Links for Fun and Entertainment

Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day is always the last Monday in January! You can celebrate by popping virtual bubble wrap or join the LOLcats in a bubble-wrap frenzy.

Morning Cup of Links: Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day
by Miss Cellania - January 31, 2011 - 5:08 AMBubble Wrap Appreciation Day is always the last Monday in January! You can celebrate by popping virtual bubble wrap or join the LOLcats in a bubble-wrap frenzy.

5 Products that Will Be Exposed as B.S. in 2011.

Know any redneck couples? The TV show My Big Redneck Wedding is holding a casting call.

Funny and Rude UK Place Names.

Thirty kids race together in an amazing display of forced cooperation.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark ...as performed by stick figures. (via Gorilla Mask)

A tie-tying machine. It even applauds its own work!

If you love your hamster, you will make him a plate of spaghetti. (via Buzzfeed)

Everyone watch out! David Thorne is visiting the United States!

That's The Good Old Sunny South

A 1929 performance by The Gumm Sisters. The youngest would later change her name to Judy Garland.

Vadrum Meets the Barber of Seville

I found this quite enjoyable.

Somewhere in Dreamland

Max Fleischer, 1936. (via Nag on the Lake)

Good Reads and Information

Underground Animals: Cool Cave Critters, Part One and Part Two.

Michelle Bachmann’s Strange Grasp of History.

Study shows limited learning in college, but studying alone and more reading and writing helps. (via TYWKIWDBI)

The Spiral Clock. A totally awesome idea.

Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Or maybe it will after all.

Recipes for your favorite Girl Scout Cookies. (via mental_floss)

Everything you need to know about taking pictures of soap bubbles, even frozen ones.

A Guide to The Bill of Rights. In plain language everyone should understand. (via Gorilla Mask)

Seven Drunken Nights

(via Breakfast Links)

Fun and Funny Links

Four Cheers Five Victor Borge!

The State of the Web, according to The Oatmeal.

One flow chart to help you sing at least five songs.

Space Hoppers in Venice. I wish those things really worked like that!

Jeane-Claude Van Damme shows us how to dance to Dubstep music. Yes, it's weird. (via Everlasting Blort)

Batman vs. the Internet.

Watch LOLcats working in a sweatshop! Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger gets the NMA.tv treatment.

I Like Big Books!

Everybody Dance

Performed by Chic, 1978. (via Dangerous Minds)

Informative Links

The Fight for Safe Milk: Pasteurization. Pasteurization saved millions from tuberculosis, polio, and typhoid fever but the resistance against requiring the process was fierce.

A veteran of the Iraq War compares his readjustment to civilian life with that of the character Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's semi-autobiographical novel Slaughterhouse Five. (via Metafilter)

10 Facts About Jack LaLanne You Didn't Know. The fitness guru died Sunday at age 96. Also: Jack LaLanne's 10 Strangest Stunts. (via mental_floss)

A Dinosaur With Just One Finger.

Months of the Year And How They Got Their Names.

IKEA stores are designed like mazes. For a reason.

Underground Paris is a whole other world.

Now, this is the kind of pop quiz a teacher should give on a snowy day at school.

An 11-year-old is going to trial for murder as an adult. "The judge's rationale: Jordan's refusal to admit guilt showed that he was not sorry for what he did and therefore liable for murder as an adult." (via Metafilter)

Funny Links

The 2010 Razzie nominations are out. Who will win the awards for the worst movies of the year? (via The Daily What)

I think this is a strange name for a book. (via b3ta)

12 Year Olds Getting Bikini Waxes: Why Do Women Do Such Terrible Things to Their Vaginas? (via TYWKIWDBI)

The 20 Best Nicknames in the Big Mafia Bust.

Discography of Your Favorite Band. It doesn't matter what band it is or what era they are from, chances are that at least some of this timeline by Grant Snider will apply to them, sooner or later.

My family celebrated the arrival of our first granddaughter yesterday, so I couldn’t resist picking out some of my favorite classic baby videos for the Late Movies. I hope you get a kick out of them!

Did you ever know someone who felt the need to narrate a sexual encounter?

BMW Motorcycle

Bill tells the story at YouTube.

