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There's just something about a man in uniform. However, most of us don't throw ourselves at the object of our affection in such a blatant manner. The music adds a special touch to this video. -via YesButNoButYes

When you show up at work or school wearing a cast and people ask what happened, you can show them with a Castoo. The company makes all kinds of decorations that you apply to your cast and seal with the heat of a hairdryer. Some pre-designed Castoos show arm or leg bones with breaks. You can also get one custom-made with your particular injury by sending them your x-ray! Link -via Geekologie

Your knowledge of the Old Testament will be sorely tested in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. For each question, you'll be given the names of two Biblical figures. You must decide which one is also the name of book from the Old Testament. I scored 100% on this one. Link

Nominations are complete for the annual Diagram Prize {wiki} for the oddest book title of the year. Ninety books were suggested in 2009, and the top six are in the running for the prize, to be announced on March 26th. The nominees are:

* David Crompton's Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter (Glenstrae Press)
* James A Yannes' Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich (Trafford)
* Daina Taimina's Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes (A K Peters)
* Ronald C Arkin's Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots (CRC Press)
* Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky's The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (SLACK Inc)
* Tara Jansen-Meyer's What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua? (Mirror)

You can vote on your favorite in a poll near the bottom of the site's homepage. http://www.thebookseller.com/news/112868-spoons-chihuahuas-and-autonomous-robots-make-odd-title-shortlist.html -via Arbroath

Previously at Neatorama: The Oddest Book Title Ever

Yesterday, students at the University of Mississippi voted to update their image with a new mascot. The previous mascot Colonel Reb, who resembles a antebellum plantation owner, hasn't been seen at a game since 2003, due to his Confederate symbolism. Who, or what, will the new mascot be? The athletic teams at Ole Miss are the Rebels, so the logical symbol would be Admiral Ackbar, the highest ranking member of the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars universe. Only time will tell if the students and administration at Ole Miss will embrace the campaign. Link -via Geekosystem

All athletes are ecstatic over winning a gold medal at the Olympics. But how about second and third place winners? It turns out that a bronze medal will bring more happiness than a silver medal!

Research by three U.S. academics, who analyzed heat-of-the-moment reactions, medal-stand temperament and interviews of Olympians, shows that bronze-medal winners, on average, are happier with their finishes than silver medalists. Take silver, and you tend to fixate on the near miss. Score bronze, and you are thankful you were not shut out altogether.

"When you come in second," said Thomas Gilovich, chairman of Cornell's psychology department and one of the study's co-authors, "it's the most natural thing in the world to look upward. 'I got the silver and that's what it is, but what is it not? It's not the gold.'

"With the bronze, the natural place to look is downward. 'I got the bronze. That's what it is, but what it isn't is off the medal stand.' "

The research was done during the 1992 summer games in Barcelona, but the findings appear to hold true in 2010. Link -via Digg

(image credit: Flickr user selihpxe8)

According to this infographic, there are 133,000,000 blogs on the internet, which makes me kind of proud to work for four of the top 1000 blogs. The biggest part of the blogging community update their sites 3-4 times a week, and spend 1 to 3 hours a week doing it. Looking through these statistics, it appears that I am a weird blogger, indeed. http://www.intac.net/breakdown-of-the-blogosphere/ -via the Presurfer

3-year-old Victoria Bensch wandered away from her home in Cordes Lakes, Arizona last Thursday. She was missing in the nearby mountains overnight while the temperature dipped down to 30 degrees. Fifteen hours later, she was spotted in a dry creek bad by a helicopter pilot. Victoria was accompanied by her dog, Blue. Pilot Matthew Uhl and medic Eric Tarr, who rescued Victoria, believe Blue kept the child warm and safe from predators.

The dog was protective of the child when they first approached, but when the girl smiled, the dog relaxed.

"I think once the dog realized we were there to help them out, he was very excited," Uhl said.

"He ran around while the medic tended to the little girl, and when it was time to go, he jumped right into the helicopter and was ready to go."

Victoria was taken to a hospital for frostbite treatment and was found to be healthy. Link -via Arbroath

Jason Bonham answered a 911 call at the Hancock County, Indiana dispatch. On the line was a five-year-old named Savannah Hensley who reported that her father had trouble breathing. An ambulance was dispatched, and Frank Hensley's life was saved by her calm but adorable call. http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=11780155 -via Digg

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You won't regret listening for six minutes to hear what Savannah had to say. The YouTube video is audio only.

