You've read the stories about eating contests, and you've wondered how in the world can people stuff that much food into themselves. Now you can see how its done, with ten videos of various food contests, including glimpses of Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi doing what they do best. Jalapeno, anyone? Link

Payday loans can have a annual interest rate of 400%, but people who take them don't look it it that way when they borrow $100 and pay back $115 in two weeks. Many fall into the trap of taking a second, third, or more loans to cover the shortfalls caused by the previous loans. University of Chicago economists Marianne Bertrand and Adaire Morse ran an experiment in which they explained the terms of payday loans in detail, and gave statistics on how the average borrower must continue getting loans.

In a nationwide experiment, Bertrand and Morse found that providing a clear and tangible description of a loan's cost reduced the number of applicants choosing to take payday loans by as much as 10 percent. Better information, it turns out, may dissuade borrowers vulnerable to the lure of quick cash while maintaining the option of immediate financing for those truly in need.

Among the other 90%, some won't change their behavior no matter what, but many have no other credit options available. Link

NASA managed to put a man on the moon and broadcast the event live to half a billion people on earth. The footage wasn't great, but we were glad to see it anyway. It turns out that the images from the moon to the earth were pretty good, but when they were relayed to NASA and then to broadcast TV, the quality degraded. However, the earth receiving station in Australia recorded the signal in rather good quality. But where is that tape? Stan Lebar, who was in charge of the original broadcast in 1969, and Apollo video engineer Dick Nafzger went searching.

After schmoozing his way into the stacks and sifting through boxes for months, Lebar found evidence that more than 140,000 tapes from the Apollo era had been checked out of the Records Center between 1979 and 1985 and sent back to the Goddard Space Flight Center. But from there, Lebar fell straight into a black hole. At Goddard, there was no record of where the footage had gone. So the tape hunters hit the phones and the Net, scouring the globe for Goddard retirees who might recall the boxes. It didn't go well. "We're dealing with memories here," Nafzger says, "and those are pretty frail."

Personally, I think they should look in the big warehouse next to crate that holds the Ark of the Covenant. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

(image credit: Flickr user evalin)

Update: We may see those original tapes yet. -Thanks, Ivan!

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The wedding party enters the sanctuary in an unconventional fashion. Say what you will about the staging; this is obviously a joyous occasion for all concerned. -via reddit

Update: The success of the video inspired Jill and Kevin to donate revenue from YouTube to the Sheila Wellstone Institute.

Daniel Suelo lives in a tiny cave in Utah. Instead of working for money, he spends his time foraging for food because he believes that living without money is a better way. Nine years ago, after volunteering with the Peace Corps, working in a women's shelter, and living in Thailand and India, he decided to be a "vagabond in America".

I tell him that living without money seems difficult. What about starvation? He's never gone without a meal (friends in Moab sometimes feed him). What about getting deadly ill? It happened once, after eating a cactus he misidentified—he vomited, fell into a delirium, thought he was dying, even wrote a note for those who would find his corpse. But he got better. That it's hard is exactly the point, he says. "Hardship is a good thing. We need the challenge. Our bodies need it. Our immune systems need it. My hardships are simple, right at hand—they're manageable."

Is this a grand experiment or a retreat from reality? Read the entire story at Men.Style. http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_9817& -via Digg

(image credit: Mark Heithoff)

Charles Darwin was fascinated with the Venus Flytrap and other carnivorous plants. How did such a thing arise through natural selection? Botanists Don Waller and Thomas Gibson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison believe they have figured it out. The Venus Flytrap descended from an earlier plant that had sticky leaves that acted as flypaper.

First the ancestral plant must have adapted to move its tentacles and leaves in a particular direction, giving it a greater chance of sticking to and engulfing a passing insect.

Next it sped up how quickly it detected prey and tried to respond.

Then the plant would have had to find a way to become selective, so it only tried to trap live prey and not any detritus that landed upon it.

Finally, it must have evolved its tentacles into sensory hairs and teeth that detect and wrap around prey, respectively, while also losing its sticky glands and growing new digestive glands capable of digesting the victim's corpse.

The adaptations led to the plant's ability to eat larger insects for more nutrition. Link -via the Presurfer

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This intense video was shot as a group of neighbors and passers-by rescued a mother and her two children from their burning SUV in Milwaukee. The mother and baby daughter were brought out first, but the son was trapped. Two off-duty firefighters, John Rechlitz and Joel Rechlitz, as well as off-duty police officer Mark Wroblewski went to work to extract 4-year-old D.J. Harper as the back of the car burned fiercely. D.J. suffered second and third degree burns, but is expected to make a full recovery. Link -via I Am Bored

You've heard plenty about how the US beat the Soviets to the moon in 1969. There was another lesser-known exploratory scoop in January of 1960, when US Navy marine specialist Lieutenant Don Walsh and oceanographer Jacques Piccard climbed aboard the Trieste, a deep sea bathysphere designed by Piccard's father Auguste Piccard, and dived to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. It was the first time human beings traveled to the deepest part of the earth's oceans -seven miles down!

