You have to wonder what they were thinking, but I suppose there are places in the world where you can get in more trouble for shooting pictures than for aiming a gun. Oobject has a collection of 14 cameras that look just like guns. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Frank Woodruff Buckles is the only living American-born veteran of World War I, as far as federal officials know. The 107-year-old veteran was honored at the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City yesterday during Memorial Day celebrations.

Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States entered the "war to end all wars" in April 1917.

He was rejected by the Marines and the Navy, but eventually persuaded an Army captain he was 18 and enlisted, convincing him Missouri didn't keep public records of birth.

Buckles sailed for England in 1917 on the Carpathia, which is known for its rescue of Titanic survivors, and spent his tour of duty working mainly as a driver and a warehouse clerk in Germany and France. He rose to the rank of corporal and after Armistice Day he helped return prisoners of war to Germany.

Buckles later traveled the world working for the shipping company White Star Line and was in the Philippines in 1940 when the Japanese invaded. He became a prisoner of war for nearly three years.

Buckles is to attend a ceremony today in which he will be presented with the American flag from the memorial site. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jNYrbhwwpK2QFrtBHpEaPH0DFhkAD90SVBG00

(image credit: AP/Charlie Riedel)

Fireflies is a pleasant little game where you aim for as many fireflies as you can. Ricochet shots count, too! http://kungfugaming.com/play.php?game=fireflies -via Dump Trumpet

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This is what to do when you find a raccoon in the dumpster. It happened several times at my former workplace, and we kept a plank nearby for such occasions. -via Arbroath

Thanks to Twitter, I know the Phoenix Mars Lander touched down on the Martian surface today with no problems. Like any Twitter addict, the lander has been sending constant updates. You can follow along, too! Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=349&cID=7 to Phoenix image gallery.

(image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Old Australian cookbooks are on exhibit at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. Some of the recipes are pretty strange from today’s view.

In "The Antipodean Cookery Book", first published in 1895, Mrs. Lance Rawson has a stew recipe with listed ingredients including a dozen parrots "well-picked and cleaned."

Even less appetising is a recipe in Australia's first known cookbook, dating from 1864, for a dish called "slippery bob", consisting of kangaroo brains mixed with flour and water then fried in emu fat.

The book's author Edward Abbott described the delicacy as bush fare, admitting it required "a good appetite and excellent digestion" to stomach.

His book also contains recipes for bandicoot, a small marsupial, and black swan, in which he recommends baby cygnets as particularly tender.

Link -via Fark

(image credit: AP)

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A compilation of many, many crash tests. You have to wonder what they did with the data on the rolling sushi and the sausagemobile. Warning: AC/DC music. -via Bits and Pieces

Remember SARS? Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome exploded out of China in early 2003 and frightened the entire world. Over 8,000 people were infected, and nearly 800 died. The epidemic was over by the summer, thanks to coordinated efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO), doctors who risked their lives to treat patients, and a military doctor who defied his government to break the Chinese policy of secrecy about the disease. Pictured is Dr. Carlo Urbani, an Italian epidemiologist who ultimately died of SARS. Read the entire story at Damn Interesting. Link

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With a stroke of the pen, a stranger transforms the afternoon for another man in this emotionally stirring short film by Alonso Alvarez.

Alonso Alvarez Barreda won the NFB Online Competition Cannes 2008 (featured previously at Neatorama) with the short film Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign). Link -via Viral Video Chart

Jake Mandell, who brought you the tonedeaf test last year, has another musical test called the Associative Visual Music Intelligence (AMVI) test. How well can you associate a musical sequence with a visual shape? It’s not easy! I scored in the 70-80% range in the several parameters measured, which is supposed to mean “excellent”. Link -Thanks, Jake!

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander was launched last August, and is scheduled to reach the surface of Mars on Sunday. This is the first Mars mission that will set down near the planet’s frozen pole. Scientists hope to find ice, and maybe evidence of the planet’s past.

Wielding its robotic arm like a backhoe, Phoenix is designed to dig down in to the Martian soil to collect water ice samples. It will feed them into small onboard ovens and beakers to determine if its landing site may have once been habitable for microbial life.

"We believe that the ice is somewhere between 4 and 6 centimeters (1.5 to 2.3 inches) below the surface," Phoenix deputy principal investigator Deborah Bass of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) told SPACE.com. "It's not going to be ice skating rink-pure, white, shiny ice. It's going to be permafrost - dust, dirt and ice all mixed together."

You’ll be able to watch the landing “live” as the signals reach earth on NASA TV. Link -via Simply Left Behind

(image credit: NASA)

Slinkachu, the artist who brought you Little People, a Tiny Street Art Project, has a new “moving art” project. It moves pretty slowly, as it consists of snails with painted shells placed in London landscapes. He’s devoted an entire blog to the endeavor. Link -via b3ta

Artist and musician Jamie Livingston began taking a Polaroid picture every day, from March 31st, 1979 through October 5th, 1997 -his 41st birthday, and the day he died. The resulting 6,697 pictures are an art collection, exhibited by his friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid. Chris Higgins at mental_floss has posted select photos that follow the story of Livingston’s life and decline as he battled cancer, plus the story of what happened to the photo collection afterward. Warning: have your hankie ready. Link

Neurophilosophy has posted a roundup of unusual penetrating brain injuries, with properly horrifying x-rays. Most of these cases were self-inflicted wounds, and all of the patients survived! Warning: not for the squeamish. Link

Rolling Stone has an in-depth article explaining why Pink Floyd adopted a flying pig as a symbol, and how it became the most famous rock and roll prop ever. The pig made its first appearance on the cover of the 1977 album Animals. Roger Waters tells the story of the photo shoot:

The first day was that beautiful sky, but the pig escaped. The rope broke and it drifted off, up into the flight path at Heathrow. Then the next day, we flew another pig, and it was a bright blue sky, and so the photographs weren't nearly as interesting as they had been from the day before. So in fact we stripped the pig from the second day into the photograph from the first day that didn't have a pig in it because it had already escaped. And that is what appeared on the album cover.

The pig has been escaping ever since. The latest incident was at the 2008 Coachella festival. Link -via Metafilter