Google has a new tool in which you can search the books that Google has digitized for a keyword and get statistics from as far back as the 16th century. The Google Book Ngram Viewer gives you data you can use to track the popularity of ...just about anything. For example, Geeks Are Sexy looked as terms like "geek", "computer geek", and "computer hacker" to ascertain that geeks are indeed, gaining in popularity. Link

Noted founding father Benjamin Franklin published a list of different ways we refer to someone as drunk in the Pennsylvania Gazette on January 6, 1737. Franklin said he collected these phrases at -what else- a tavern. Here are just a few:

Got the Indian Vapours,
Topsy Turvey,
As Drunk as David’s Sow,
He’s got his Top Gallant Sails out,
Seen the yellow Star,
As Stiff as a Ring-bolt,
The King is his Cousin,
Got Kib’d Heels,
As Dizzy as a Goose,
Had a Kick in the Guts,
Spoke with his Friend,
Cherubimical,
He’s kiss’d black Betty,
He’s had a Thump over the Head with Sampson’s Jawbone

Of course, that's far from 200. See the rest at mental_floss. Link

McClain County Operation Christmas in Purcell, Oklahoma collected hundreds of toys and other gifts for children from low-income families. They were ruined when a skunk invaded the storage building and sprayed scent on the packages, according to project spokesperson Peggy Christian. Volunteers laid about $15,000 worth of gifts outside to air out.

As for the gifts that were sprayed, it's unclear whether they can be salvaged.

"The ones laying out, they have been sprayed with Febreeze many, many times," Christian said.

Volunteers took the wrapped presents outside to air out.

The organization sent an appeal for donations of replacement gifts. The party scheduled for the toy giveaway is today. Link -via Arbroath

Spoiler alert, in case you haven't seen the 1973 movie Soylent Green {wiki}. Soylent Green is made of people. However, you have to remember that the world in the movie is horribly overcrowded and underfed. After all, it is set in 2022!

First, a quick recap: In the movie, the earth is overpopulated and over-polluted. Global warming is in full swing and even rich people have to eat crummy food. The government hands out rations of Soylent products, which are awful, flavorless cubes and loafs of “soy” (actually plankton but really it’s irrelevant cause it’s people) foodstuff that look like red, blue, or green Play-Doh. When you die, you go to a death-a-torium of sorts where you pay a small fee, then watch a really pretty movie filled with scenes from nature and peaceful music. You die quickly and painlessly from a colorless, odorless gas.

Then your body is shipped off and turned into Soylent Green which everyone loves to eat.

Would you eat Soylent Green under those conditions? How about in other science fiction scenarios? Several are spelled out at Science Not Fiction, where you are asked to leave your thoughts. Link

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How cool is this? We don't post a lot of iPhone apps, because so many people do not have iPhones (myself for one). However, this is the first app I've seen that actually makes me want an iPhone (not that I'm going to buy one). The Word Lens app is a free download, but the dictionaries are $5 each. So far, English to Spanish and Spanish to English are the only dictionaries available. It works with short phrases like signs, not with large blocks of text, like books. Link -via reddit

It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? I can't even figure out what it's for! The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to qwhacker, who called this "The Long Arm of the Law". Qwhacker wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The second place entry was from cs, who did not specify a t-shirt:

"The future of traffic enforcement - The Self-Service Ticketing Lane Response Vehicle and Revenue Generator. No longer will officers have to be inconvenienced by weather or in danger from other vehicles on the highway. They will be able to work comfortably from the nearest coffee shop and use Facetime to issue tickets while sipping their latte.

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From Ryan Iverson, who brought us a few similar readings, comes the Clement C. Moore classic "A Visit from St. Nicholas" as interpreted by his impression of Werner Herzog. -Thanks, Ryan!

A church in West Columbia, South Carolina held a drive-through nativity scene last weekend. The hundreds of people who came to see it got more than they expected when a participating goat gave birth to a kid!

They knew they were awaiting the birth of a baby at a church's live drive-thru nativity scene, but one of the stars, who was on loan from a local farm, fell to the ground. "Joseph was standing beside her, and he kinda looked at her and said something was wrong," says the church's pastor, Charles Westbrook.

Westbrook played one of the three kings, and he says it didn't take he and Joseph long to realize the Virgin Mary wasn't the only one who was pregnant. "I could see the head of the goat coming out," says Westbrook, "She was actually coming. There was a water sac around the baby."

