A fish over eight feet long is thought to be the largest line-caught halibut ever! Fisherman Soren Bec landed the fish off the coast of Norway after a “titanic struggle.” The trophy measure 8’ 1” and weighs 31 stone (434 pounds). Link -via Digg
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You name it, and somewhere there’s a place where you can buy it right out of a machine! Let’s take a look at some of the weirder vending machines you can stick your money into.
Medical marijuana can be purchased from a vending machine in California. Yes, you have to have a prescription. In order to use the machines, you have to have an ID card, and you’ll be fingerprinted and photographed by a security guard at the machine site. See a video report here.
Nathan's Famous hot dogs in Coney Island is the site of the annual July 4th hot dog eating contest. Soon, New Yorkers will be able to get the famous dogs from a vending machine! They’ll be kosher, as the machines are run by Kosher Vending Industries, which already makes kosher pizza and other items available by machine. Only selected Nathan’s locations currently sell dogs with rabbinical oversight.
The Atlanta airport is home to a Zoom Shop machine that sells iPod Minis and Shuffles, along with batteries and digital cameras. There are similar machines at other airports. Have your credit card ready, this probably doesn’t take quarters! (image credit: sbisson)
The Hey Buddy! company makes vending machines that sell dog supplies, such as dog food, leashes, flea collars, chew toys, treats, waste bag holders and refills, and purified water. Check for a location near you.
Fishermen get up and go earlier than bait shop owners prefer, so the idea of a live bait vending machine makes sense, even if it seems weird. In 1993, fisherman Joe Meyer converted an old sandwich machine to a bait machine and sold it to a shop owner, who now has 30 machines and sells 10,000 night crawlers every week! Bait machines are refrigerated, and the bait is sealed in plastic bags with an oxygen tablet added.
They don’t expect you to buy food for crows; this machine is for the crows to use! The point of the experiment is to create a device that will train crows to pick up change dropped on the ground and exchange it for peanuts, using this specially-designed vending machine. See a video here.
Japan is vending machine heaven. You can get pretty much anything you like from vending machines. Sometimes a row of vending machines will replace an entire store! There are vending machines that sell pornography, bread in a can, and even fresh eggs. There are reports of fetish items still for sale in Japanese vending machines, if you know where to look.
Cigarette machines are only seen in antique stores in America these days, but they are still used in Japan, where the legal age to buy tobacco is twenty. New technology is being developed to keep underage smokers from using the machines. New machines require a “taspo” (tobacco passport) card, an ID issued by the Tobacco Institute of Japan. Manufacturer Fujitaka has another machine in development that uses face-recognition software to “see” how old the buyer is. The face recognition is around 90% accurate in judging a person’s age. It has yet to be approved for public use.
No, you don’t get to go for free everywhere. Some places still have coin-operated toilets. In Japan, you can use the facilities, but you’ll have to pay for the paper, at least in some public areas. But you might get lucky: Japanese businesses often hand out free samples as part of their advertising budget, since the individual packets have advertising printed on them.
This machine in Osaka is not exactly a vending machine -it’s a claw game! You pay your money and test your skills at catching a live lobster, which is also the prize. Have fun carrying it home!
Vending machines are so popular in Japan that they’ve been made into a popular toy, which in turn was the inspiration for these life size Coke Bots!
Medical Marijuana
Medical marijuana can be purchased from a vending machine in California. Yes, you have to have a prescription. In order to use the machines, you have to have an ID card, and you’ll be fingerprinted and photographed by a security guard at the machine site. See a video report here.
Nathan’s Hot Dogs
Nathan's Famous hot dogs in Coney Island is the site of the annual July 4th hot dog eating contest. Soon, New Yorkers will be able to get the famous dogs from a vending machine! They’ll be kosher, as the machines are run by Kosher Vending Industries, which already makes kosher pizza and other items available by machine. Only selected Nathan’s locations currently sell dogs with rabbinical oversight.
iPods
The Atlanta airport is home to a Zoom Shop machine that sells iPod Minis and Shuffles, along with batteries and digital cameras. There are similar machines at other airports. Have your credit card ready, this probably doesn’t take quarters! (image credit: sbisson)
Pet Supplies
The Hey Buddy! company makes vending machines that sell dog supplies, such as dog food, leashes, flea collars, chew toys, treats, waste bag holders and refills, and purified water. Check for a location near you.
