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You can debate the wisdom of making an otter into a pet, but you have to agree that Sidney is adorable. -via Buzzfeed

Every once in a while, political parties or local groups will put an animal on the ballot for public office. Every once in a blue moon, that animal will be elected! These eight stories include three critters who actually served (although how well they served is a matter of opinion). Pictured is Clay Henry III, the beer-drinking goat who was once mayor of Lajitas, Texas. Link

The remote Mustang caves of Nepal are yielding treasures and artworks that lead explorers to think it may be the legendary Shangri-La. Expeditions in 2007 and 2008 found 15th-century paintings, religious texts, and skeletons. The expeditions were led by US researcher Broughton Coburn and veteran mountaineer Pete Athans.

The unusual treasures have led Coburn and his team to suggest that the Mustang caves could be linked to "hidden valleys" thought to represent the Buddhist spiritual paradise known as Shambhala.

"Shambhala is also believed by many scholars to have a geographical parallel that may exist in several or many Himalayan valleys," Coburn said.

"These hidden valleys were created at times of strife and when Buddhist practice and principals were threatened," Coburn said. "The valleys contained so-called hidden treasure texts."

Elaine Brook, author of Search for Shambhala, said the hidden valleys of Mustang indeed "have some of the characteristics of the mythical land of Shambhala."

For his 1933 novel, Hilton used the concept of Shambhala as the basis for his "lost" valley of Shangri-La, an isolated mountain community that was a storehouse of cultural wisdom.

PBS will air two specials about the Mustang caves tonight. Link

(image credit: Kris Erickson)

Can you name the most commonly used words in the English language? In this quiz, you'll have twelve minutes to name the 100 words most used. I only guessed 68 before time ran out, but I ran into trouble by having a space in front of some words. Be careful! Link -via J-Walk Blog

(image by Flickr user the|G|™)

Award-winning author Beverly Cleary gave us books about Ramona and the kids from Klickitat Street. In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, find out how much you remember from the books. I scored miserably because I read some of these so long ago, and others weren't written until I was an adult. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/40851

The Hamster Hotel is now open in Nantes, France. No, it's not just a clever name. Frederic Tabary and Yann Falquerho converted a room in an old building to a human-sized hamster cage complete with a running wheel and hay to sleep on! Guests will be able to live like a hamster complete with grain offered for meals.

"The hamster in the world of children is that little cuddly animal. Often, the adults who come here have wanted or did have hamsters when they were small," said Mr Falquerho, who was dressed as a hamster.

The price for the room is currently 99 euros for a night, but the price will go up when Wifi and a TV screen are installed. Link -via Arbroath

Social networking on the internet has given us plenty of new words and terms (such as "social networking"), and the New Oxford American Dictionary is paying attention. The publishers announced that "unfriend" is their word of the year for 2009.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

Other words considered for the honor included hashtag, sexting, and paywall, all of which are unfamiliar to my spellchecker. Link -via Mashable

This clever candy is packaged to look like our favorite lucky cat, Maneki Neko! But open the cellophane and all you get are two white balls of candy. The cellophane is where the cat is at -in fact there are several wrappers with different cat expressions. http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/10/lucky-cat-candy-packet.html -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

David Thorne is at it again. The guy who tried to pay a bill with a picture of a spider and suffered through a surprise apartment inspection now has overdue video rentals. The correspondence between Thorne and Blockbuster Video goes about as you'd expect (if you can't dazzle them with brilliance...), but there is a delicious twist at the end.

Dear Megan,

With the possible exception of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the movies were not worth watching let alone stealing. In Logan's Run, for example, the computer crashed at the end when presented with conflicting facts and blew up destroying the entire city. When my computer crashes I carry on a little bit and have a cigarette while it is rebooting. I don't have to search through rubble for my loved ones. The same programmers probably designed the Blockbuster 'returned or not' database.

Link -via Digg

On November 15, 1959, Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their four children were murdered in Holcomb, Kansas. This crime was later chronicled in Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood and in four movies. The Guardian takes a look back at the crime, the book written about it, and how the town of Holcomb has dealt with its notoriety for 50 years. Some of the townspeople welcomed the attention; others wish everyone would stay away. Bob Rupp, the last townsperson to see the Clutters alive, and who erected a memorial plaque honoring the family, has his own opinion.