This is a photo story of my father's 1958 BMW R50:

Boy meets girl, gets married, buys motorcycle. Rides it for 60,000 miles and has accident when wife is pregnant with 3rd child. (me) Wife orders motorcycle to be taken off road until all her children are grown and on their own. One day when bike is moved to a different storage location, son sits on bike and dreams of being a Jedi Master like his father. Couple grows old together and bike is not ridden for 40 years. Husband is now a grandfather of 7 and married for 50 years, when he dies of a stroke at age 71.

Son looks over the old rotting machine and finds note attached to it from his father to him. Son decides to restore the old 1958 BMW R-50 as a tribute to his father. With the help of many friends, especially Peter Nettesheim, world renowned BMW collector, bike is restored to look even better than it did when it was built in Germany.

(via Nag on the Lake)

Good Reads

Bryan Lewis Saunders does a self-portrait everyday. Lately he started doing a different drug every day and then doing his self-portraits -they turn out quite differently under those conditions. (via Neatorama)

A Tour of the Peabody Hotel, followed by The Children’s Tour of Memphis. Which makes a total of four times I’ve posted about one of my favorite cities.

Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance -In 1798. (via Metafilter)
The 1957 Russian film Road to the Stars is way beyond those cheesy ’50s science fiction movies. The science-based predictions and the stunning special effects would be reflected in 2001: A Space Odyssey over a decade later. (via Dangerous Minds)

Exactly 26 early Twitter adopters have user names of only one letter. Find out who they are in Twitter From @A to @Z. (via The Daily What)

6 TV Movie Facts (Including some dirt on Steven Spielberg). Turns out I admired Spielberg’s work before we even knew who he was!

"...WikiLeaks disclosures are significant precisely because they expose government deceit, wrongdoing and brutality, but the damage to innocent people has been deliberately and wildly exaggerated..."

Albino redwood trees are very rare, since they lack chlorophyll plants use to convert sunlight to nutrients. However, they can survive by sucking nutrients from its neighbor trees like a vampire. (via mental_floss)

Brian Epstein started negotiations for the Beatles to work with Disney on the 1967 movie The Jungle Book, which, of course, didn't happen. (via Metafilter)

Why Are There Different Types of Screws?

Sleepy Puppy

Fozzie doesn't want to go for a walk yet. (via The Daily What)

Mr. Clean

Ad from the 1950s for Mr Clean, who will clean anything!

Friday Fun Links

This story is NSFW and may cause pain to males, but it's a great story. The comments are priceless as well, especially this thread.

Searching for the Naturally Occurring Punchline. Unintentional comedy has replaced scripted humor, especially for citizens of the internet. (via Breakfast Links)

Discography of Your Favorite Band. No, it doesn’t matter what band they are; in fact they don’t even have to be your favorite.

Axeman13 reviewed a video game without realizing it is a parody game. He also didn’t realize how hilarious we would find his spelling and his outrage.

The Meal that Ended My Career as a Restaurant Critic. Eating at a different restaurant every night is not all its cracked up to be, even when they’re giving you special treatment. (via Boing Boing)

Inglip, Dogfort and How the Internet Shapes Humor. Choose wisely which memes you want to follow, or you’ll never get an productive work done.

The Neural Correlate of Ignorance.

The latest story from Allie Brosch will remind you of a horror film -one in which you are being chased through a dark forest by a horde of demons intent on devouring you. Never mind that the horde of demons was a group of six-year-old girls at a birthday party!

The Rings of Saturn is just a concept at this point, but even that makes me dizzy. Would you ride it? (via The Daily What)

Reader Requested Bookstore Cats

It doesn’t take of lot of hard work for a cat to become famous: 1. get a job at a place where people gather, 2. have someone upload your photo to the internet, and 3. eventually, someone will request that you be featured at mental_floss! Here are more of our reader’s favorite bookstore cats in the latest edition of my series at mental_floss.

Informative Links (Thursday)

How to Avoid Getting Screwed When Using Your Debit Card. We hope vigilance is the only price you pay for the convenience of plastic

The New York City island hospital where Typhoid Mary was quarantined was abandoned in 1963, and is off-limits to the public. But we have pictures, and a look at the island’s colorful history. (via Breakfast Links)

Whatever happened to Muzak? Elevator music is still here, you’ve just grown to like it it’s just different.

The Over-Interpretation of Dreams. That dream you took 20 minutes to tell me was most likely due to the banana split just before bedtime.

