounce tally just missed breaking Chestnut's own world record of 8.8 pounds, set in Stockton in 2008.

Chestnut previously held the title from 2004 until 2008. Link -via Fark

After you stop groaning, you can vote for this proposed Threadless T-shirt design by Ste7en. Link -via Nag on the Lake

If William Shakespeare hadn't died in 1616, he would be 446 years old today. In honor of the occasion, Geekosystem presents some things you can do to celebrate.

Though Shakespeare’s influence tends to be thought of in the context of academics and books, he’s also had a steady influence on geekdom. After the jump, five geeky ways you can bring in the Bard’s birthday:

1. Watch Star Trek.

If you watch closely, Shakespeare has an enormous influence over Star Trek: Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha has a very comprehensive list of influences over the years. Lots of Trek titles are Shakespeare references, Captain Picard loved to recite The Bard, and oh — William Shatner is a classically trained Shakespearean actor.

Link

Instants! is a page of buttons you can use to insert appropriate phrases and sound effects whenever you need them. I can't wait for the opportunity to tell a joke (drumroll) punchline (yeah!). Before showing this to children, note that a couple are NSFW. Link -via Gorilla Mask

When you chew a piece of mint gum and then take a drink, the drink seems colder than it would otherwise. It's not colder, that's an illusion from your brain and a protein called TRPM8.

TRPM8 doesn’t just respond to cold temperatures, though. It also activates in the presence of menthol, a waxy, crystalline organic compound found in peppermint and other mint oils. (It responds to other “cooling agents,” too, like eucalyptol and icilin. Why, exactly, is unknown; menthol just happens to fit the cellular “lock.”)

Read about how this works at mental_floss. Link

(vimeo link)

Peruvian filmmaker Ricardo de Montreuil made the short film The Raven on a budget of only $5,000. It is based on a treatment for a potential film trilogy. I won't give any details, just enjoy the effects! -via Geeks Are Sexy

The question of whether video games can be considered an art form is raging across the internet. Game designer Kellee Santiago asserted in a TED talk that they can be. Film critic Roger Ebert responded that video games are not and can never be art. Gamers and art critics immediately joined in the fray. Neatorama author John Farrier comes down on the side of video games as art and explains in detail.

I define art -- and specifically good art -- as the effective outward expression of an inward conception of an ideal condition. If a person thinks of a story, and can express that story fully in text, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of a sound and can fully express that sound in music, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of a movement and can fully express that movement in dance, that person is an artist and has produced art. If a person thinks of an image and can fully express that image in paint, that person is an artist and has produced art.

If a person can envision a video and gather a team together that can accurately express that inner vision, that person is an artist and has produced art.

What do you think? Link

Eighteen-year-old Connor Olson of Tonganoxie, Kansas spent the past year fighting bone cancer. Earlier this month, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side. But he also achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and was looking forward to graduating from high school. Last week, Tonganoxie High School held an early graduation ceremony for Connor in which he was the only graduate.

The high school let out early Thursday so that Connor’s friends could watch him get his diploma.

So by the time he made his way into the auditorium, more than 500 people — classmates, neighbors, school board members, people who have raised money for his medical bills — were waiting for him.

Connor’s teachers, wearing black graduation gowns, stood in a big semicircle in front of the stage, most of them blinking back and wiping tears from their eyes.

Even though the stage has a lift, Connor's friends carried his wheelchair to the stage where he received his diploma. Speakers included the senior class president and a representative of the University of Kansas football team. The school band played the national anthem and a slide show of Connor's school days was shown. After he received his diploma, he went home with his parents and hospice nurse. http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/15/1880739_tonganoxie-holds-special-graduation.html (with video) -via Fark

Connor died a week later. http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/21/1894385_tonganoxie-student-who-courageously.html

(image credit: John Sleezer)

Some dances that we learned as kids were not at all new, or not nearly as new as we thought they were! Here are the origins of five dances you might have tried at one time or another.