The female kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes. The music minister named her Beth, short for Bethlehem. http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?S=13665075 -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Peggy Peagler)

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The Gifford Children's Choir of Racine, Wisconsin perform Trolololo (previously at Neatorama) as a Christmas gift to the people on the internet! Link -via The Daily What

Food and beverage websites argue about the best beers in the world, and we sometimes see a brew hailed as the most expensive in the world. Have you ever wondered which is the cheapest beer in the world?

Bia Hoi, most commonly found in Hanoi, is the most budget-friendly brew on the planet. Commonly described as having the appearance and flavor of Bud Light (go figure), Bia Hoi can be found for 3,000 VND per 12 oz. glass, which is the equivalent of about 16 US cents.

Gullible tourists and Vietnamese hobos seeking the beverage, need look no further than the ‘Bai Hoi’ or ‘Fresh Beer’ signs scattered throughout the city. Fresh beer is actually Bai Hoi’s English translation, and it is indeed brewed fresh daily — presumably in someone’s bathtub.

There's no definitive word yet on whether it is worth the price. Link -via the Presurfer

Update 12/18/10 by Alex: Roger Wade wrote the original blog post on Bia Hanoi being the world's cheapest beer. Thanks Roger!

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If there were any doubt that Judy Garland had the greatest movie line of all time in The Wizard of Oz, take a look at how many other movies have used it! See a list of films used in this supercut at fourfour. Link -via Buzzfeed

Q: Does rubbing a boo-boo really make it better?

A: Yes! Pain signals are sent to the brain by special receptors, called nociceptors, which are sensitive enough to distinguish between a bruise and a scratch. If you rub or caress a wound, receptors for other types of sensations will start sending out their own signals -drowning out the pain signals of the nociceptors, like one voice getting lost in the crowd. The result? The pain lessens, and maybe even goes away. So let Mommy kiss that boo-boo!

Q: Can swearing help?

Yes again. There's good scientific evidence to suggest that cursing like a sailor can numb your pain. In a recent study, participants were asked to hold their hand in icy water for as long as they could. They could either say the same neutral word over and over while their hand was in the water, or they could repeat a swear word of their choice. The people who cursed reportedly felt less pain, and they were able to keep their hand in the water longer. Scientists aren't exactly sure what causes the phenomenon, but they'd swear by it.

Q: Why do you stub the same toe twice?

A: There's more at work here than just bad luck. To understand why you stub the same toe twice, we need to look at the thalamus, the part of the brain that interprets pain signals. If the signals last for a while, the thalamus eventually starts to ignore them. This is called habituation. Unfortunately, when the thalamus starts to ignore pain, it also ends up ignoring other things, like where exactly a body part is in space. Not knowing exactly where your stubbed toe is can make you clumsy, and you can wind up hurting yourself again.

__________________________

The above article by Peter Hildebrand is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the November-December 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

The New York Times has a series of interactive maps of the US with which you can study population distribution by race and ethnicity, income, housing (such as mortgage, home value, and rent), and by education. I found that the average household income in my county in 2009 was $21,195, which is 10% less than in the year 2000. The data comes from the US Census Bureau. Link -via Metafilter

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Sid Ceaser proposed to Sara Prindiville as a Muppet. Really. He has been a Muppet fan all his life. When the time came, Sid ordered custom designed Muppets that resembled the couple and produced a film about them. It was shown along with the previews at a theater he took Sara to. Of course, she recognized who the Muppets were as soon as she saw them. And she said yes! Read the story of how the film came about, see photographs of the happy couple, and watch outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage of the project. Link -Thanks, Mike Weinstein!

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The structure of your individual brain has a lot to do with how you perceive optical illusions. Researchers at University College London asked subjects how they perceived illusions of size such as the one used in this video, and then measured the size of each subject's visual cortex -the amount of brain matter devoted to processing vision.

The researchers then took MRIs of the subjects' brains. What they discovered astonished them - there was an almost perfect link between the size of somebody's visual cortex was and how much the optical illusion affected them. The smaller the visual cortex, the more a person was taken in by the optical illusion. Those with the largest visual cortices were also those most able to see the circles' true sizes.

Read more, and see the different illusions used, at io9. Link -Thanks, Greg Ross!