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A cat spruces up a fennec fox. -via YesButNoButYes

Mmmm, beaver! Bug Girl posted these beaver recipes from a 1960 pamphlet entitled Good Eating from Woods and Fields, which also includes instructions for cooking muskrat. Link -Thanks, ersatz soubriquet!

See more from the booklet in her Flickr stream.

British citizen and experienced sailor Laura Hughes and her friend John Cochrane were battling gale force winds off the Turkish coast when a rope got caught in her boat's propeller and killed the engine. She sent a Mayday signal and a boat responded, but the crew demanded 10,000 euros for their rescue -more money than Hughes had. So she jumped in to swim to shore. But she had some precious cargo to take with her -two dogs and their nine puppies who were born during the boat trip!

So, wearing a lifejacket, Miss Hughes jumped out of the boat, carrying the nine Rottweiler puppies 'African-style' by balancing the crate on her head and holding the side with one hand while swimming with the other.

Mr Cochrane and the two adult dogs also jumped off the boat and swam to the nearest beach at the Greek resort of Lalissos about 100 metres from their boat.When they got to the shore, exhausted, they were helped by German tourists from a beach hotel and members of the emergency services.

The British Embassy found Laura and John a hotel room for the night - and the puppies spent the night at a local Greek police station.

Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: KNSNEWS)

The folks who bring you the Merriam-Webster dictionary select their top words of the year not by how trendy or new they are, but by which words are the most looked up in their online dictionary. This year, nine of the top ten words are easily linked to big news stories. For example, the word people look up more than any other was "admonish", which had to do with Rep. Joe Wilson's interruption of president Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress in September.

Wilson's interruption wasn't exactly an act of admonishing, since that word (defined by the Visual Thesaurus as "warn strongly" or "take to task") usually implies a gentler, not so confrontational approach. Admonish made the news the following week when the House of Representatives voted on a resolution disapproving of Wilson's conduct. The resolution wasn't so strong as a rebuke or censure, so admonish fit the bill in many of the press descriptions.

Other words on the list include philanderer, pandemic, and rogue. Link -via Metafilter

(vimeo link) Some things are so obvious, it only took a quarter-century for someone to think of this. (via b3ta)

This 1936 ad for Camel cigarettes encourages you to stop and smoke between each course of your Thanksgiving feast. Link to Flickr page (full size). -via Metafilter

Can't decide what kind of pie to serve after Thanksgiving dinner? Make them all in one pie pan! Cakespy at Serious Eats experimented with pecan, apple, and pumpkin pie recipes to make this triple threat. The best results came from the pie divided into sections, as seen in the picture. The recipes are included. Link -via Unique Daily

Maité Roël of Bovekerke, Belgium is the youngest victim of the first World War. As a disabled war victim, she carries a veteran's card that entitles her to reduced train fares, but gets suspicious looks when she uses it. Roël was only nine years old when an RAF bomb that was inadvertently thrown on a bonfire nearly destroyed her leg. She underwent 29 operations and was addicted to morphine for ten years.

"We went on a scout camping expedition to Wetteren and I remember now that it was an old military camp," Maité recalls very slowly. She has tiny dreadlocks that hang down her slim face and a silver ring in her nose – not the usual face of a First World War victim. "It was July 6th, 1992. I knew nothing about war. I remember we all built a fire using bricks round the outside and the other kids starting throwing logs on it. I was tired and so I went a few metres from the fire so I could sleep. Then there was a sudden explosion – I woke up and saw sparks from the explosion. Everyone was running and shouting and I tried to get up and I couldn't. Everyone was looking at me and I looked down – and I saw that my left leg was hanging by a piece of skin."

Roël is under the care of the Belgian Institute for Veterans' Affairs and War Victims. She has no interest in learning about the war that affected her life. Link -via YesButNoButYes

(image credit: Laurent Lenclud)

A strange assortment of prehistoric crocodilyform fossils have been found in Africa. Crocodilyforms are ancient cousins of today's alligators, crocodiles, and caimans.

For instance, the rodent-like RatCroc had buckteeth for rooting through the ground after tubers or simple animals.

The flat-bodied PancakeCroc was the "ultimate sit-and-wait predator," Sereno said. The animal would lie motionless and "wait for something stupid" to swim into its rail-thin, 3-foot-long (0.9-meter-long) jaws, which were lined with rows of spiky teeth.

DuckCroc had a long, smooth, sensitive nose to poke through vegetation as well as hook-shaped teeth to snag frogs and small fish in shallow water.