You know how we occasionally hear of a stolen garden gnome or some other toy taking a trip around the world, with photographic evidence? There's also the Flat Stanley project that sends a foldable character on long trips. Now here's a travel agency that will do all the work for you! At least in Prague. A Czech travel agency will take your toy around the city and record the tour in photographs. You'll also get travel updates and a surprise. Link -via Arbroath

Here's a site where you can look up character actors by their pictures, because you don't know their names.

Have you ever been watching TV or a movie and pointed to the screen and said, "Hey! It's That Guy!"? Well, here is where you'll find him. This page is dedicated to the character actors collectively known as "That Guy".

That Guy is easy to recognize and difficult to place. You can describe him but not name him.

You'll know a lot of the faces, and now you'll know their names as well, and each is linked to their Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page. Pictured is Ed Lauter, who has appeared in 193 movies and television shows! Link -Thanks, Holistic CPA!

Many Americans know the V-2 rocket mainly as the beginning of the space program. That was Wernher von Braun's dream from the beginning, but the Nazi war machine saw it as a very important weapon. During World War II, the rockets were built at a concentration camp called Dora, where prisoners were used for slave labor.

The system of exploiting slave labor to assemble missiles began in 1943. It expanded dramatically after the August 1943 bombings of Peenemünde by the British Royal Air Force. The widespread destruction led the Nazi leadership and the missile staff to move underground and use forced labor. The chosen site was a mine/fuel depot near the town of Nordhausen in Thüringen. Slave laborers from the Buchenwald concentration camp came to extend the tunnels for an underground V–2 factory called Mittelwerk. The new concentration camp outside the tunnels was code named Dora and was later renamed Mittelbau. More than 60,000 prisoners were interred at Dora. Some of them built 6000 V–2 rockets between August 1943 and April 1945. They experienced squalid housing, starvation diets, and draconian discipline with frequent executions.

Tens of thousands of prisoners died at Dora. Others were sent off to death camps as their usefulness faded. When the US Army liberated Dora in 1945, they found 750 workers and 3,000 corpses.

Following combat units were teams associated with various American intelligence groups intent on capturing German technology and experts. The US Army collected parts of 100 V–2s from the underground factory and, under a larger program best known as Paperclip, brought more than 125 German V–2 missile engineers, scientists and technicians to America. The Army interrogated them to determine their involvement in Nazi organizations and war crimes. However the Army wanted their expertise for the Cold War, so officers sometimes consciously overlooked or buried incriminating information.

Similarly, the US–led Dora war crimes trial at Dachau in 1947 led to no heightened American understanding, in large part because the US media had lost interest in such trials. The Dachau proceeding tried guards, kapos and the Mittelwerk general director, but its convictions narrowly focused on individual cruelty to prisoners. US Army Ordnance shielded its German missile engineers from public scrutiny by preventing Wernher von Braun, the leader of the group, from traveling to Germany to testify. Afterwards the Army classified the trial records as secret to guard information about Mittelwerk.

The story of slave labor at Dora accompanies a photographic exhibit at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. The extensive website also includes many links to outside sources. Warning: some photographs may be disturbing. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Walter Frentz)

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We first posted the HumanCar back in 2006. Inventor Chuck Greenwood has been working steadily ever since to bring his dream of an eco-friendly human-powered car to the market. In this latest video, he test drives the Imagine_PS, an electric hybrid that combines human and electrical power. Link -Thanks, Chuck!

34-year-old Robin Joshua Hood was arrested in Denver after leaving a store without paying for three baseball caps he took. Police then found "injection devices" that Hood says he uses for heroin.

Officials say Hood found a wallet in downtown Denver and assumed the identity of the owner.

As Hood told investigators after his arrest, he was wanted out of Denver for drug violations and didn't want to be arrested on a Denver arrest warrant.

Hood used the name he had stolen, which was blacked out in court documents, when issued a summons in Denver for shoplifting.

Given the circumstances, what's the possibility that Robin Hood isn't his real name, either? http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14391684 -via YesButNoButYes

The user-generated website There, I Fixed It often showcases how people use duct tape to fix anything. An engineer at NASA submitted photos of how duct tape is put to work on the International Space Station! See more pictures and the explanation at the site. Link