Bob Rupp has a third view. He says he has never read In Cold Blood, nor seen the movies, and never will. But he believes that Capote was unfair to the Clutters, because he left to posterity a memory of them that is dominated by the gruesome manner of their deaths rather than the wonderful accomplishments of their lives. He still thinks about the Clutters often, hence his idea for the memorial.

Link -via Metafilter

Anyone who takes digital pictures gets a real kick out of how crime investigators on the CSI TV shows use their computers to zoom in and enhance photographs, as if you could really zoom in to just a few pixels and see a legible image. Now you can! The CSI Image Enhancer lets you zoom in on a photograph just by typing furiously and saying "enhance!" Well, really, all you have to do is type furiously. Try this one as an example. Upload your own photos to make a personal enhancement of your own. Link -via b3ta

(image found at Arbroath)

Most people outside Scandinavia would have a hard time naming more than two Vikings if you asked them. Sure, you're familiar with Eric the Red and his son Lief Ericson, but have you ever heard of Egil Skallagrimsson, who killed many but still found time to write poetry? Or how about Freydis Ericsdottr, who held her own with the male warriors? Then there's Ivar the Boneless, who invaded England to avenge his father's death.

I should mention that Ivar the Boneless got his sweet nickname because he had a degenerative disease that left him unable to stand, and not because he needed to talk to his doctor about Cialis or anything like that. However, as a badass medieval sea-raiding shitwrecker, Ivar wasn’t going to let a little thing like “not being able to use his legs” stop him from raining death on his enemies at every turn.

In this manner, Ivar killed two kings and captured a large part of the British Isles. Link

Scientists are working on unconventional methods for controlling neurons in the brain. In one such experiment, a mouse's behavior was controlled by shining a light directly on its brain! But this was no ordinary brain -the mouse had DNA from algae inserted into its neurons, which made them responsive to light. The crucial part of these experiments is making the new genes active in only certain types of neurons, depending on the outcome we are looking for. Stanford psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth and his team are experimenting with optogenetics to help victims of Parkinson's disease, starting with mice.

Many experts had thought the cure was to stimulate certain kinds of cells within the subthalamic nucleus, which coordinates motion. But when they tried that, it had no effect whatsoever. Then two of Deisseroth’s grad students began experimenting with a dark-horse idea. They stimulated neurons near the surface of the brain that send signals into the subthalamic nucleus — a much harder approach because it meant working at one remove. It was as if, instead of using scissors yourself, you had to guide someone else’s hands to make the cuts.

Their idea worked. The mice walked. In their paper, published in April 2009, they wrote that the “effects were not subtle; indeed, in nearly every case these severely parkinsonian animals were restored to behavior indistinguishable from normal.”

Other experiments on rhesus monkeys show promise. The team is now designing ways to make optogenetics safe and effective for humans. Link

(image credit: Justin Wood)

There is some evidence that peeling a hard-boiled egg is not as easy as it was a couple of decades ago. The reason why might surprise you -older eggs are easier to peel, and the eggs we eat are fresher than ever! As an egg ages, it loses both moisture and carbon dioxide, which causes the air bubble between the shell and the membrane to get bigger. A bigger air pocket makes eggs easier to peel.

While I’ve noticed the Peeling Problem most distinctly with superfresh farm eggs, the eggs you buy at the supermarket could be getting fresher too. Most American eggs are produced and distributed by agribusiness concerns like Cal-Maine and Rose Acre, which each have more than 20 million hens cranking out eggs just for you.

Statistics on the time it takes for an egg to go from hen to supermarket have not been calculated, a USDA representative told Wired.com, but there’s some reason to believe that new production techniques could be delivering eggs to markets faster.

A 1998 report by the agency found that big consolidated chicken egg facilities, which wash and package the eggs on-site instead of sending them to a separate processing location, could reduce the time from farm to store from 100 hours to 53 hours. And, according to Cal-Maine’s SEC filings, the industry continues to centralize, squeezing out the old facilities in favor of the new ones.

So if you are going to use hard-boiled eggs in your Thanksgiving dishes, you might want to purchase your eggs soon. Link -via Unique Daily

Fiat Lux is a lamp with a switch that hovers underneath -no strings attached! The ball-shaped switch is magnetic, and rests on the lamp when not in use. When you approach the lamp, it turns itself on. Then you "hang" the switch underneath, where it levitates by magnetic force. Move the switch to turn the lamp off. Designed by Constance Guisset and Grégory Cid. http://www.constanceguisset.com/?page_id=35 -via Metafilter