The rise of DIY abortions. Even though abortion is legal in the US, it’s expense and difficulty (and a wish for secrecy) drive some women to desperate measures.

The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist. The complicated plot was doomed from the start, as was the man wearing the collar. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

Opium Wars. Afghanistan relies on Western aid and opium for its revenues, a balance that spells lasting trouble if nothing replaces them.

My Beverage Tastes Better Because I’m a Chemist. You don’t have to just take her word for it because she explains the experiment in brewing better ginger tea.

Dazed and Confused

Performed by The Yardbirds in 1968. Written by James Holmes in 1967, it was later made into a hit by Led Zeppelin with no credit to Holmes. (via Cynical-C)

Links for Enjoyment and Fun

Two videos pay tribute to Nicholas Cage, his never-ending weirdness, and his versatile hair.

Andy Samberg meets Pee-Wee Herman in a bar. This leads to two assaults, an intervention, and the most amazing Breathalizer test you’ve ever seen.

Your editing lacks continuity. Sorry.

Mini muffins are delicious! However, if you aren’t hungry, they can be oh so annoying. (via Everlasting Blort)

Encounter. A 1982 stop-motion film explores the question of how aliens would have been received in medieval times.

The Big Bump. When this girl recovers from her shock and graduates, she’ll run for city commissioner on the platform of fixing potholes.

The Sarah Palin Battle Hymn.

March of the Beers. It's like March of the Penguins, except, with beer.

The Evolution of Famous Dogs.This handy chart shows where they came from, and where things started to go horribly wrong.

10 Cute and Creepy Crochet Creations

People all over the web are making amazing things with one hook and some yarn. If your idea of crochet is the afghan throw your great aunt made years ago, you are in for a treat! Amigurumi is the art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed characters of all kinds -and there is a vast array of those characters in craft forums, blogs, photo sites, and of course, Etsy. With so many online, I chose to focus on the more bizarre, offbeat, and downright creepy (but still cute) crocheted characters for this list I posted at mental_floss.

Informative Links

You’ve heard of people who plan their trips so that they never make a left turn? A new study shows that this scheme will not only save you gas, but will also save you time! (via Boing Boing)

9 Weird Ingredients Hiding in Your Makeup Bag. Should we have a chemistry degree to figure out what we are putting on our skin?

Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini became a World War II bombardier until his plane went down in the Pacific. He survived 47 days adrift at sea before being captured by the Japanese. (via Metafilter)

A sword hilt has been found among the wreckage of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. That raises a possibility that it could have belonged to Blackbeard the pirate or one of his crew -or one of his victims.

Do you type with two spaces at the end of a sentence because your typing teacher told you to? I never had typing instruction, so I was unaware that there was a vast gap between one-spacers and two-spacers. (via Buzzfeed)

As part of research into LSD during the 1950s, a “normal” housewife takes a trip while being recorded for science -and for TV. She needn’t have been so nervous; it obviously was a pleasant experience for her.

5 Ways Science Could Make Us Immortal. Emphasis on the word “could”, because these methods aren’t yet ready for real world tests. NSFW text.

Whiskey distillers used to run dairies just because they had leftover mash they could feed cows with. It didn’t matter that the “swill milk” was awful -some chalk or plaster mixed in made it appear passable.

Belarus Bulb Blues

An elderly busker in Gomel, Belarus plays the blues, using a light bulb as a slide. (via Metafilter)

Fun and Funny Links

Confessions of a Disney Employee. This animated story doesn’t seem as long as it is because he tells it so well.

If shoot-em-up games seem too dumb and word games are too boring, try a game that combines both. In Z-type, you type letters to shoot the words out of the air! (via J-Walk Blog)

5 New Ways to Tie a Tie. A different tie method for different purposes, none which make any sense in the real world.

Everyone give a big round of applause to The Most Exciting Severed Hands Of All Time. There are more of them in movies than you ever imagined. (via Gorilla Mask)

So you found something cool on the internet…. A handy flowchart from The System and Caldwell of Loldwell.com about how to properly share other people’s awesomeness so that they will keep creating more. (via Metafilter)

Snow falls, ice breaks, and things get really slippery in winter. The only thing more predictable is that someone will record our slips and slides and make a video compilation.

A Field Guide to Literary References in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. If you care nothing at all about literary reference, you’ll still enjoy these classic Python clips.

