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If you liked the story of Christian the Lion (previously on Neatorama), you'll love the story of Bigfoot, from California's Redwood Coast. Link -via YesButNoButYes

Is it a mantid, a wasp, or a fly? Answer: none of the above. This is a Wasp Mantidfly (Climaciella brunnea), which is more closely related to a green lacewing than any of its namesakes. Although this picture is featured on Iowa Voices, it was taken in Illinois. Link -Thanks, Matt!

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Is there a law somewhere that says we all have to face the same direction in an elevator? Apparently so, since we all obey that law. This old clip from Candid Camera is funny because we all understand it. In real life, the behavior is a little more ambiguous, as seen in the elevators of the London Underground that have doors on both sides of the elevator. http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/08/elevator-psychology-and-london.php

Joyce Bernann McKinney, who made headlines by having her pit bull cloned (previously on Neatorama), has left South Korea without the five cloned puppies she commissioned from a biotech company. Publicity over the cloning led to her identification as a fugitive from a British court in 1977. She had been accused of the kidnap and rape of a 21-year-old Mormon missionary. McKinney denied the charges, saying that the relationship was consensual. The case was never brought to trial, as McKinney fled to the US after making bail.

Now, a lawyer has identified McKinney as a fugitive from a criminal case in Tennessee.

The Tennessee charges stem from McKinney's arrest in November 2004 after being found in a van with the teenager. According to prosecutors in Carter County, an area in north eastern Tennessee, she instructed the boy to burgle a house and was charged with criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

McKinney had allegedly told the teenager she needed money to help her three-legged horse. A representative of the South Korean biotech company said she had left for the US last week, but does not know where she is. Link -Thanks, Heather!

US Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson won a silver medal in the all-around competition yesterday in Beijing, but she has an even bigger honor awaiting her back in the States. Johnson's likeness is on display at the Iowa State Fair, carved in butter!

Butter Shawn Johnson will share the spotlight with the butter cow in the Agriculture Building Aug. 7-17. Butter sculptor Sarah Pratt of West Des Moines plans to incorporate a balance beam into Johnson’s pose, and possibly an American flag.

The butter cow is a tradition at the fair.

There has been an Iowa State Fair butter cow since the early 1900s, according to fair officials.

Johnson will join an elite butter list that includes Tiger Woods, Elvis, Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” actor John Wayne and country singer Garth Brooks.

Pratt said she and Iowa fair organizers discussed options such as Indiana Jones and the 50th anniversary of the Doctor Seuss classic “The Cat in the Hat” before picking Iowa’s 4-foot-81/4 Olympic favorite.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080701/SPORTS15/80701003/1001/NEWS -via YesButNoButYes

This might not be the most tasteful home accessory ever, but it will sure draw attention! The Terrorist Teapot glares at you from underneath a ski mask tea cozy. http://store.heliotropehome.com/tetebbysuuk.html -Thanks, Thomas Barker!

You've seen the text that explains how the human mind can read scrambled words, as long as the first and last letter of each word is correct. Now you can scramble a webpage in the same manner! This picture is of the previous post on Neatorama. Can you still read it? Use the application to convert text on a site of your choosing. Link -via b3ta

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KCCI-TV meteorologist Kurtis Gertze make an appearance at the Iowa State Fair with a snake. The snake slithered into his pants and did not want to come out. A good time was had by all. -Thanks, Bill Chamberlain!

The earlier post on how a map of the state of Georgia made it into a story about the conflict in the European Georgia was strange, but that sort of thing keeps happening. Officials in Birmingham, England mistakenly used a picture of Birmingham, Alabama when printing official leaflets.

Under the headline "Thank You Birmingham!," the picture showed office blocks in the U.S. city, rather than its own distinctive Rotunda tower and the curvy Selfridges store.

The council said it had made a mistake, but had no plans to recall the leaflets.

Those leaflets may become collectors items, as well as an embarrassment for the city council. Link

The winners of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad opening lines for novels were announced a few days ago, but word is slow to get out because "many newspapers have allowed themselves to be distracted by a large athletic contest being staged somewhere in Asia." The winning entry:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

This gem was written by 41-yar-old Garrison Spik of Washington, DC.