At approximately four hours into their descent–several thousand feet above the sea floor–a sharp clang sounded through the pressure sphere and the vehicle shuddered violently. Once their wincing subsided, the men did what they could to inspect the craft and its condition. It seemed that the water pressure at this never-before-encountered depth–six tons per square inch–had cracked the outer pane of the lucite window. For the moment the vehicle itself remained watertight, but the damage was worrisome. The Trieste was outfitted with a few safety systems; for instance, the ballast doors were held closed by electromagnets, so in the event of electrical failure the doors would fall open and drop the ballast, causing the vehicle to rise to the surface. But such systems would be of no help to the men inside if the 1,000 atmospheres of pressure crushed their delicate passenger compartment. Moreover, no other vehicle in existence was capable of reaching such depths, which meant that if her float tank became compromised there was no chance of rescue. Nevertheless, the stalwart scientists opted to press on.

It was also the last time anyone dived that deep. Like the space race, once it had been done, no one saw the use in continuing to pay for such risky adventures. Read the entire story at Damn Interesting. Link

The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century will move across part of the earth tomorrow. You'll be able to see it if you are certain parts of India, China, or Japan.

The first who will be able to see it are the inhabitants of the Gulf of Khambhat, India. Instead of the sunrise, people will see a black hole rising in the sky and birds will be unsure if the day is beginning or not.

The eclipse will last exactly 6 minutes and 39 minutes, being the longest of the 21st century and will only be surpassed on June 13, 2132. After those from the Gulf of Khambhat, also Chinese and Japanese will be able to see the solar eclipse.

Link -via Metafilter

Follow the eclipse live on this Japanese site.

New signs for a public loo in Winchcombe, England have people scratching their heads. The infographic resembles a skier with poles, or a man on an escalator. The words "ambulant urinal" convey the idea of a urinal that walks.

Barbara Heard, from Gretton Road, Winchcombe, said she failed to understand how the signs could have been sanctioned by Tewkesbury Borough Council.

She said: "Does anyone have any idea what these signs mean?

"My husband and I regard ourselves as fairly intelligent but we have no idea.

"What will our overseas visitors will make of these signs?

Chris Pike of the Tewkesbury Borough Council says "ambulant" restrooms are larger than standard, and are "intended for people who may be partially disabled but cannot access the full disabled unit." Link -via Arbroath

After winning a horse race, the glory usually goes to the horse instead of the jockey. But the jockey makes a world of difference. A new study from the Royal Veterinary College in London says that how a jockey positions himself on a horse has a lot to do with how fast the horse runs. Bioengineer Thilo Pfau explains the physics.

Any "jockey-plus-horse system," as the researchers call the racehorse-and-rider team, will start off essentially the same as any other: a combined mass of roughly 1,100 lb. (500 kg) of living flesh, with the horse representing about 87% of the total weight and the jockey making up the rest. One key to speed will be how lightly the horse can carry that 13% load. The investigators found that the horse's back oscillates up and down about 6 in. (150 mm) throughout its stride, and fore and aft about 4 in. (100 mm). The jockey moves too — up and down through a cycle of 2.3 in. (60 mm), and fore and aft just 0.8 in. (20 mm). That small motion makes a very big difference.

"Whether the jockey is sitting in the saddle or not, the horse still has to carry his weight," Spence says. "But by absorbing the jiggles of the horse, the jockey prevents the animal from having to make him go up and down with each stride. It's the difference between the horse carrying a moving rider or simply a quantity of lead that weighs the same." The crouched position the jockey assumes throughout pays an additional dividend by minimizing wind resistance.

In physics, however, nothing comes for free, and as the horse's workload goes down, the jockey's goes up. "The jockey's legs oscillate in length while transmitting a vertical force," the researchers wrote, "resulting in substantial mechanical work."

That in itself should qualify a winning jockey as a champion athlete as well as the horse he rode in on. Link -Thanks, Alyson!

(image credit: Eadweard Muybridge)

The post is titled "9 reasons why there wasn’t stress in the good old days". Now, you better believe there was plenty of stress in the 19th and 20th centuries, but people were happy to try everything nature and medical science could provide to relieve it. That included cocaine, heroine, opium, amphetamines, and of course, plenty of alcohol for all ages. No prescription needed! The Benzadrine inhaler shown was handed out to airline passengers to treat discomfort. Link -via the Presurfer

The site Not Fooling Anybody is a gallery of business conversions that retain the ghosts of past architecture. For example, this chiropractic office used to be a ...you know. The big bucket still on the sign post should be a dead giveaway. You're invited to submit your own photographs. Link -via mental_floss

Photographer Burk Uzzle took plenty of photographs of the Woodstock music festival in August of 1969, but none are remembered better than the young couple wrapped in a blanket that became the cover art for the record album, and later the poster for the movie.

Forty years later, the couple in the photo - Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both 60 - remain together. They married two summers after the fabled weekend, and they still live less than an hour's drive from the original concert site of Bethel, N.Y., and within spitting distance of where they both grew up.

Nick Ercoline works for the Orange County, N.Y., Department of Housing. Bobbi is a resident nurse at the elementary school in their hometown of Pine Bush.

The two weren't even aware of the photograph until they saw the album cover. Link -via Boing Boing

(image credit: Harbus for News)

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Lithuanian composer Mindaugas Piecaitis was inspired by Nora the Piano Playing Cat (featured previously at Neatorama) and composed a concerto for her to perform with an orchestra. Nora appears via videotape. The rest of the music was performed by the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra. This performance, condicted by Piecaitis, was recorded on June 5th in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Link -via Arbroath