A proposed hydroelectric dam on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo could double the electricity available in all of Africa and bring power to hundreds of millions of people. Representatives from seven African countries are meeting with construction firms and bankers to plan construction on Grand Inga, as the dam is named.

Grand Inga was proposed in the 1980s but never got beyond feasibility studies because of political turmoil in central Africa. But now it stands a chance, according to Gerald Doucet, secretary general of the World Energy Council thinktank, which is convening the London meeting.

"It is the greatest sustainable development project, offering Africa a unique chance for interdependence and prosperity," said Doucet. "It's much more feasible now than ever. There is a peace settlement in Congo, and economic and technical studies have all shown it is possible."

Some advocacy groups fear that even if an incredible amount of power is generated, it won’t benefit most citizens of Africa. Terry Hathaway of the organization International Rivers fears corruption in such a large project.

Hathaway said that the 94% of people in Congo DRC and the two in three Africans who have no electricity now were unlikely to benefit because the dam depends on exporting its electricity to existing centres of industry, especially in South Africa where there have been power shortages.

"As it stands, the project's electricity won't reach even a fraction of the continent's 500 million people not yet connected to the grid. Building a distribution network that would actually light up Africa would increase the project's cost exponentially. It would be very different if rural energy received the kind of commitment and attention now being lavished on Inga," she said.

The proposed cost of the Grand Inga is estimated at $80 billion. Link -via Digg

CNN is now selling t-shirts with their headlines on them. As of right now, it’s pretty simple to make up your own headline. They’ll probably get that fixed pretty soon. Link to CNN store. Link to this shirt. Link to another great one. -via YesButNoButYes

In today’s lunchtime quiz from mental_floss, you are to decide which website of a pair is more popular, according to Alexa rankings. I scored 80%, only missing the subjects that are outside my areas of interest, but it’s supposed to be my business to know such things. No, Neatorama is not in any of the questions. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14289

This Lego recreation of Mount Rushmore is not full size. Of course not! But its pretty big. This is just one of the the wonderful Lego sculptures featured in the list 33 Of The Most Intricate & Realistic Lego Creations, which has links to each. Don’t miss the fully-functional Lego pinball machine and the 20-foot tall giraffe! Link -Thanks, Andy Boyd!

The Big Fat Quiz Design Arts Includes: - fashion design - photography, painting, objective arts - media design - drawing and illustration - interior design and decorating - culinary arts You are an imaginative, inventive artist. Your negative traits may be that you are needy, emotional, confused, and/ or easily stressed. The design arts are perfect for you because you get to express your creative self and have fun doing it.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Answer 16 simple questions and see where your interests really lie. This is my result. Whether you have the talent for the job or not is a totally different question! Link -via Geek Like Me

(YouTube link)
In this silent film from 1899, two ladies (male actors play the parts) are engaged in some sort of excited exchange when two men play a trick on them. From the YouTube page:

The film doesn't make clear why they deserve this attack, but an accompanying set of cards produced by the production company indicates that the ladies were engaged in a discussion about the then pressing political issue of women's suffrage.

From the British Film Institute National Archive. Link

You might not know that German spies landed on the East Coast of the US during World War II. The group of eight men were neither talented as spies nor committed to the Third Reich. All of their actions were either in direct conflict with their orders, or else had nothing to do with their mission. Two men of the group, George John Dasch and Ernst Peter Burger planned to sabotage the mission entirely. The trouble is, when ringleader Dasch visited the FBI, no one would believe the story!

The agents in the building, however, were too busy catching spies to be bothered with every crackpot off the street who happened to know classified details about secret Nazi landings. Dasch was bounced from office to office until finally Assistant Director D.M. Ladd, the agent in charge of the manhunt, agreed to humor him with five minutes of his time. Dasch angrily repeated his story, only to find himself greeted once again with patronizing nods and glances toward the door. Fed up at last, he lifted the briefcase he had been carrying, tore open its straps, and dumped the entire $84,000 of mission funds onto the Assistant Director’s desk. Ladd blinked with astonishment and began to reconsider Dasch’s claims.

The group was rounded up by the FBI. However, the story made public by J. Edgar Hoover had nothing about Dasch turning himself in. Hoover credited “The detective work of the century,” and all eight men were convicted by a military tribunal. Six were swiftly executed, and the two leaders received long sentences. The case served as a precedent for holding terrorists for military tribunals today. Read the entire story at Damn Interesting. Link

(YouTube link)
This girl is ten years old. My daughter will be eleven when her piano recital comes up next week. If I show her this video, she’ll never be able to perform her elementary piece. -via mental_floss

(YouTube link)
This promo song from The Discovery Channel is perfect for Earth Day (which is Tuesday). From ad agency 72andSunny. -via Viral Video Chart

Would a jackalope be kosher? How about a dragon?

In honor of upcoming holidays like Passover, I thought I would ask Jeff’s better half, Ann VanderMeer, editor of Weird Tales and a practicing Jew, to give us an idea of which fantastical animals and beings would be kosher and which would not be kosher, in terms of gnawin’ off a bit o’ that. Answers below… - Evil Monkey

The list includes sea monkeys, mermaids, Sasquatch, Chupacabra, and Hobbits, among others. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

You can download and print foldable paper finger puppets of the US presidential candidates. These would be pretty handy for your next political argument with friends or family, or for staging your own photo-op or debate. Link -via Everlasting Blort

(YouTube link)
Darryl Gold re-edited the classic western High Noon to include killer robots! -via b3ta

(Live Leak link)
You don’t see a crime committed with a crossbow every day. Shopkeeper Mohammed Razaq had just loaded a DVD for his five children when a man with a crossbow tried to rob the store. Security footage shows he appeared to shoot at Razaq, but he either missed or did not have the crossbow properly loaded. Razaq chased the would-be thief out the door with a pole he uses for changing the store’s sign. Razaq feared for his family.

He said: "He tried to load up the crossbow and I could see a big window pole in front of me, so I grabbed the stick and chased him.

"I felt he was threatening me and my family and kids, so I just had to do it.

"As soon as he saw me with the stick, he ran like mad. I tried to hit him, but I think I missed."

The suspect is still at large. Link -via Arbroath

ISWWR is a site that collects and catalogs photographic “evidence” of Star Wars characters and objects in real life. The picture above shows a Spanish peace summit in the 1920s, attended by Queen Jamillia of Naboo. Each photograph has an explanatory history. Link -via Dump Trumpet

Scientists have recreated what they believe to be the voice of Neanderthals.

Robert McCarthy, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has used new reconstructions of Neanderthal vocal tracts to simulate the voice. He says the ancient human's speech lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech.

Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another, says McCarthy, who was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11.

"They would have spoken a bit differently. They wouldn't have been able to produce these quantal vowels that form the basis of spoken language," he says.

New Scientist has very short audio clips contrasting the Neanderthal and modern human speech. Link -via Yahoo News

(image credit: Anthropological Institute, University of Zürich)