Garrison Spik is the 26th grand prize winner of the contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982.

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Winners were also named in the categories of adventure, children's literature, detective, fantasy fiction, historical fiction, purple prose, romance, spy fiction, vile puns, and western. See all the winners, runners-up, and dishonorable mentions at the San Jose State University Dept. of English & Comparative Literature site. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm -via a comment at mental_floss

Director Alfred Hitchcock made a habit of cameo appearances in the opening scene of his films. Is it possible he made more than one appearance in some films? In North by Northwest, he is seen running for a train and missing it. But here's something else later in the movie...

North by Northwest: About 43 minutes into the film Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) has boarded the Chicago-bound Twentieth Century Limited and is hiding in the restroom. Two Pullman conductors make their way through the adjoining Club car checking tickets. In a brief segment, the conductors pause for a moment to examine the ticket of a plump elderly woman in a blue dress. Eventually satisfied, the conductors move on down the train and the portly woman turns toward the camera and gives a slightly bewildered shrug of her shoulders. At that moment the woman’s features become strikingly familiar.

FilmPosters.com has many screenshots, so you can decide for yourself. Link -Thanks, eLzo!

Update: You can see a good copy of the clip in question here. -Thanks, Alex Zavatone!

A Japanese manufacturer is churning out modular homes made of polystyrene foam. The material is easy to assemble, will not rot or attract insects, and acts as its own insulation. The flame-retardant walls can burn, but do not emit toxic fumes if they do. There are many configurations and sizes to select from. Link -via the Presurfer

You always thought that octopuses had eight arms, right? It turns out that they have six arms and two legs!

A study by scientists at Sea Life centres across Europe found that the invertebrates move across the sea bed using their two rearmost limbs, leaving the other six free for the important business of feeding.

Researchers who observed the creatures in action found they push off with the "legs" and then employ the other tentacles to pump themselves along.

The study, the largest of its type carried out, was designed to show if octopuses favoured one side or the other.

But it found that octopuses are ambidextrous, though many seem to favour their third arm from the front to eat with.

Link -via Arbroath

As you watch Olympic diving, you may have wondered how the camera follows the divers every inch of the way from the platform to underwater. The answer is extremely old-fashioned: they drop the camera!

"Ideally," Rob Brear said the other day, "the diver and the camera drop at the same time." Mr. Brear, who is the DiveCam's chief dropper, was in Beijing's colossal "Water Cube," the National Aquatic Center, standing behind a plastic screen on a ledge built just below the diving tower's 10-meter platform. Between him and the platform, the DiveCam's pipe hung suspended by a chain from the roof.

Mr. Brear, a 54-year-old Australian, was warming up -- with the divers -- for the first platform events of the Games on Monday and Tuesday. "After the camera drops," he went on, "what you do is you pull it up again." Ken East, another Australian and Mr. Brear's teammate, sat behind him on a stool with his hand on the pulley's brake. "It's called gravity," he said.

There are some other factors. The camera operator has to drop it at the right time, and a bungee cord is used to keep the camera from smashing against the bottom of the pool. The Wall Street Journal has an interactive graphic that shows how the tracking works. Link -via Geek Like Me

The EcoJohn incinerating toilet uses no water at all!

The EcoJohn Sr. is a waterless, incinerating toilet certified for safety by Underwriters Laboratories, which, for classification purposes, called it a barbecue.

"Toilets haven't really changed for the past 100 years," Stefan Johansson said. "People are always looking for better products, better solutions. The EcoJohns are better, cleaner and good for the environment."

The unit can be installed at a site as a primary toilet or carted via trailers and used as portable toilets.

The toilets, one of several waste disposal products offered by the company, operate pretty much like the units found in homes across America today. But while those toilets use water to carry waste away, the EcoJohn Sr. is equipped with a propane-fueled burner.

After a user does his business, he closes the lid and a large, screw-like auger turns and carries the waste to the burn chamber where the propane burner then bakes urine, feces and paper into ashes.

The EcoJohn is useful for places where it is impractical to install a sewage system, such as vacation cabins, rooftop parties, and construction sites. But the question in everyone's mind is: why does it have to be classified as a barbecue?! Link -Thanks, Julie Anne!

(image credit: Mark Martinez/Orange County Register)