Live Bait
Fishermen get up and go earlier than bait shop owners prefer, so the idea of a live bait vending machine makes sense, even if it seems weird. In 1993, fisherman Joe Meyer converted an old sandwich machine to a bait machine and sold it to a shop owner, who now has 30 machines and sells 10,000 night crawlers every week! Bait machines are refrigerated, and the bait is sealed in plastic bags with an oxygen tablet added.
Crow Food
They don’t expect you to buy food for crows; this machine is for the crows to use! The point of the experiment is to create a device that will train crows to pick up change dropped on the ground and exchange it for peanuts, using this specially-designed vending machine. See a video here.
Pornography, Beer, and Eggs
Japan is vending machine heaven. You can get pretty much anything you like from vending machines. Sometimes a row of vending machines will replace an entire store! There are vending machines that sell pornography, bread in a can, and even fresh eggs. There are reports of fetish items still for sale in Japanese vending machines, if you know where to look.
Cigarette for Adults Only
Cigarette machines are only seen in antique stores in America these days, but they are still used in Japan, where the legal age to buy tobacco is twenty. New technology is being developed to keep underage smokers from using the machines. New machines require a “taspo” (tobacco passport) card, an ID issued by the Tobacco Institute of Japan. Manufacturer Fujitaka has another machine in development that uses face-recognition software to “see” how old the buyer is. The face recognition is around 90% accurate in judging a person’s age. It has yet to be approved for public use.
Toilet Paper
No, you don’t get to go for free everywhere. Some places still have coin-operated toilets. In Japan, you can use the facilities, but you’ll have to pay for the paper, at least in some public areas. But you might get lucky: Japanese businesses often hand out free samples as part of their advertising budget, since the individual packets have advertising printed on them.
Live Lobster Claw Game
This machine in Osaka is not exactly a vending machine -it’s a claw game! You pay your money and test your skills at catching a live lobster, which is also the prize. Have fun carrying it home!
Coke
Vending machines are so popular in Japan that they’ve been made into a popular toy, which in turn was the inspiration for these life size Coke Bots!
In the comics, Wolverine painfully pops his claws out right through his skin, and when they retract, his skin heals up. There’s a group of frogs in Africa that do the same thing!
Scientists are still not sure what happens to surviving frogs after the claws are no longer needed. Link
The frogs defend themselves with sharp bone claws on their hind feet but to do so, the animals have to drive the claws through their own skin. It's an extreme defence that is completely unique in the animal world.
The clawed frogs belong to a family called Arthroleptidae that were discovered in Central Africa more than a century ago. At first, people wondered if the claws just stuck through the skin as a side effect of the preservation process. Alternatively, the frogs may have used them to grip or climb. Their true function as defensive weapons only became clear when naturalists first described actually picking up and handling live animals.
Doing so is a mistake, and anyone who makes it is punished with a series of deep, bleeding wounds inflicted by the struggling animal as it kicks out violently with its claws. The ability is well known to the people of Cameroon, who only ever hunt the frogs with machetes or spears.
Scientists are still not sure what happens to surviving frogs after the claws are no longer needed. Link
(YouTube link)
This video remix stars Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and Leslie Caron dancing to Michael Jackson’s "Smooth Criminal". The dance sequences were taken from the 1953 film The Band Wagon and the 1955 film Daddy Long Legs. -via Boing Boing
Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss tests your food knowledge. In each question, you are given two items and you decide which has more calories. I only scored 40%, but every question I missed had an item I’m not familiar with. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15275
14-year-old Sam Hawthorne was bitten by a shark in his sleep! He was sleepwalking one night and walked right into a trophy shark’s head that was hanging on his bedroom wall. His mother found him bleeding from a wound on the cheek, and the shark still imbedded in his face.