Miss Arkansas surprisingly did NOT win the Miss America pageant, despite her triple-threat talents in singing, yodeling, and ventriloquism. Which should all be required skills for a beauty queen.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Happy Birthday.

One Night in Bangkok

From the 1984 musical Chess, performed by Murray Head, whom you may remember as the original Broadway Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar.

Sequels to The Titanic

I didn’t watch the movie The Titanic for ten years because I already knew how it ended: the boat sank. Which is what makes the idea for a sequel that much sillier. Despite the 1980 movie Raise the Titanic and the 2010 film Titanic II (which is about another boat named Titanic II), people tried their hand at making a sequel to the 1997 disaster romance epic. Some are pretty good, considering what they had to work with. See several in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Good Reads and Info

9 Developments That Prove We Really Are Living In The Future. You hear about new technical developments every day, but when you see them together, it’s apparent we are living a science fiction novel.

Private Plane, Public Menace. If you’re flying on a private plane, whether it’s yours, or chartered, or belongs to a friend of friend, no TSA screening is necessary.

The first cute exotic baby animal born at the San Diego Zoo in 2011 was …a Satanic Leaf-tailed Gecko. Luckily, the first new year baby at Lincoln Park Zoo is cuddlier.

Mutual Funds to Match Your Lifestyle. Not that matching your lifestyle will mean a bigger profit, but it may make explaining your investments to your relatives more fun.

Google invites students between the ages of 13 and 18 to enter their global online science fair. Prizes include a trip to the Galapagos islands and a trip to CERN. (via Discoblog)
*
Down the Hatch and Straight Into Medical History. Dr. Chevalier Jackson kept objects that his patients swallowed or inhaled (and he removed) and his eccentric collection is now a museum exhibit. (via Bioephemera)

Absinthe is Legal Again – 11 Things You Need to Know. The most important being whether it is legal where you are.

Hooked on Tonics: Snake Oils, Hangover Cures, and Other Questionable Medicine.
Carl Zimmer’s list of banned words for beginning science writers. Wonderful idea: leave the jargon in class and just tell us what happens.

Our Readers’ Favorite Bookstore Cats (Volume One)

One of the ways independent book stores distinguish themselves from the big chain stores is to make their shop into a literary home, where people like to hang out. Having a cat (or many cats) around is a simple way to do that -and it keeps the mice away! When 12 Bookstore Cats was posted last week, we received responses from dozens of bookstore cat fans, and tips on lots of cats to meet. Meet some of them in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Links for Fun

Tucker plays the piano and sings. He’ll never headline a concert, but he’s not bad for a dog.

The Trench Run. A few seconds of video that made shoveling all that snow worth the effort.

Oooh, pretty colors! Silk is an online art toy that can easily fritter away your productive work time, so don’t tell anyone else about it. (via Metafilter)

Pirates of the Caribbean 4 will have Blackbeard, mermaids, and zombies, but no Orlando Bloom or Kiera Knightly. Which means it just might be the best movie of the series.

The unintended consequences of blowing up a Death Star. Honestly, this was what I expected the first time I saw Return of the Jedi.

How can you tell if someone is watching you or following you? If they described your every movement to someone on the phone, you can be pretty sure.

This streaker video is so funny I wanted to post it myself, but I have a no-nudity policy.

A photo collection in which one family tries, over and over, to take a picture of a black dog. After many snapshots that seem to have a hole cut in them, we finally get to see the dog. (via Metafilter)

The map called Food By State assigns a representative food for each state. Enlarge to read the names and comment to argue about the selections. (via Laughing Squid)

Planning For Good Eating

Disney teamed up with the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs to send public service films to South America to combat the influence of Nazis. This nutrition film was released in 1945. (via Metafilter)

Informative Links

NASA is preparing to auction off souvenirs, ephemera, and hardware from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects. Bidding on the 422 items will begin on January 13th. (via Bad Astronomy)

5 Satirists Attacked by People Who Totally Missed the Point. You can write for a higher-thinking audience, but you can’t keep everyone else from reading as well. #1 is NSFW.

Why Can't We Walk in a Straight Line? (via Metafilter)

How Dry Cleaning Really Works. Dry Cleaners won’t tell you, but we will.

The Fordson Snow Devil made traveling through snow several feet deep look downright simple.

A Plague of Pigs in Texas. At least a million invasive wild hogs are eating everything in sight, spreading disease, and wrecking the ecosystem.

