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Another eerie episode of Google mischief from The Vacationeers, who brought you Google SMS, Google My Maps, Google Moon, and Google Maps. -via I Am Bored

Talk about a renewable energy source! Dutch agriculture minister Gerda Verburg unveiled a biomass power plant run exclusively on poultry manure, with a capacity of 36.5 megawatts.

Situated in Moerdijk, the 150 million euro plant was constructed by the Dutch multi-utility company Delta. It will convert roughly 440,000 tons of chicken manure into energy annually, generating more than 270 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The plant also addresses a key environmental problem in the Netherlands: “managing the vast excess stream of chicken manure, which, until today, had to be processed at a high cost”.

Delta’s biomass plant has even been described as being carbon neutral, since it will prevent the manure from sitting in fields and seething greenhouse gases into the air. Once methane from the poultry waste has been extracted and ignited, the left over ash will be used to make fertilizers and other agricultural products.

This plan kills two birds with one stone, so to speak, solving the energy problem AND a waste disposal problem. Link -via Digg

Far below the Earth’s surface, where the sun rarely penetrates, is a world of twinkling glow worms, precious gems and limestone caves and mountains, a land inhabited by nature alone. Within this world are visions to rival many landscapes decorating our horizon; lakes lie still and calm, great networks of caves know no borders and rivers and rivulets carve an ever-evolving terrain.

The lake pictured here is a sacred spot on the Yucatan Peninsula. See all ten at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via reddit

The toughest creatures on earth have survived a trip into space. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are microscopic animals that survive extreme conditions that would kill most organisms. Last September, a colony of water bears was launched into orbit via satellite and exposed to cosmic radiation, solar radiation, and the vacuum of space.

The tardigrades had already been coaxed into an anhydrobiotic state, during which their metabolisms slow by a factor of 10,000. This allows them to survive vacuums, starvation, dessication and temperatures above 300 degrees Fahrenheit and below minus 240 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once in orbit, the tardigrade box popped open. Some were exposed to low-level cosmic radiation, and others to both cosmic and unfiltered solar radiation. All were exposed to the frigid vacuum of space.

Back on Earth, tardigrades that had basked in cosmic radiation revived and reproduced at rates comparable to an unexposed control group. Those dosed with solar radiation were less likely to wake -- but that even a few survived, wrote Rettberg's team in findings published today in Current Biology, was remarkable.

The next task is the find out how water bears survive so well. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/invertebrate-as.html

Enter your family name in the World Names Profiler and find out the distribution of that name around the world. I used my maiden name, married name, and the names of several other people and got the expected results from what I know of their backgrounds -although I was surprised to find my legal last name is more common in Australia than anywhere else! I entered "Li", which is the most common family name on earth, but got no results, possibly because the statistics would be in Chinese characters. However, Alex's last name is most common in Indonesia, as expected. I used the graphic from Gerard Vlemmings (the Presurfer) as an illustration, as his name is most commonly found in the Netherlands. Link -via the Presurfer

It's the simplest weather report ever! Will you need an umbrella today? Just enter your ZIP code (it only works for the US) and Umbrella Today will give you a yes or no answer. You can also sign up to get a text message by phone on days you will need an umbrella. By coincidence, today is the first day my area has seen any rain in a couple of weeks. http://umbrellatoday.com/ -via Geek Like Me

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy Blog (which is now a part of the Discover Magazine website) has some interesting facts about Mother Earth. Did you know that there are at least four natural objects in space that stick near the earth? They are sometimes referred to as moons, but they aren't quite moons.

The biggest is called Cruithne (pronounced MRPH-mmmph-glug, or something similar). It’s about 5 kilometers across, and has an elliptical orbit that takes it inside and outside Earth’s solar orbit. The orbital period of Cruithne is about the same as the Earth’s, and due to the peculiarities of orbits, this means it is always on the same side of the Sun we are. From our perspective, it makes a weird bean-shaped orbit, sometimes closer, sometimes farther from the Earth, but never really far away.

That’s why some people say it’s a moon of the Earth. But it actually orbits the Sun, so it’s not a moon of ours. Same goes for the other three objects discovered, too.

Also find out what it would be like to fall through the center of the earth, and eight other strange things about our planet. Link -via Digg

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YouTube member bulc96 won $40 in a contest with this video. -via I Am Bored

Before the latter part of the 18th century, prison was a place to put people away and forget about them. Then the Quakers designed Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia to make prisoners penitent and to encourage their reform.

Compared to other facilities of its day, Eastern State was a technological marvel, and at a cost of $800,000, one of the most expensive building projects of its day. At a time when President Andrew Jackson was still using a chamber pot, prisoners in Eastern State had their own private toilets. Inmates were also served three hearty meals (usually boneless beef, pork, or soup and unlimited potatoes) a day, and had their own exercise areas. The cells each had a narrow skylight so that the divine wisdom of god might shine down upon them! Eastern State was a paradise compared to other prisons of the time. Except, despite all the comforts that were even better than home, this paradise also drove men mad.

Read how the experiment failed, but opened the way for the development of the modern prison system. Link

Beakman's World was a kids' science show in the nineties. Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss tests how well you remember the show. I am shocked that I scored 82%, since I never saw the show! Sometimes common sense (and a bit of TV production knowledge) comes in handy. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17794

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Fortune cookies are a strange, unfamiliar food in China. They were developed in Japan and popularized in the US. Nana Shi began selling them online in China and found that she needed to include instructions! Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

I'm not familiar with a vegetable called a marrow (it seems to be some kind of squash), but this one is apparently the biggest ever at 113 pounds! There were lots of huge vegetables at a giant vegetable show in England.

The skin is craggy and dark, indicating it might not make the best offering at dinner, but it overtook the current world record by a whopping three kilos.

Grown by Ken Dade, from Norfolk, it had benefitted from the wet conditions during the spring and summer.

Show organiser Roy Davey is hopeful the show could yet produce another giant vegetable record. 'We have hopes for a record cucumber,' he said.

There's a picture of the cucumber at The Daily Mail, but I can't tell how long it is. Link -via Unique Daily

Any of these prison escape stories would make an exciting movie (and some of them already have). Not all of the escapees were hardened criminals; some were prisoners of war, and Alfréd Wetzler (pictured) along with his partner Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz by hiding inside a wood pile for four days! He later provided extensive details of the death camp to Allied forces.

The 32-page Vrba-Wetzler report, as it became known, was the first detailed report about Auschwitz to reach the West that the Allies regarded as credible.

The evidence eventually led to the bombing of several government buildings in Hungary, killing Nazi officials who were instrumental in the railway deportations of Jews to Auschwitz. The deportations halted, saving up to 120,000 Hungarian Jews.

Read about Wetzler and nine escape stories at The List Universe. Link -via the Presurfer

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Why did I spent so much time trying to make a raisin milkshake when I could've been doing something fun like this? It turns out that you can make raisins dance in any kind of carbonated beverage. Link to an explanation. -via YesButNoButYes

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If you've ever wondered what your dog does while you are at work, this may enlighten you. Flickr user Bill Binns made a video of what his dog did from 8AM to 5PM. Relax, the time-lapse video is only about a minute long. Now I know the meaning of the phrase "It's a dog's life"! -via Unique Daily