Fight for Your Right to Electric Slide

(image credit: Improv Everywhere)

Many people are too embarrassed to admit they know how to do the electric slide, but Richard Silver isn't one of them. Silver was a fixture of the New York disco scene, and he choreographed the electric slide in 1976. As the dance craze caught on, he was horrified to discover people doing just 18 of his 22-step routine. So he did what any self-righteous dance creator would do ad spent years threatening to sue anyone who bungled his moves. He even made YouTube take down videos of people dancing the slide at their weddings and bar mitzvahs. But Silver never actually sued anyone; he just made threats. In 2007, a civil rights organization called his bluff and sued him on behalf of a man whose dance party clips had been removed from the internet. The incident convinced Silver to stop hounding amateur dancers.

How Low Can You Go? The Soul-Crushing Origins of the Limbo

If you think the limbo was created for middle-aged couples in Hawaiian shirts, you couldn't be more wrong. According to most sources, the dance came to America by way of Trinidad, where West Indian slaves invented it to simulate the descent into a slave ship. The lower a slave went into the ship's hull, the harder it became to break free. Now try enjoying the dance on your next trip to Club Med. (image credit: Flickr user Endlisnis) 

Striking a Pose, When It Counts

Like breakdancing, voguing began as a competition between African Americans in New York. But in this case, rivals were underground fraternities of gay men in Harlem during the 1930s. Back then, voguing (which involves posing like a model) was simply called "performance" because of the judging it inspired. The dance was renamed "vogue" in the 1970s, after performers began striking poses found in glossy fashion magazines-namely Vogue. (image credit: Flickr user nayrb7)

Breakdancing: Settling it Old School

As innocent as it seems today, breakdancing emerged in the 1970s as a new way for gangs to fight each other. In black neighborhoods in the South Bronx, for instance, gang leaders would dance-off to songs like James Brown's funky "Get on the Good Foot." They'd even settles disputes through these proxy battles. The judging procedure was simple: whoever had the illest moves won.

The Courage to Trot Like a Turkey

In the early 1900s, men and women danced side by side, polka-style. So when kids started doing the Turkey Trot-a dance in which partners face each other-parent just didn't understand. The Trot quickly became the forbidden dance of the ragtime era, and it was outlawed in some states. One unfortunate young lady in New Jersey actually served 50 days in jail just for dancing like a turkey. It should also be noted that the Turkey Trot is only one of many food- or animal-inspired dances that have been accused of corrupting America's youth. There's also the Bunny Hug, the Cakewalk, the Mashed Potato, the Duck Dance, and the Chickle Noodle Soup, just to name a few.

__________

The article above, written by Adam Rosen, appeared in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!

Studies with apes and monkeys show that the concept of fairness goes beyond human experience. Researchers taught monkeys and chimpanzees to exchange tokens for grapes (which they preferred) or carrots. The exchanges went well when the subject knew what to expect, and when the reward they bought was the same for their cohorts. But when the researcher offered a grape and then delivered a carrot, or when the subject got a different reward from his cohorts, the tantrums began.

However, chimpanzees in this study went beyond the basic tenets of the social contract and demonstrated what could be considered the foundation of social solidarity. In 95 trials chimpanzees that received a grape were significantly more likely to refuse the high-value reward when their group mate only received a carrot (p = 0.008). Even those who benefitted from inequality recognized that the situation was unfair and they refused to enjoy their own reward if it meant someone else had to suffer.

This particular behavior was not seen in the monkeys. Did a sense of fairness evolve along with cooperation among higher primates? Link

(image credit: Flickr user Owen Booth)

Charlie Chaplin has a fan club in Adipur, Gujarat, India called the Charlie Circle. A couple hundred local people are members, and have a celebration every year on April 16th, Chaplin's birthday. For this year's party, more than 100 people attended dressed as Chaplin's character the Little Tramp. The man behind the town's fascination with the actor is film buff Ashok Aswani, who became a Chaplin fan in 1966 when he watch The Gold Rush four times in one day.

The young man, his life changed by Chaplin's cinema, dropped out of college and applied for an actor's course in India's most famous cinema school in the western city of Pune. He passed the admission test, joined the school but was thrown out after six months when he failed his tests.

Returning to Adipur, Mr Aswani opened the Charlie Circle club in 1973. He became a practitioner of indigenous medicine, giving away free Chaplin CDs with his potions.

The annual celebration includes a street party and procession and the showing of a Chaplin film. Link -via Fortean Times

(image credit: Sanjoy Ghosh)