Author and illustrator Maira Kalman took a trip to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson and was moved to write a travelogue. But this is no ordinary travelogue. Kalman writes about Jefferson's life and philosophy as well as his home, with whimsical pictures that drawn you in to her experience. Link -via Everlasting Blort

You don't want to be around when a high-rise apartment building falls over! The unfinished 13-story building in Shanghai toppled Saturday morning and killed a 28-year-old worker.

"It was just like an earthquake," witness Zhang Supong told China Daily.

Construction of the building has been halted pending an investigation of the collapse, including reports that cracks had appeared Friday on a flood prevention bank near the apartment building, Xinhua reported.

Link to story. http://cache.daqi.com/view/2617990.html to pictures. -via J-Walk Blog

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The dancing inmates of Cebu prison in the Philippines (featured previously at Neatorama) presented a choreographed tribute to Michael Jackson yesterday. 1,500 inmates participated. The best is the middle part, where you'll see dancing nuns and prisoners doing the Thriller dance to "I'll Be There". -via Buzzfeed

Here's another case of science proving what we all knew in the back of our minds. Men pretty much agree on what makes a woman attractive, while women have their own ideas about what is attractive in men. A survey led by Wake Forest University psychologist Dustin Wood showed pictures of people to 4,000 adults of all ages, and had them rate the photographs for attractiveness on a scale of one to ten.

Men's judgments of women's attractiveness were based primarily around physical features and they rated highly those who looked thin and seductive. Most of the men in the study also rated photographs of women who looked confident as more attractive.

As a group, the women rating men showed some preference for thin, muscular subjects, but disagreed on how attractive many men in the study were. Some women gave high attractiveness ratings to the men other women said were not attractive at all.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: Flickr user mod as hell)

How do researchers study the tops of rain forests? One way is to use a canopy raft, which is flown up and settled on the very tops of trees.

canopy rafts are extraordinary things. they're basically enormous nets attached to an inflatable frame and are dropped onto trees from airships, resulting in a viewing platform like no other which can also be used as a base from which to hang using climbing gear. the raft above is the solvin bretzel, a new design by gilles ebersolt which due to its pretzel-inspired shape is both safer to use and more effective than older versions. researchers can spend days at a time on the raft (hence the tent) and due to its extremely light weight the trees are left unharmed.

deputy dog shows us several other ways scientists can get to the tops of forests to study the ecosystems that sustain the majority of our planet's species. http://deputy-dog.com/2009/06/how-to-get-to-top-of-forest.html

(image credit: Pyot Laurent/Ocean Vert)

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Eight-year-old Riley Silos sings in this video recorded and edited by his dad. It was a Fathers Day project they did together. -via Buzzfeed

Are you familiar with these sixty symbols from physics and astronomy? The University of Nottingham is following up on the success of their Periodic Table of Videos (previously at Neatorama) by posting this guide with a video explaining each symbol. You can access the videos by clicking a symbol at the site. The question marks indicate symbols and videos that aren't yet ready to launch. Link -via Metafilter

Cockroaches, wasps, rats, mosquitoes, and E. coli bacteria. All horrible creatures, right? Maybe not so much. Cracked spells out how each of these things benefits us and the planet we live on. It might not make you feel good about them, but maybe you will understand them a little bit better. Link -via Gorilla Mask

The elephant is the national symbol of Thailand. But lately, citizens have been going crazy for pandas. Zookeepers feel that the elephants aren't getting enough attention, and made their point by painting the elephants to look like pandas!

Slathering them in white watercolour paint, the keepers at the Ayutthaya Elephant Kraal then paraded the five elephants before schoolchildren in an effort to remind Thailand that its elephants have needs, too.

The furore was sparked after the nation became fascinated with the birth of a female panda cub to pandas Lin Hui and Xuang Xuang at Chiang Mai zoo.

The Bangkok Post also reported that a 20 million baht (£355,800) snow house was being built for the panda family at the zoo.

Link -via Unique Daily

When is a video not a video? Some consider Vaslav Nijinsky the greatest ballet dancer ever, but there is no known film footage of Nijinsky, who retired at age 29 in 1919. He would not allow his company to be filmed. However, YouTube has Nijinsky dance videos. How can that be?

Because, it turns out, these aren’t films. They are computer-generated artifacts, made by Christian Comte, a French artist who has a studio in Cannes. Reached the other day, Comte acknowledged his authorship. “These films are animations of photographs, achieved thanks to a process that I invented,” he said. “I work as an alchemist in animated cinema.” He uses still photographs and, by employing a computer to alter them—tilt a head, move an arm—fills in the gaps between successive shots. That’s why his “Faun” footage is so much longer than his other footage. He had all those de Meyer stills. This is basically no different from the way Steven Spielberg got the dinosaurs to run around the jungle in “Jurassic Park.”

Link -via Boing Boing

The Battle of Little Bighorn happened 133 years ago today. George Custer and his men were certainly outnumbered, but their defeat may have also been assured by the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors' superior weaponry.

If the Indians were, in fact, better armed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer may have contributed to the situation by declining to include Gatling guns in his van. Because he was setting off on what amounted to a search-and-destroy mission, he argued that the Gatlings were too cumbersome and would only slow him down.

At the point where he was surrounded and outnumbered by a ratio as high as 9-to-1, he probably regretted making that choice. In such a dire situation, the Gatling gun would have considerably reduced the enemy’s numerical advantage and may have even proven decisive in turning the tide.

The Lakota and Cheyenne warriors did join the battle with a number of Henry and Spencer repeating rifles, which provided a higher rate of fire than the single-shot Springfield Model 1873 carbines carried by the cavalry troopers.

In the end, several factors led to the deaths of the 197 men under Custer, each stemming from his underestimation of his adversaries. Link

A shelter in Australia takes care of the world's cutest baby fruit bats during tick paralysis season. http://www.uniquedaily.com/baby-bat-caring-center/ (embedded YouTube video)

I just love the way the announcer says "bebes"!

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Maybe there is a little envy in this cat, but he sure is affectionate. The laughter from the spectators is a bonus. -via Buzzfeed

Archaeologists have unearthed a well in Cyprus that is believed to be between 9,000 and 10,500 years old, making one of the earth's oldest water wells. Debris at the bottom of the well includes the skeleton of a woman.

Pavlos Flourentzos, the nation's top antiquities official, said the 16-foot deep cylindrical shaft was found last month at a construction site in Kissonerga, a village near the Mediterranean island nation's southwestern coast.

After the well dried up it apparently was used to dispose trash, and the items found in it included the poorly preserved skeleton of the young woman, animal bone fragments, worked flints, stone beads and pendants from the island's early Neolithic period, Flourentzos said.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: Cyprus Antiquites Department/AP)

As of 2010, the Pontiac brand name will no longer be used. Over the last 50 years, there have been almost 30 Pontiac models sold in the US. How many can you name in ten minutes? Anything over ten is considered a winning score. Let's just say I barely won. Link