How to Recognize When You’re on the Road to Burnout. It’s much easier to correct a stressful situation before it gets out of hand rather than after you crash. (via Lifehacker)

Five Fake Memoirs That Fooled the Literary World. Not interesting enough as fiction nor true enough to be autobiographies, these might have been better off unpublished.

16 of Our Favorite Rabbits

The Lunar New Year begins on February 3rd. According to the Chinese zodiac, we will welcome the Year of the Rabbit. Rabbits are an attractive animal: they are adorably cute, relatively unthreatening, full of energy, and have those ridiculous long ears we can laugh at. Plus they seem to live for sex. Let’s take a look at some of our most beloved pop culture lagomorphs in this list I posted at mental_floss.



Funny Links

Fark's Headline of the Year Winners. And honorable mentions -lots of them.

Vice-presidential dating advice. Joe Biden only knows one thing to say to girls, so he’s had plenty of practice saying it.

Watch the cool dancing lights in the 8×8 LED cube! It comes with instructions for making your own, guaranteed to impress anyone. (via The Daily What)

5 Terrible Movie Toy Tie-Ins. They are so awful that they are probably collector’s items now.

"Beat It": the Red Army Version.

Meet Germany’s newest superstar, all the way from North Carolina! If it weren’t for her unorthodox appearance, she’d be just bump on a US highway.

Should I Have a Cookie? This handy flow chart will give you the same advice I would. Also works for honey buns.

Unobtaniums. Chemicals, elements, and materials that only exist in fiction.

I'm awesome. NSFW lyrics.

Nomi Song

Performed by Klaus Nomi in 1982.

Good Reads and Info

A stay-at-home mom gives “a warning from the front lines.” Making choices between kids, career, or both is harder than ever when your preference can backfire on you years later.

The Confederacy's Plan to Conquer Latin America.

Doctor Who is going to marry his daughter. Sort of. The bride played Doctor Who’s daughter on TV, but she’s also the real daughter of a TV Doctor Who as well. Got it?

8 Terrifying Animal Swarms Created by Human Stupidity. That is Cracked’s way of saying that humans have introduced invasive species to places where they wrecked the ecosystem. Text NSFW.

Once upon a time, women college students learned to take care of babies by living with and caring for a “practice baby” from an orphanage. Too bad no one thought to find out how those babies turned out later. (via Nag on the Lake)

The 15 Most Hated Companies in America. They say these are in no particular order, but I’m not surprised by what was listed first. (via Breakfast Links)

In prison, honey buns are worth their weight in gold. They are used for currency, bribery, and if all else fails, you can eat them.

Upset Specials: 7 Stunners Not Involving Joe Namath, Buster Douglas or Cold War-era Olympic Hockey. Meaning that these might be sports stories you aren’t already familiar with.

Extreme Sledding

I’ve watched the snow fall all day long. I’m content to stay inside and watch, but there are those who take full advantage of snow’s slippery properties on sleds or skis. See a bunch on them in the Late Movies I posted at mental_floss. Don’t try this at home. 

Links for Information and Edification

No soap or shampoo for a year? Sean Bonner gave them up, although he still showers, and he says he’s just fine without the chemicals.

The life of a migrant farm worker. Of course it’s honorable work, but this is not a way of life you want to aspire to. (via Metafilter)

The World Ends Today: 7 Modern Doomsday Predictions that Didn’t Pan Out. By the time everyone knew they were wrong, the prophets were gone along with the profits.

6 Real People With Secret Identities Nobody Saw Coming. Just the story of the wrestler who supported an orphanage made this worth a read. NSFW text.

Ballet on the Beach. Members of the Ballets Russes are caught dancing joyfully on the shores of Australia in 1938; one of several Australian tours of that era.

Things I Won’t Work With. I believe this might be what you’d call chemistry porn -the exciting but forbidden fruit. (via Monkeyfilter)

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring: 6 Awful Floods. You know it’s going to be pretty bad when you start seeing animals walking along two by two.

Red Pandas

(via Boing Boing)

12 Bookstore Cats

Books and cats go together as well as peanut butter and jelly. You could file them under "things that are nice to curl up with" -at the same time! We featured a list of bookstore cats some time ago, but there are many stores with friendly and attractive cats. Meet a dozen of them in this list I posted at mental_floss.



