Check out this marvelous Barack Obama action figure that makes him look like a cross between Chuck Norris and James Bond! The site (with lots more pictures) is in Japanese, so I don't know if this is for sale or not. Link -Thanks, Steve Temkin, James, and McKenzie Kerman!

The Big Picture at The Boston Globe has an awesome collection of large photographs that give a glimpse of the pageantry, pathos, and the enormous crowd at Tuesday's inauguration events. Over a million people were in attendance, with millions more following the festivities by TV and internet all over the world. This collection has pictures of both. Shown are attendees taking footage by phone at one of the inaugural balls. Link -via Cynical-C

(image credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

In a new book, an Argentine historian asserts that Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele is responsible for the astonishing rate of twins in Candido Godoi, Brazil. Jorge Camarasa makes the claim that Mengele ministered to both humans and livestock of the town during the 1960s under the name Rudolph Weiss in the book Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America.

For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed.

But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town.

The normal rate of twin births is one out of every 80 pregnancies. Link -via Reddit

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Alexandra and Lizz encourage YouTube commenters to learn proper grammar and spelling, and scale back on the hate talk. -via Everlasting Blort

If we could select the US president from the movies, who would be elected? That's not really the aim of this list; it's about the presidential portrayals we enjoyed watching the most. When I got to #2 (my personal favorite), I knew who #1 would be. Still, I think Kevin Kline's character in the movie Dave should have been included. Shown here is Bill Pullman as the US president in Independence Day. Link -via the Presurfer

From a Storm Trooper pit crew who services a race car to a Wookiee who pitches, GalacticBinder.com celebrates those moments when Star Wars invades the world of sports. Don't miss the video of the Storm Trooper playing the national anthem!
Link -via Metafilter

Take what you have and build what you need -that's what we in the South call Southern ingenuity, although I'm sure it's called something else in other places. Roland at Geeky Gadgets built an easel out of five pencils and four rubber bands. Now he can comfortably watch videos instead of working! Link -Thanks, Roland!

Since 1975, twelve people have hosted Saturday Night Live five times or more. Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss challenges you to name them. How many can you think of in three minutes? I named six, but I also wasted a lot of time entering names that weren't in "the club." http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21900

Two Dutch students, Omar Kbiri and Lennard Hulsbos, found themselves on a last-minute trip to Washington, DC to watch the inauguration, thanks to Virgin founder Richard Branson! Branson was at a conference Tuesday in Amsterdam and mentioned he was flying back to the States for the inauguration. The original story in Dutch is available here. An English translation provided by b°b (the full version is in the comments):

To make his speech more interactive, the attendees were allowed to send their questions to the Englishman to a big screen via text-messages. On the question "Can you take 2 broke students to Washington DC?" Branson answered "Yes" immediately. After his speech, the two students stepped inside Bransons’ limousine and drove to the airport where Branson’s private jet was already waiting.

The two ‘poor’ students didn’t even have to pay for their hotel. A sponsor spontaneously offered to pay the bill.

Link to English translation by Google. -Thanks, b°b!

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Mark Winkler spent six months building a machine to fling watermelons and fireballs, just for kicks. Link

We know that men have an easier time losing weight than women do. Why this is so is the subject of a recent study. Nuclear-medicine specialist Dr. Gene-Jack Wang of the Brookhaven National Laboratory conducted a rather sadistic experiment using 23 male and female volunteers. First, they fasted for 17 hours. Then they were presented with a large amount of their favorite food and told to think about something else to reduce their cravings. Meanwhile, they had been injected with a dye and scanned to see what areas of the brain were most active.

When the scans were studied and the results were tallied, it appeared that both sexes were actually able to lower the overall sensation of hunger. In most people, the brain may grow partially habituated to an empty belly over time, and all of Wang's volunteers did a good job of hastening that desensitization. What the men could do that the women couldn't was quit ruminating on food, successfully suppressing — if only temporarily — the conscious desire to eat. The women continued experiencing emotional cravings even if their hunger had subsided.

Wang suspects hormone may play a part in the difference. Link -Thanks, Freshome!

(image credit: Ansgar/zefa/Corbis)

Ochre Jelly recreated Gaius Baltar, Six, Starbuck, and Morbo from Battlestar Galactica in Lego! I looked up pictures of these characters, and found they are pretty much dead-on. Link -Thanks, Ochre Jelly!

Alberto Ocampo was paragliding from San Felix to Antioquia, Colombia when he became entangled in power lines 350 meters above ground.

Fog and cold temperatures hampered the rescue mission, but civil defence forces eventually lowered Ocampo back onto the ground where his family were there to greet him.

Ocampo was hanging for ten hours. Link (with video) -via Arbroath

We’ve all seen them in busy shopping streets and parks, or in front of monuments and tourist attractions: street performers posing as statues. Some whistle when you pass by, some move when you give them money. Some do it as a career, others between jobs. But whatever the case, being a living statue takes guts, strength, creativity and yes, a good deal of exhibitionism.

Environmental Graffiti has photos of 15 living statues, some you'd never know until they moved! Link -via Unique Daily

Two Burmese men were rescued from the waters off Horn Island, in the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea. They had been floating in a fish cooler for about 25 days! They were survivors from a crew of about 20 Thai and Burmese fishermen whose boat had broken up.

They told rescuers they were forced to crew a 10m-long Thai fishing boat that broke up about 200 nautical miles north of Australia, sources told The Courier-Mail.

As the wooden boat splintered into the ocean, the crew sent out distress signals but were ignored, the men told authorities.

The two survivors climbed into the icebox as other crew searched desperately for something to grab from the wreck.

They saw a Thai man floating past them in the ocean but were unable to help, they said.

It is understood the men managed to survive by drinking rain water that gathered at the bottom of the box and by eating pieces of fish that were also in the container.

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/01/20/50631_todays-news.html -Thanks, Vit Peyr!

(image credit: Channel 7)