(Break.com link)

I was expecting someone to pull the truck over on top of himself, but no, no one gets hurt (I think). Still, the result is not what these guys expected! -via Grow-A-Brain

Your dose of cute for the day. This is just the first of a series of pictures recording this encounter. Link -via reddit

(YouTube link)
I wouldn’t normally post a political video here unless it was funny, but the story on this one is how it took off like a rocket. I thought this was quite interesting when I first saw it linked on Metafilter yesterday. It was released Friday, posted to YouTube only yesterday, but this morning copies of it occupy five spaces on the Top 20 at Viral Video Chart. It was created by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and Jesse Dylan (son of Bob), inspired by Barak Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech.

Dylan and will.i.am say they did not coordinate the production or release of this video with the Obama campaign and the filmmakers say they don't even know if Obama is aware of the video.

Link

Deputydog has posted photographs of six incredible star forts. These are communities surrounded by a wall, road, or waterway shaped like a star. Although some have been around for hundreds of years, their real beauty shines when seen from the sky. This one is Bourtange, in the Netherlands. http://deputy-dog.com/2008/02/02/6-incredible-star-forts/

Worldometers brings you real-time statistics on world population, health, environmental issues, and more. We’ve seen how fast the numbers on life and death turn over, but their “stastistic of the month” fascinated me -the price of a bottle of beer in Zimbabwe just goes up and up and up. Link -Thanks, Bill!

(image credit: Cian Walsh)

The Sinking Palace is a nickname for the Basilica Cistern below Istanbul. Built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinianus I in the sixth century, the cistern once held enough water for the entire city-26 million gallons! The columns and archways were recycled from earlier Roman ruins. The cistern was forgotten for hundreds of years until rediscovered by a Dutch traveler in the 1500s. Now, the Sinking Palace is a tourist attraction for Istranbul. Link

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this photo of a Martian happy face on January 28th. The unnamed crater is about 3 kilometers across. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Britain mourns the passing of Miles Kington {wiki} who died on Thursday. Kingston coined the term “Franglais”, which is the language produced when English speakers attempt to speak French.

Its rules are simple. Insert as many French words as you know into the sentence, fill in the rest with English, then speak it with absolute conviction.

Some examples:
A man is accused of driving his car "avec toute la finesse d'un Rangers fan" (Miles Kington)
A door-to-door seller assures his customers "je ne suis pas un nutter religieux" (Miles Kington)
"Je suis un rock star." (Bill Wyman)
A famous defendant who "ject un brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist". (Old English court case)
“Le maker de 'franglais' est le dead.” (Fark)

Kington wrote several books about Franglais. Link -via Fark, where you’ll find more examples.

Also see: La Petite Lesson En Franglais

Hotel Fox in Copenhagen invited 21 artists from all over the world to decorate their 61 rooms.

Each room is an individual piece of art. From wacky comical styles to strict graphic design. From fantastic street art and Japanese Manga to simply spaced out fantasies. You will find flowers, fairytales, friendly monsters, dreaming creatures, secrets vaults and…

The room pictured was designed by Los Angeles artist Simone Legno, also known as tokidoki. Link -via Dump Trumpet

Teaching has never been an easy profession, but at least most teachers don’t have to start the fire in this century! That was probably a dangerous task while wearing two petticoats. Link -via Phil's Phun



Then I found these rules from 1872 at the Rusk County Historical Society Museum. Among them:

4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
5. After ten hours on school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the bible or other good books.
6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly stime of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.

In other words, live your life exactly as we tell you to, but don't expect a pension. Link

A 65-year-old Finnish man received a new upper jaw that was grown in his abdomen using his own stem cells. Scientists had isolated stem cells from the patient's fat, and sorted out the type of cells that could grow into bone tissue. The cells were applied to a custom jaw-shaped scaffold and implanted in his abdomen for nine months. Tissues grew around the scaffolding, which was removed and attached to the man’s skull to replace his upper jaw, which had been removed due to a tumor.

"There have been a couple of similar-sounding procedures before, but these didn't use the patient's own stem cells that were first cultured and expanded in laboratory and differentiated into bone tissue," said Riitta Suuronen of the Regea Institute of Regenerative Medicine, part of the University of Tampere.

She told a news conference the patient was recovering more quickly than he would have if he had received a bone graft from his leg.

"From the outside nobody would be able to tell he has been through such a procedure," she said.

Growing custom parts from a patient’s own stem cells not only bypasses the shortage of organs, but also eliminates the risk of tissue rejection. Link -via Metafilter

(Daily Motion link)
How similar are housecats and lions? In this TV clip from Japan Probe, you can see how lions play with cat toys, fall under the spell of catnip, learn to open a door, and deal with mirrors. Link -via Arbroath

Scientists report that a new species of animal has been found in Tanzania. Rhynochocyon udzungwensis {wiki} is a type of giant elephant shrew, also called a sengi. The species was first observed on film in 2005, and specimens were collected in 2006. The animal is not a shrew, but is closely related to a group of African mammals which include elephants, sea cows, aardvarks and hyraxes.

"This is one of the most exciting discoveries of my career," said Galen Rathbun, from the California Academy of Sciences, who helped to confirm the animal was new to science along with an international team of colleagues.

It is the first new species of elephant shrew discovered in 126 years. The BBC described it as looking like “ a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater.” Link -via the Presurfer

Update 2/1/08 by Alex - Conservation International has the photo gallery (and later in the week, a chat with one of the members of the expedition team) - Thanks Lindsay Walter-Cox!

The folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories made their own LED pegboard and named it Peggy. You can change the design or message any time you like without rewiring it, and you can program individual lights to go on and off. You can make your own with a kit and some downloadable instructions. Link

Indy Mogul has posted two Instructables on grisly special effects for film that you can do yourself, How To Rip a Heart Out of Someones Chest (a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), and a Decapitation Effect. With videos. These could be handy for Halloween, too! Link to heart effect. Link to head affect.