And the plant-eating DogCroc had lanky legs that meant it was likely spry enough to run into the water if threatened.

By far the mightiest of the lot, BoarCroc was a 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) "saber-toothed cat in armor" that ate dinosaurs for dinner.

DuckCroc and DogCroc were previously known to scientists, and the rest are new discoveries by a team headed by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago. The expedition found fossils of all five in Niger and Morocco. Link (with video) -via Digg

(image credit: Mike Hettwer/National Geographic)

The 2,100 citizens of North Pole, Alaska take Christmas very seriously. Since 1954, they've volunteered for Operation Santa, a program of the US Postal Service which answers letters to Santa Claus. The program has volunteers all over the country, and many letters are routed through Alaska to get the special North Pole postmark. However, the USPS is discontinuing the practice of sending letters to the town of North Pole.

Anchorage-based agency spokeswoman Pamela Moody said dealing with the tighter restrictions is not feasible in Alaska.

"It's always been a good program, but we're in different times and concerned for the privacy of the information," she said.

Moody stressed that kids around the world can still send letters to Santa Claus. The Postal Service still runs the giant Operation Santa Program in which children around the world can have their letters to Santa answered, and the restrictions do not affect private organizations running their own letter efforts.

But what will change are the generically addressed letters to "Santa Claus, North Pole" that for years have been forwarded to volunteers in the Alaska town. That program will stop, unless changes are made before Christmas.

North Pole residents are upset over the changes, and also unhappy that North Pole cancellations will now be stamped in Anchorage instead of Fairbanks, which is only 15 miles from North Pole. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hCHNHQco9s98ruRro8qyPD2vwB_AD9C2K4TG3 -via Consumerist

(image credit: AP/Sam Harrel)

This recipe for turkey stuffing calls for "18 White Castle hamburgers (no pickles), chopped into 1-inch pieces," (or you can substitute bread, but it won't be the same). I suppose if you live in the southern part of the US, you could substitute Krystals. Both brands are commonly called sliders. The recipe is a part of Thanksgiving for Chicago chefs Chris and Jill Barron, who share their Thanksgiving cooking schedule. Link to story. Link to recipe. -via Boing Boing

(image credit: Flickr user DaddyPlus5)

College students Leslie Pope and John Wagner and four of their friends went to the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The bill came to $73, which they paid, but they refused to pay the mandatory $16.35 tip, because they said the service was lousy. So they were arrested.

They had to find their own napkins and cutlery while their waitress caught a smoke, had to ask the bar for soda refills, and had to wait over an hour for salad and wings, they told NBC10.

The pub, which was very busy that night, took the $73, but then called the cops, who treated the matter as a theft.

The menu clearly states, "18 percent gratuity added to check of parties of 6 of more," and a similar message is printed on receipts, a pub employee said this morning.

The students will be in court over the matter next month. What do you think? A mandatory tip for groups of six or more is common in the US restaurant industry in order to keep waiters from being stiffed when they can't serve enough other tables to make up for it. However in this case, the policy seems to be a license to give poor service. Link -via reddit

(image credit: Flickr user me and the sysop)

NASA needs lots of help sorting through the hundreds of thousands of images they've collected from the surface of Mars. What do do? Make it into a game! Be A Martian combines the work of analyzing those images online with the competition of gaming. In this way, NASA hopes to enlist citizens to help with the huge project.

Nasa hopes the mix of real data and fun will also inspire the planetary scientists of tomorrow.

"We really need the next generation of explorers," says Michelle Viotti, from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees Mars missions.

"And we're also accomplishing something important for Nasa. There's so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important."

Link to story. Link to game. -via Metafilter

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Mickey Mouse made his public debut in the cartoon Steamboat Willie on November 18, 1928 -81 years ago! The character appeared in Plane Crazy a few months earlier, but the Walt Disney Company doesn't count that because it was a silent film. Link

Lion Safari Park in Johannesburg, South Africa allows cars to drive through the lion enclosure so people can see the animals up close. A family in a white Toyota drove through with the doors closed, but apparently failed to lock at least one back door.

Thier glee turned to horror as the 300lb lion firmly took the rear door handle with his teeth and pulled it open in one deft movement.

For several seconds the car remained still while the occupants digested the shock of what had happened before finally hitting the accelerator and driving off.

As they fled, the lion followed in pursuit until it reached the gates of the enclosure. There it was finally held back by a warden who hurled stones to shoo it back.

Richard Holden was in a car behind the Toyota and managed to take pictures of the incident. Link -via Arbroath