Canstruction is an international charity competition that opened last Thursday at the Winter Garden and Courtyard Gallery of the World Financial Center, featuring giant structures built entirely out of cans of food. Top architectural and engineering firms in over 100 cities across North America participate in Canstruction, collecting millions of pounds of food for local food banks — the New York City show features local architectural and engineering talent. At the close of the competition, all of the food from the show will be donated to City Harvest.

See pictures of quite a few can sculptures at Eat Me Daily. My favorite is this scene from a recent movie you might recognize. Link

Happily Ever Over is an epic tale that explains a lot of what you never understood about holidays. An economic crisis among the magical creatures leads to crime and adventure, involving the Pied Piper who lives in his extermination van after his wife left him, an investigator who loves a mysterious ghost, and Santa Claus as you've never seen him -a time-traveling, whip-cracking descendant of grizzly bears! It's a long story, but one you'll never forget. Written and illustrated by C Merry, first published in 2003 as a gift to her friends. Link -Thanks, C Merry!

Make your own cute little papercraft models of Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, and Charles Darwin! Download pdf files in color, print them out and fold them up. Then maybe you can keep one on your desk for inspiration. I love Einstein sticking his tongue out! Link -Thanks, Atila!

The old adage is that there's always an exception to any rule. This shows up in global nutrition studies, too, in populations that are either healthier or less healthy than their diet, lifestyle, and/or environment would lead us to expect. HealthAssist Blog details ten such paradoxes. How do the French stay so slim while eating such rich food? Why is heart disease decreasing in Spain while the consumption of meat and dairy products skyrockets? And how do Albanians live so long in one of the poorest countries in Europe? Link -Thanks, Karen!

Noel Padgham of Yarrawonga, Australia wondered what was making that awful noise in her car. After a week of hearing it, she took the car for a check. Mechanics suspected something was stuck in the air conditioning fan.

Air-conditioning mechanic Kit Carson, 59, got in the car expecting to find the usual piece of paper - they tend to fall down the back of the glove box - but instead found a one-metre carpet python.

"Him and I both got a jump," he said.

"He'd been spinning around like a bloody washing machine, but the end of his tail must have been hanging out - it was all feathered and ratty."

The snake was taken to an animal hospital, where five centimeters of his tail had to be amputated, but he is expected to make an otherwise full recovery. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Nick Welsh)

Karol Lu entered a contest that challenged chefs to come up with a recipe for ramen noodles that was both delicious and creative. Her idea? Ramen noodle pizza crust! Would you try it? Link -Thanks, Geekazoid!

(YouTube link)
You read here about Brenden Foster, the 11-year-old whose last wish was to feed the homeless. In addition to local friends who took sandwiches to the tent city he was concerned about, Brenden's story inspired projects all over the country.

A TV station in Los Angeles held a food drive. School kids in Ohio collected cans. People in Pensacola, Florida gathered goods.

And here in Western Washington, KOMO viewers from all over took part in the Stuff the Truck food drive in Brenden's honor. Hundreds with generous hearts donated six and a half huge truck loads of groceries and more than $60,000 in cash to benefit Northwest Harvest and Food Lifeline.

Brenden touched hearts all over the world. His wish came true, and he lived to see it.

Brenden died on Friday, November 21st in his mother's arms. http://www.komonews.com/news/34851839.html -Thanks, AliS

21-year-old Owen Lewis found a way to charge his iPod -with an onion and an energy drink!

Owen, from Portsmouth, said the idea was a foolproof way of staying green as the onion decomposes and the drink bottle can be recycled once finished with.

Phil Stubbles, a physics lecturer from St Vincent College in Gosport, Hampshire, said almost all vegetables could power iPods because they contain ions which react with energy drinks to create a charge.

'The only problem is you have no control over how long it may work for ... and it can be smelly,' he added.

Has anyone here every tried this type of battery? Link -Thanks, Allison!

The 3G iPhone doesn’t come with a dock , unlike the 2G version, instead you have to spend an extra $29 on an Apple iPhone 3G Dock.

So we decided to make our own iPhone dock, that was easy for anyone to make and can be made from readily available materials.

We decided to make our dock out of cardboard, and wanted anyone to be able to print one off on their printer so we kept the size to A4.

Geeky Gadgets has a pdf pattern and a video tutorial. This will give you a place to put your iPhone as you recharge it with vegetables. Link -Thanks, Roland!

(YouTube link)
Do you think he'll ever catch it? -via Cynical-C

Back in the day, you could order a "small", a "medium", or a "large" of just about anything. The names have changed! Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will find out how well you know the cutesy and creative names companies give to their sizes. I scored 60%, which is better than I expected, since almost none of these chains exist where I live. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20461

Attention: If you have lost a piano, police in Massachusetts would like to talk with you. A mysterious piano in good working condition was found sitting in the middle of a forest near Harwich, Massachusetts.

Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune.

Sgt. Adam Hutton of the Harwich Police Department said information has been broadcast to all the other police departments in the Cape Cod area in hopes of drumming up a clue, however minor it may be.

But so far, the investigation is flat.

Police took the piano and bench into custody. Link -via Arbroath

Gizmodo has assembled a list of gadgets that could cause time to stand still, because you'll spend yours staring at them. Each has a link to the product page. Some could make really nice Christmas gifts! This picture is of designer Camilla Diedrich's fiber optic wallpaper. Link -via Gorilla Mask

In a survey of really rich people, the Wall Street Journal found that 80% of millionaires who have secret lovers will be cutting back on gifts and financial support during the economic crisis.

The survey–a subset of a larger wealth study–polled 191 individuals with a minimum net worth of $20 million who said they had lovers of at least a year or more (this to screen out the one-night stands, etc.). About two thirds of the respondents were men and one third women. All were married and all had personal control over their finances, meaning the women and men surveyed were the primary wealth holders in their homes.

The most surprising stats in the study relate to gender and what might be termed “length of service.” Fully 82% of men in the study said they planned to lower the allowances to their mistresses, while more than three quarters planned to provide fewer gifts, less expensive gifts and fewer perks, like jet rides, resort vacations and top restaurant meals.

Women were far more generous to their paramours in the face of financial crises. Less than 20% planned to lower allowances, gifts and perks, while more than half planned to raise them.

It appears that in hard times, it's better to have a sugar mama than to have a sugar daddy. Link -Thanks, Mark!

He's seven meters tall and weighs three metric tons. He is WEEE Man! This sculpture stands at the Eden Project in Cornwall, after his debut at the South Bank in London. The British Royal Society of Arts had WEEE Man built out of discarded electronic components and household appliances to symbolize how much of this material each person contributes to environmental waste. Link -Thanks, RJ Evans!

(image credit: Loz Flowers)