A grocery store with 500 flavors of soda? You betcha, and the owner of Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles knows his sodas. In this video, learn about Romanian rose soda, the best-tasting diet soda, why glass bottles are better, and other fascinating facts about soda pop. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

Previously mentioned in: Four Neat Things About Los Angeles.

It’s been locked up since 9/11, but Ransom Riggs of mental_floss managed a visit to the Mojave Air and Spaceport and took plenty of pictures. The inactive airport is used as a parking lot for planes and also a junkyard of planes that will never be flown again. The result is a collection of photographs that are urban decay with an aviation slant. http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/33186.html

Like The Last Supper or the Abbey Road album cover, Stonehenge is such an iconic image that people the world over recognize it, even if it's made of bamboo or old refrigerators. Web Urbanist has collected 20 Stonehenge recreations from all over. Some try to faithfully resemble the original in England, others are art pieces using recycled materials. Pictured is Phonehenge in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Link -via Interesting Pile

On September 11 2006, more than 3,000 bloggers joined together to honor the victims of 9/11 by remembering their lives as individuals. The project helped to put a face on each person instead of seeing them as a large group of people. You can access a list of those posts with links here. Project 2,996 will be repeated this year. If you would like to post a tribute on your own blog on 9/11, sign up now. Link -via Holtie’s House

People of Walmart is a user-generated image blog with a niche that’s as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Honestly, when you’re talking about the world’s largest discount store, where you can find almost anything you need 24 hours a day, it’s a wonder you don’t see more people shopping in whatever they slept in. Only the funniest submissions are published. Link -Thanks, Bill!

Scientists have detected a black hole 12.8 billion light-years away, which means it was around when the universe was very young. This one is a billion times the size of our sun! The light from the black hole (or more correctly, from burning objects being sucked into it) has traveled so long to get to earth that its wavelengths have shifted. The process, known as redshift, help astronomers to calculate the huge distance to objects in space.

To see the supermassive black hole, the team of scientists used new red-sensitive charge-coupled devices (CCDs) installed in the Suprime-Cam camera on the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea.

CCDs are used in many light detecting gadgets from photocopiers to bar-code readers. In astronomy they are used to collect analogue information (such as light or an electrical charge from a distant object) and convert it into digital information that can be analyzed by computer software.

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(image credit: University of Hawaii)

This Cracked Photoshop competition asked what science classes would be like if science were as it is portrayed in movies. This CPR poster is only one of the top 19 funny images. Don’t skip reading “The Benefits of Electrocution”. Link -via Digg

Steve Valdez of Tampa, Florida had a check written to him from his wife. He took a check to her bank to cash it. Bank of America requires a thumbprint to cash a check from anyone who does not hold an account there. The problem is that Valdez was born without arms. The bank refused to cash the check.

According to Valdez, when he gave the teller the check, she said "Obviously you can't give a thumbprint." But Valdez says the manager refused to cash the check unless he did.

When Valdez told the manager giving a thumbprint would be impossible, she suggested he either bring in his wife or open an account. Valdez says that's not the way the bank would treat someone without prosthetic arms, and he refused.

A spokesman for Bank of America said that the bank should have made accommodations for Valdez. Link -via J-Walk Blog

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It was a simple slip of the tongue, but the bride’s and groom’s nerves turned the ceremony into a real hoot! -via Buzzfeed

Denise Woodage of Reading, England told a court that the sight of her neighbor naked put her off men and sausages for life. 53-year old Paul Darlow was arrested for indecent exposure after Woodage saw him naked in his garden.

The 54-year-old, who is mum to Hazel, 26, told the Post she was now anti-men as a result of seeing Darlow’s “pale and hairy” body in the November chill and is now on anti-depressants.Mrs Woodage, who does not work, first saw the 53-year-old flashing in March 2008. She complained to police and they installed CCTV.

In November 2008 – after capturing Darlow on film flashing his bits yet again – he was arrested and charged with indecent exposure.

He initially denied the incidents but during his trial, before Judge Zoë Smith, he confessed to touching himself outdoors

Darlow was sentenced to six weeks jail time. Link -via Arbroath

Italian artist Lyle Rowell rides slowly on a 1,900 pound mechanical animal that breathes fire! It walks on two front legs and rolls on two back wheels. He calls it Lrry.

The contraption is the product of four months of Rowell “crawling around in the scrap and dirt” to gather parts that he liked. He took an engine from an old Volkswagen Bug–like Citroën and stuffed it into two chopped-up and welded-together motorcycle frames. Aside from propane for Lrry’s fire breath, Rowell was able to scrounge up nearly every part, all the way down to the linkages and sprockets.

The beast spits fire from the back end, too. http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2009-08/fire-breathing-robo-beast (with video) -via Metafilter

(image credit: Elle Dunn)

Research shows that playing the video game Tetris can improve your brain’s efficiency and will thicken some areas of the cortex. Neuroscientist Richard Haier had adolescent girls play Tetris for three months and looked for changes in their brain scans.

Three months of Tetris playing had two distinct effects on the brains of research subjects: Some areas in the brain showed greater efficiency (the blue areas in the diagram above), and different areas showed thicker cortexes, which is a sign of more grey matter (red). This, says the doctors who undertook the study, shows that focusing on a “challenging visuospatial task” like a videogame can actually alter the structure of the brain, not just increase brain activity [Wired.com]. But surprisingly, there was no overlap between the regions that became more efficient and those that thickened. Haier says more research must be done to determine how different areas of the brain interact during game playing

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How do you get a family of duckling out of the pool? All they need are the right tools! -via Arbroath

There have been many studies about what body part attracts the opposite sex, but few studies that compare the importance of body parts to each other. A new study suggests that people assign more importance to faces than bodies when they are looking for a long-term relationship. For a potential short-term relationship, men assigned slightly more importance to the appearance of a woman’s body, while women cared more about a man’s face.

Statistical analysis of men rating women indicated that, even though both the body and face ratings were significant positive predictors of the ratings given to the combined images, the face ratings were stronger predictors of the combined ratings. It was also observed that the ratings for combined images was slightly higher for short term relationships as compared to long term relationships. One other significant observation – when the short term and long term relationship data were analyzed separately, the body ratings stood as more significant predictors to the combined ratings than face ratings, for short term relationships. In the case of females rating men, similar to men – the body and face ratings were both significant predictors with the face ratings being very strong predictors as compared to the body ratings. However, females ratings for men did not show any difference under the short term and long term decisions.

This only makes sense, as we tend to cover our bodies most of the time, but you have to look at that face a lot. http://www.scitechbits.com/2009/08/31/what-makes-them-hot-body-or-face/ -via Digg

It was 40 years ago today, September 2, 1969 that scientists connected two computers at UCLA with a 15-foot cable and the machines were able to communicate with each other. The test data was meaningless, but the breakthrough eventually led to the formation of the internet, but there were plenty of other milestones. Which date is the birthday of the internet?

September 2, 1969: First time two computers communicated with each other.

Oct 29, 1969: Message sent from computer to computer in different locations.

1971: The first email was sent.

Jan 1, 1983: ARPANET adopted the standard TCP/IP protocol.

March 1989: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.

April 22, 1993: Mosaic became the first web browser.

Which date should we designate as the birthday of the internet? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6125925/Internet-celebrates-40th-birthday-but-what-date-should-we-be-marking.html -via Buzzfeed

(image credit: Flickr user lemonfridge)