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Patrick Jean created this video about retro 8-bit video game characters taking revenge on the modern world. -via mental_floss

If history had swung in a slightly different direction, we may have spent fourth grade memorizing the capitals of Sylvania, Deseret, Texlahoma, and Forgottonia. I would be living in Transylvania!

American pioneer Daniel Boone also had a thing for the "sylvania" suffix. If he'd had his way, Kentucky would have been called Transylvania and we'd be placing bets on horses at the Transylvania Derby. Boone hoped to call the colony's capital Boonesborough, but much to the explorer's chagrin, North Carolina and Virginia voted against Transylvania's existence.

Read about more of these "lost states" at NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125142955&sc=fb&cc=fp -via Metafilter

This picture shows what hydrogen atoms might look like if we could see them.

The chart above shows the appearance of a single hydrogen atom in a few of its lowest excited states. In each of those states, the electron is found in a different orbital, some of which have unfamiliar shapes. But even the term "shape" is a little funny for something that you can't hold in your hand. These are actually probability density plots, which show the likelihood of observing the electron in any one position at a given time-- and more correctly, 2D projections of 3D probability densities.

So even the humble hydrogen atom can be a bit complex. Fortunately, we have advanced technology that can help us cut though the quantum mechanical haze: Cookies!

What we can see (and taste) are cookies made to resemble the shapes of the hydrogen atoms in the chart. The folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories made these cookies and will show you how you can make them, too! Link

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Every Easter in Stratford, Ontario you can see the swans returning to the Avon River in style. They are escorted from their winter quarters in a fenced area to the water by a parade of bagpipers! The Stratford Police Services pipe band wore kilts and marched to the river while playing music. The swans waddled behind. Link -via Arbroath

In 1931, a schoolboy wrote a fan letter to his favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs. It said, in part:

I am a fourteen year old boy and am a low Junior in High School. Today at school our teacher was discussing "good literature." I asked if Edgar Rice Burroughs was all right for a book report. I knew she'd say "no" (teachers always do) but I didn't expect her to lecture to the class for the whole period about how terrible your books were!

The author of the Tarzan novels wrote back, in part:

My stories will do you no harm. If they have helped to inculcate in you a love of books, they have done you much good. No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

Which explains why I bought the Twilight books for my youngest daughter. The 14-year-old boy who wrote the letter was Forrest J. Ackerman, {wiki} who grew up to coin the term "sci-fi". Ackerman was a film producer, actor, and the editor of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, and made a name as the biggest science fiction fan ever. Read both letters in full at Letters of Note. Link

The award-winning game Small Worlds looks simple with its pixel graphics, but start exploring and the world becomes bigger. I could eat up a lot of time moving around in here! Link -via reddit

While most people look for the cheapest airfares, Rob Cockerham sought out the most expensive fares from several different airlines. Unsurprisingly, the priciest tickets were either last-minute bookings or scheduled near Christmas. Adding a carbon offset didn't add much, relative to the astronomical ticket prices you could book. The highest fare came from British Airways, but that doesn't mean they are the most expensive airline overall. Link

(image credit: Flickr user caribb)

Doyle Geddes, a teacher at Sky View High School in Smithfield, Utah, led 150 students through the construction of the world's largest recreation of Van Gogh's masterpiece Starry Night. The finished product was 72 feet by 90 feet on the gym floor, and an inch deep in breakfast cereal! A Malt-O-Meal factory donated two tons of Tootie Fruities, Cocoa Dyno-Bites and Frosted Mini Spooners for the project.

“To the best of our knowledge it is the largest re-creation of a Van Gogh work of art in any medium,” he said. The re-creation – made with blue, purple, red, green, yellow and brown cereals – was displayed in a gym at Sky View.

As he looked at the completed project Saturday, Geddes said, “I think it’s better than we even expected or dreamed that it could be.” He thinks Van Gogh would be happy with the re-creation, too.

The work was displayed to the public for four hours on Saturday, then the cereal was collected and given to a farmer to feed his pigs. The Herald Journal details the process of making the recreation. http://news.hjnews.com/news/education/article_c363e3de-3fa0-11df-a496-001cc4c03286.html to story. Link to time-lapse video.

(image credit: Alan Murray/Herald Journal)

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You might remember Biola University professor Matthew Weathers from his Halloween prank video last year. He also went the extra mile for April Fools Day. Even the university president got involved! -via Buzzfeed

With livestock farmers on both sides of the family, I thought all manure was eco-friendly up to a point. But domesticated pigs have excess phosphorus in both their urine and feces, which does awful things to the water supply and organisms living in the water. Now researchers in Canada have developed a genetically-altered "Enviropig" that produces plenty of the enzyme a pig needs to process phosphorus.

To fix this problem, the scientists tinkered with the swine’s genes to make the pig produce its own phytase in its salivary glands. When the cereal grains are consumed, they mix with the phytase in the saliva, and throughout the pig’s digestive tract the enzyme works to break down the phosphorous in the food. With more phosphorus retained within the body, the amount excreted in waste is reduced by almost 65 percent, say researchers.

The researchers who created the Enviropig say it’s not just eco-friendly, but it also cut farmers’ feed-supplement costs. If the pigs eventually become common, they could also help U.S. farmers comply with “zero discharge” rules that forbid pork producers from releasing nitrogen or phosphorus runoff.

The pigs are now being raised on test farms, and won't be available to consumers anywhere for a few years. Link

Spring means baseball time! To celebrate, try your hand and eye at today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You'll be given one letter from a Major League Baseball team logo, and you tell us what team it is (don't include the city). Some may be past versions of the logo, and some may be tilted, just to make things interesting. I got two right out of 13, ha! I'm sure some of the answers I put in were football teams. Surely, you will do better. Link

The game Tremerz is exactly like the movie Tremors, except that it's a video game. You are Kevin Bacon, and you must collect the other movie characters and lead them around while avoiding the Graboids. I don't know how you would win, since I haven't gotten that far yet. Link -via Metafilter

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This looks way cool. You can ignite the particles in a stream of smoke! It's not so cool when you think about how this would work in a burning house. -via reddit

Peepshi is sushi made from marshmallow Peeps! Yeah, it looks like sushi, but the ingredients are Peeps, Rice Krispies, and Fruit by the Foot, so you know it's super sweet. Link -via Nag on the Lake

(image credit: Robyn Lee)

The Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy is a group that gives $100 grants to people who promise to give it away in a meaningful and creative way. The formerly-secret society was founded in 2006.

Miss [Courtney] Martin was an aspiring writer who had just finished her first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, and suddenly found herself in possession of a six-figure royalty advance. Unlike most people, who would be thrilled to have this amount of cash in their pockets, Martin felt guilty that she suddenly had so much money, so she decided to give some of it away to charity. The only problem was that she didn’t know how. In the end, she decided to give nine of her friends and family members $100 and then ask them to give it away as they saw fit. She only asked that they reported back to her a month later.

Several years later, we are privy to many stories of how members have given away their $100 grants. Read about 15 such grants, some with video reports, at mental_floss. Link