Funny Links

Feline Reactions to Bearded Men.

A Blind Date between pi and e. The relationship between numbers can be as complicated as human relationships. Or more.

The U.S. Border Wall is supposed to be difficult to cross, but two young women scaled it in 18 seconds flat. Imagine how fast you could do it with a little planning and a ladder.

Ah, the life of a freelance writer. Naked with My Editor.

Have you ever seen the pilot episode of Gilligan's Island? It wasn't aired until the 90s. The music, actors, and characters all changed before the series started.

Red Square is a classic game that will drive you insane. My best time is about 15 seconds.

Was 2010 the Worst Year Ever? Dave Barry looks back month by month and lays out the case. (via Metafilter)

Pan-American Blues

Recorded by DeFord Bailey in 1926. (via Metafilter)

Good Reads and Info

Cold Cases. Mysteries that remain unsolved.

Sixties Seventies. This Italian photo site documents the fashions of the 1960s and ’70s -miniskirts, bellbottoms, platform shoes, hot pants, go-go boots, and that hair!

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness. What conditions will be included or excluded from the new edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will have far-reaching consequences for untold numbers of people. (via Metafilter)

The Happy Marriage Is the ‘Me’ Marriage. Oh sure, there’s lots of giving involved, but that’s simpler when you receive as well. (via 3 Quarks Daily)

WojtekNYC gathered friends from the International House to compile New Year greetings in 43 languages. That’s a winning way to start out 2011!

What Makes a Whiskey Bourbon? (And Other Bourbon FAQs). Ethan Trex knows, because he likes Bourbon a lot.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is now in the public domain. A publisher is releasing a version with the n-word removed, hoping schools will go back to using the book, but the idea has provoked anger over messing with a classic. (via Neatorama)

French astrophotographer Thierry Legault went all the way to Oman to take a picture of a solar eclipse. The shot he wanted was only available for a split second, and he got it!

Creepy Home Decor

Shopping online can be fun, even if you’re only “window shopping.” There’s an amazing array of ways to make your home stand out from all the others, or just give your guests a little shiver, with these products worthy of The Addams Family. This list is the fourth in a series of horrifying home decorating articles I've posted at mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

If you find yourself disgruntled at going back to work or school, try gruntle.me. You may have to try it more than once, or dozens of times to get gruntled enough. (via Monkeyfilter)

Automated ketchup, coming soon to a table near you. It might need just a little tweaking first.

Grave-ly funny: hilarious obituaries. If you’re gonna leave, you may as well leave ‘em laughing!

Hyperpipe is not easy, but I couldn’t stop playing. Connect all the pipes so the water can flow through freely.

Anger is Illogical mashes up Star Trek: TOS with the audio of a 50s educational film. And the You Got Served trailer gets mashed up with video from Fiddler on the Roof. And all is right with the world.

He heard the term “dog sledding”, but didn’t take it to mean that dogs pulled the sled. After all, it’s more fun to ride!

The Alcowebizer simulates what a website would look like if you were under the influence of alcohol. Slide the drink around to set your limit. This is what Miss Cellania would look like.

Johnny Cash and Cypress Hill

Informative links

Instead of institutionalizing her special needs children, Lucia Gavrilita worked hard to care for them and give them full lives. She eventually became a government minister and was able to change the way disabled citizens are treated in Moldova. (via Metafilter)

A study shows that empathy has been declining among college students, even faster in recent years. Since empathy is thought to be inborn, what is causing us to lose it?

Meet the Twiblings. Author Melanie Thernstrom tells of the extraordinary measures she and her husband took to achieve parenthood, involving an egg donor and two surrogates. (via Metafilter)

How the world has changed since the year 2000. Since 2000 seems like just yesterday, the differences are particularly jarring.

Giving Alzheimer’s patients whatever they want to eat, control over their schedules, and even alcohol helps calm them and control behavior problems. What’s really amazing is that this is a relatively new idea for nursing homes. (via Fark)

Inspired by Insects: 10 Creepy-Crawly Biomimetic Designs. This kind of applied science is how that weird kid who collected bugs grew up and became fabulously rich. (via Not Exactly Rocket Science)

Great Moments in History: Who Invented the Shovel?

Women, Facts A Man May Or May Not Know

Thank you, Jay Herrod. (via The Daily What)