Link -via Arbroath
'The shark must have been embedded in Sam's cheek for about 15 minutes and he was in a lot of pain,' she said.
Fortunately, Sam escaped with just a small scar. 'It was the most frightening experience of my life,' he said.
Link -via Arbroath
Working from home is not easy, but it’s easier when you have an office you can use just for work. If you have a shed or room to build one, it can become a home office away from the distractions of the house. Here are twenty such shed offices that have been customized to the max. I’ll take the Manhattan rooftop shed! Pictured is a greenhouse that was converted to an office. Link
Toyota and subsidiary Hino Motors are joining forces with Japan Rail Hokkaido to develop vehicles that can drive on roads and railways. The DMV (Dual Mode Vehicle) has rubber tires and steel wheels, and can convert in about 15 seconds. They began testing the vehicles 18 months ago.
Combing the versatility of a bus with the speed of a train has allowed Japan Rail to tailor routes and services to the communities it serves. Rather than scuttling service on under-utilized lines, Japan Rail has simply switched to smaller vehicles.
Dual-mode vehicles would be a great addition to America's mass transit infrastructure. It would make rail transit feasible in those areas that don't have the population density to support a lot of stations, and make mass transit a more viable option for exurbs. Riders could simply hop on at a bus stop in their neighborhood, then ride the rails to their destination.
The new vehicles also use a lot less diesel fuel than conventional busses. http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/05/half-bus-half-t.html
(image credit: NeiTech)
(YouTube link)
If you are still not sure that cell phones are evil, this should convince you. Don’t ever try this! -via the Presurfer
On May 27th, 1937, the new Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco officially opened to pedestrian traffic. Vehicles weren’t allowed until the next day. Wired has a look at the bridge’s construction timeline stretching back to 1869, and some statistics.
Link
(image credit: jeromeinsf)
The Golden Gate Bridge was an engineering marvel. The site alone -- buffeted by high winds and split by the swirling currents of the Golden Gate -- made construction treacherous. The sheer size of the bridge (the longest suspension bridge in the world until the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964) required several innovations in bridge-building technology, especially where it came to constructing the two colossal anchorages in -- and under -- turbulent water.
Of all the mind-boggling statistics surrounding the bridge's construction, and there are plenty, perhaps the most jaw-dropping involves the two main suspension cables. Each measures 7,659 feet in length and each used hundreds of pencil-thick wires bound together to make a cable just over three feet in diameter. In all, more than 80,000 miles of steel wire was needed, enough to circle the earth three times.
Link
(image credit: jeromeinsf)
If you’re having a Memorial Day picnic today, you probably won’t see this in time, but the summer is long. Instructables has directions for cutting your watermelon in a way that makes it easy to remove most of the seeds. I think it may take a bit of practice, but that just means more watermelon! Link -via Lifehacker
Atractaspis are also called mole vipers, burrowing asps, burrowing adders, stiletto snakes, or side-stabbing snakes. They can bite without opening their mouths!
Burrowing asps have a highly reduced dentition, with just two particularly elongate maxillary fangs (up to a third of total skull length), two short, gently curved dentary teeth, and a couple of very small palatine teeth[...}. The maxillary fangs (there are two in each maxilla, one of which is a replacement tooth kept in reserve) are huge compared to the short, block-like maxilla: in fact virtually its entire length is occupied by the transversely arranged fang sockets. The maxilla articulates with the relatively immobile prefrontal by way of a saddle-shaped joint (this contrasts with the condition in viperids, where the articulatory surfaces between the maxilla and prefrontal are flat), allowing the maxilla to easily rotate posterodorsally and anteroventrally.
Rotating teeth? I didn’t need to hear that! These snakes burrow underground and live in Africa and the Middle East. Link
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